A definitive declaration of ‘blame’ was hard to come across, simply because of the dissolution of the Austrian-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. The borders redrawn (as they often didn’t) did not take into consideration the wishes of these minorities, their population centres and their ideals. Countries like Czechoslovakia had huge numbers of ethnic minorities who were unhappy with the redrawn borders. The League of Nations failed to enforce treaties relating to borders and a large number of refugees were created from the crisis. In this case, there was no definitive state of people who could lay certain blame on any one minority, though I am sure the minorities were quick to blame one another especially given the turmoil that ensued their loss.

There were however many minorities suspected of helping the enemy, particularly in Eastern Europe.

In the Ottoman Empire, minorities were attacked under the guise of war rather than blamed for their defeat. Under the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the Ottoman Empire was to be homogenised into a Turkish-Muslim nation. Hundreds of thousands of Syriac Christians and Armenians were killed or removed; this was a tactic unrelated to war in the sense that it was not caused by it, rather was able to happen more freely under it. The Ottoman Empire fought both internally and externally during the war, so perhaps there was some level of thought that the internal affairs distracted from external victory, though I have not seen it in a source.

In Russia, Jews were blamed in a similar way than in Germany. Anti-Bolshevik rhetoric blamed them for the coup in the October Revolution of 1917 (the Bolsheviks, now in power, pulled Russia out of the war thereafter, causing them to “lose”) and about 100,000 were killed in the campaigns. During the war there were mass deportations of Jews and Germans from the front lines and instances of looting and pogroms to go alongside the killing of many Jews. This happened across Russian territory, particularly Poland.

In Austria-Hungary and surrounding areas, there was a distrust of national minorities including Jews. Often living on the outset borders, they were by many distrusted and considered to be enemies within the lines. The awful thing for the people living here then was that the combat zone that they lived in meant threats from both sides - outside invaders who would most certainly attack them, and their own military who may accuse them of treason or spying.

Source material for blame placed after the war is scarce in the other losing countries because they ceased to be so after the war. Their spiral into civil wars and conflict are a result of borders breaking down and being redrawn, but as I said I am sure there was accusations of blame fired between minorities themselves. Because Germany largely stayed together as one state, we can see the trajectory of narrative. Germany was also arguably the state hit hardest by the Treaty of Versailles, and had much time to ruminate overarching political scapegoats.