I have a different take on C/E history: the dismemberment of the H. empire yielded a host of mini-states that were virulently nationalistic in ideology (possible exc.: Czechoslovakia) but in reality inherited the ethnic & cultural heterogeneity of the old, i.e. precisely what they had been fighting against. This holds e.g. for Romania and Yugoslavia.

Hungary (the new, incredibly shrunk Hungary) was more homogeneous, but its population was in shock, b/c of the tremendous territorial  (and cultural) loss after the Versailles/Trianon treaty.

So there several repressive states in the region(more repressive than the H. E. had been) before WWII, and the economic integration of the Empire had also been lost. For Hungary & Romania at least it was a guarantee for a nasty homegrown version of authoritarianism.

I warmly recommend a history of the Romanian Iron Guard by Irina Livezeanu, a Pittsburgh history professor. She traces back the emergence of this homespun fascist movement to the Versailles treaty. More precisely: to the state that Romania was in at the time of the treaty and to the particular way in which it reacted to territorial expansion. The thing is, R. was a relatively poor country with a not-too-numerous intelligentsia when it got expanded with Transylvania and other territories, which were all relatively better developed than the recipient country AND had a multinational (Hungarian, Jewish, German, ...) intelligentsia. So, paradoxically, what should have been the Holy Grail of National Unity for Romania
(Transylvania had a substantial Romanian population!) was getting saddled with a wave of snotty for'ners. (I REALLY recommend reading Livezeanu's work to see what happened next. Her main books should be available at e.g. Amazon.)

A dog's a dog. A Cat's a Cat. (T.S. Eliot)