This study is a contribution to the lively discussion over the past twenty years comparing the ideas formed by T.G. Masaryk, Friedrich Naumann and M. Hodža during the First World War. The author mainly focuses on comparing ideas from their key well known publications (Masaryk's The New Europe, Naumann's Mitteleuropa, Hodža's Federation in Central Europe). He states that all three politicians agreed that Europe in the future had to be democratic, but their specific ideas about its character and about the importance of nation states differed. Naumann's plan was to create a democratic Central Europe under German leadership, which Masaryk and Hodža refused outright.