The Warsaw Alliance is an collective defense organization of states in Central Europe. It was established on August 1, 1919 in Warsaw, Kingdom of Poland. The treaty was signed in Warsaw on July 23, 1919 and official copies were made in German, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Finnish, and Magyar, and Ukrainian. The selection of Warsaw was symbolic to give the overall appearance of a voluntary alliance of sovereign states, rather than forced by the occupying Germans.