The Treaty of Versailles
After the war ended, they had to somehow make peace. Making peace turned out to be another battle in itself.
Several weeks ago, I wrote about World War 1 - how all Europe came out of it devastated, and how no country in the war had a definite goal besides defeating their enemies. But yet, after the war ended on 11 November 1918, they had to somehow make peace. Making peace turned out to be another battle in itself.
It took until June 1919 to draft the Treaty of Versailles. That isn't the only treaty that the victors drafted, nor the treaty that took the longest. But, it's the most important one, and the most famous one both then and now, because it was the treaty imposing peace terms on Germany. The treaties with other powers in Eastern Europe - Saint-Germain-en-Laye with German Austria (soon renamed as Austria), Trianon with Hungary, Neuilly-sur-Seine with Bulgaria, and Sèvres with the Ottoman Empire (soon overthrown by Turkey) - were significant to the people they affected, but Germany was the most powerful of the defeated Central Powers and thus the one that most worried the victorious Entente. And, as it turned out, their worries proved quite correct.
The victorious Entente came to Versailles with very different goals. As I described in my earlier blog post, the various lists drawn up during the war for demands to make afterwards had basically been a grab bag of ideas. The coherent goals for each power at the peace conference had little to do with them. In short, there were three major powers in the Entente: France, Britain, and the United States.1 France's overriding concern - after seeing the war fought on its soil, with 4.4% of its population killed and some places devastated so badly they still haven't been rebuilt - was making sure Germany could never invade again. Britain wanted to keep Germany from rivaling its global leadership, which was similar but not quite the same thing.
But America's goals were very different.
Even after entering the war (in early 1917), US President Wilson kept talking about a peace that would be fair and just to both sides. In early 1918, he articulated that in the famous "Fourteen Points," speaking of "opportunity of autonomous development" for different nationalities, free trade for all, and a League of Nations to settle future disputes. Most other national leaders (on both sides) considered this hopelessly idealistic, but many people loved it. As the Central Powers lost the war, and Germany rose in revolution in the last days of the war, their people also looked to President Wilson and his Fourteen Points to protect their future. They now welcomed America's aims. They were happy to give self-determination to others, as long as they had it for themselves too!
As best as I can tell, President Wilson did sincerely see himself as a new sort of enlightened statesman bringing forth a new era against the antiquated regimes of Europe. To some extent, this had been a common feeling in America ever since the Revolution, when the Founding Fathers were writing about America's bright future without the hidebound aristocracy of Europe. World War One only accentuated this, as Europe was tearing itself apart in ways never seen before.
We can see this in a futuristic novel written in America in 1915, during the war, The Lost Continent. Edgar Rice Burroughs depicts a world where the war has continued for over a century and the Americas have quarantined themselves from Eurasia, where ruined Europe is now being fought over by the Ethiopians and Chinese. With the fresh American army having quickly brought victory, this view actually appeared to make sense to Wilson and most Americans.
But this attitude didn't help with the details of making peace.
Wilson wasn't experienced at the game of international diplomacy, and he didn't know or care about myriads of details that mattered to the leaders of Europe who were closer to them. What was worse, he was egotistical enough to fire every advisor who wasn't willing to flatter him, and insist on leading the negotiations himself. This probably wouldn't have worked well in any case, but his falling seriously ill during negotiations - probably a case of the 1918 "Spanish Flu" pandemic that killed tens of millions around the world - didn't help. Some historians suggest he may have had a severe case of post-viral syndrome, or "long flu”, affecting his brain. Either way, he considered the League of Nations the most vital point of his Fourteen Points, so that was what he insisted on. In the end, he traded to the British and French everything else they demanded, so he could get that League of Nations.
What the British and French2 wanted was security. They'd joined the war in the first place to keep Germany from dominating Europe; now, after Germany spilled oceans of blood and devastated their countries, they wanted to make sure it couldn't happen. France, especially, knew this was a hard challenge: Germany already had more industry than France and more people; after the war had devastated the most industrialized areas of France, and broken up the Austro-Hungarian Empire leaving the new "Republic of German Austria" eager to join Germany, this difference was about to become even more severe. President Wilson assured people that his League of Nations could keep the peace - here and elsewhere - through a system of fair tribunals to settle disputes, and collective security where everyone would immediately ally against anyone who started a war. But none of the other Great Powers trusted that. So, France - with Britain behind them - wanted Germany to pay for the damage from the war, and wanted to make sure it wouldn't rise again.
In the end, the Treaty of Versailles bound Germany with an extremely heavy indemnity, hugely limited the size of their army, and kept them from moving any military units into the "Rhineland" region near the French border. In addition, some border territories were given to France, Poland, Denmark, and Belgium. Finally, "Germany and her allies" were officially blamed for "all the loss and damage" caused by "the aggression of Germany and her allies." And on top of that, President Wilson got his League of Nations. In the meantime - until the treaty was officially signed and went into effect - the British blockade that was still causing famine in Germany would continue.
Germany viewed this treaty with horror. Multiple government officials resigned rather than sign it, and their successors only signed after the Entente threatened an immediate resumption of the war. The German public thought the territorial changes were a betrayal of Wilson's Fourteen Points - as they were. They thought the "war guilt clause" blamed Germany for the whole war, and the indemnity was crushing - which might not be quite the case, but was a defensible interpretation. And, they thought the whole thing was a national humiliation.
To be fair, the German government didn't give the Treaty a fair chance. The German army had been losing the war, but - thanks to the Armistice coming before they'd been pushed back to German soil - most Germans didn't appreciate the degree to which they'd been losing. It felt, to many, like the new republican civilian government (proclaimed just before the armistice) had betrayed the army by making peace.3
The first thing people learn about the League of Nations is that it failed. It didn't prevent World War II. Even before then, it didn't prevent Japan's invasion of China, Bolivia's invasion of Paraguay, or Italy's invasion of Ethiopia - Japan and Italy simply left the League. When the League tried to sanction them, enough other countries didn't listen that they could easily endure the sanctions.
The problem was that countries didn't care for the League of Nations. The clearest expression of that was when the United States didn't join it - despite all Wilson's urging, the Senate refused on the grounds that it might involve America in future unnecessary wars.4 But even in the countries that had joined the League, not enough people actually paid attention to it.
Thus died Wilson's dream, for which he had sacrificed everything else. The League did a bit of good, such as introducing the "Nansen Passport" for stateless people and starting the Mandate system as a roadmap toward independence for some colonies, but it abjectly failed at its largest duties. It would be reborn after the next war as the United Nations, designed by people aware of the League's failings - but which would also fail the high hopes of its founders.
And the rest of the Treaty also failed. Germany refused to accept it and kept maneuvering out from every part of it that it could, even before Hitler came to power. Few of the reparations were ever paid until after the Second World War.
Under the Treaty, Britain and France had the legal right to march into the Ruhr region of Germany when Germany wasn't living up to the Treaty - both to punish Germany, and to take reparations from the mines and factories there. France did that once in 1923, but only for a brief time. When Hitler expanded the army and remilitarized the Rhineland, it would have been time for France and Britain to do it again - but they didn't. The problem was that they weren't willing to take the effort and risk to use force to enforce the Treaty, and the Germans weren't willing to stick to it without force.
So, the Treaty of Versailles was a bad plan. It was very understandable; after such a punishing war, it's no surprise the Entente wanted security and reparations. It's hard for me to see any better way to gain security, given population and industrial differences as they were. But still - making a peace with Germany would either require a treaty they would (at least eventually) be willing to accept, or continuing to force them to hold to a treaty they didn't accept. France and Britain doubtlessly planned at the time to continue forcing Germany to keep the treaty, but that national will quickly evaporated. After the exhaustion caused by the war, I think they should have recognized that. And, if they had recognized it, they should not have written a treaty that Germany would never accept.
And it was guessed, at least by some. As the French Marshal Foch said about the eventual Treaty of Versailles, "This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years." Twenty years later, a second war would cause "The Great War" to be renamed "World War I."
The death of the Treaty of Versailles can be aptly symbolized by the long, slow death of the League of Nations. During World War II, thirty-four nations - including France and Britain - continued to technically be members of the League of Nations. But, the League played no role in the war. Only the Permanent Secretariat continued sitting at Geneva, keeping it in symbolic existence. They represented the hope and dreams of Versailles, but also its impotence amid the renewed World War roaring all around them.
The League would be reborn after that Second World War as the United Nations. Versailles would be done better after the war, with a long-continued occupation of Germany which rewrote its government from the ground up against aggressive war. But, that was after a war the Allies much more clearly won, and with an Allied people much more willing (after a second war) to occupy Germany long enough to enact such extreme measures.
The Treaty of Versailles was an understandable plan. I can even sympathize with it from some angles. I can't think of a better attempt that the Entente would have accepted at the time, unless President Wilson had somehow been more forceful and uncharacteristically wise at diplomacy. But even the people framing it should not have been surprised that it failed.
Russia had dissolved into revolution during the war, and the new Bolshevik government was still unrecognized; Italy had no interests against Germany; other minor powers were largely ignored.
Their smaller European allies also wanted security (and often more land), but the British and French were the ones who mattered.
The Army had intentionally fostered this perception, even before the Armistice was requested. This "stab-in-the-back legend" would weigh down the republican government until the Nazis exploited it to gain power.
President Wilson - who, again, had fired every advisor who wouldn't flatter him - was somehow convinced that the American people would favor the League of Nations if he only explained it to them. So, he went on a nationwide public speaking tour. It wasn't succeeding, even before he had to cut it short due to health problems - which quickly developed into a stroke, leaving him largely incapacitated from October 1919 through summer 1920.
I'd always heard that Britain was somewhere in the middle of America and France at Versailles.
Certainly Keynes (who was involved) called Versailles a 'Carthaginian Peace'.
Wiki says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles
In private Lloyd George opposed revenge and attempted to compromise between Clemenceau's demands and the Fourteen Points, because Europe would eventually have to reconcile with Germany.