What-if's of Versailles
As I imagine other ways the Treaty could’ve been written, could it have been better?
I was thinking again about the Treaty of Versailles.
As I explained last time I wrote about it, the Treaty was written at the end of World War I, between the Allies (Britain and France and the United States, mainly) and Germany, at the end of World War One. It tried to satisfy British and (even more so) French demands for security against Germany attacking them again... and the first thing we learn about it was that it failed. As the French Marshal Foch supposedly said, “This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.”
I used to say that the Treaty of Versailles, as it came out, did nothing well: it was too harsh for Germany to accept it, and not harsh enough to actually keep them down. It impelled the Nazis to power on the backs of its humiliation, and it left them the room to build up their army to fight a Second World War - almost exactly twenty years later, as Foch had prophesied.
But since I’ve thought more about it and looked into it more, I’ve changed my mind. The problem wasn’t the Treaty; it was that people tried to make the Treaty do too much. And as I imagine other ways the Treaty could’ve been written, I can’t see any answer that would’ve been acceptable to its authors and better for the world.
The Treaty could hardly have done a better job of keeping Germany from starting another war. It didn’t work, of course, but that wasn’t the Treaty’s fault.
The Treaty strictly limited the size of the German Army, dissolved the General Staff to cut off their command school, handed over most of their Navy to the Allies, and forbade Germany from even having an air force. What’s more, it forbade any military presence anywhere near the German-French border. Of course, the Germans evaded all the restrictions they could - but that was predictable. At first the evasion didn’t do all that much, and later it was obvious. The Allies might have not noticed the air training in the Soviet Union, or some of the General Staff continuing to meet under another name. But when Germany started actively rearming, that was obvious. When they marched into the Rhineland up to the French border, that was obvious.
The Allies could have enforced the Treaty had they wanted to. Hitler gave the troops marching into the Rhineland strict orders to turn around if the French did anything... but they didn’t. One can blame the French of 1936 who let Germany march into the Rhineland, or perhaps one could excuse them... but one can scarcely blame this on the French of 1919 who’d written the Treaty. What more could the Treaty have done? Even if it’d literally stationed a French military mission in Berlin, would they have been willing to maintain that when historically they weren’t willing to maintain one in the Rhineland?
Versailles was harsh, but not unprecedentedly harsh.
It demanded reparations, and put the Rhineland under military occupation for a while - but so had many other wars. The reparations weren’t crushing to the German economy; the hyperinflation that did crush the German economy shortly after the war was a political decision by the Weimar government. The military occupation was nothing unusal: “guarantees against unprovoked aggression by Germany,” in the words of the Treaty. Both occupation and reparations were less than Germany itself had done to France after the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. Anything less would’ve been unthinkable to France and Britain after four years of unthinkably harsh struggle.
The problem was, the German people didn’t see themselves as having lost the war.
Germany was, in fact, decisively defeated in 1918. Its armies were in running retreat, half-starving, with barely any hope of scraping together another defensive line. Of course they surrendered; no sensible commander would’ve done differently.
(True, later in 1945, they didn’t surrender in an analogous situation - but Hitler wasn’t a sensible commander. For all their flaws, Hindenburg and Ludendorff in 1918 were sensible.)
But, because Hindenburg and Ludendorff were sensible commanders and could see what was coming - they convinced the government it needed to surrender while the armies were still in Belgium, outside German soil. What’s more, because the American President Wilson had refused to negotiate with the Kaiser, the government deposed him and declared a republic.
So, the German civilians didn’t see how bad the situation was. To them, the armies were still winning because they were on enemy soil - and then they surrendered. This was, as anti-republican pundits never stopped reminding them, a “stab in the back”. It wasn’t the armies who had lost the war; it was the brand new republican government!
The republic (called the Weimar Republic after the town where it wrote its constitution) would never escape this accusation. Hitler rode the “stab in the back” legend straight to power.
So, suppose we have a harsher Versailles. It demilitarizes Germany more, demands more reparations, and somehow goes farther in disbarring the General Staff from politics.
The problem is, I don’t see how this actually makes any difference. The German people are just as angry; the Weimar Republic is if anything even more unstable. Meanwhile, the same factors that historically made the French and British unwilling to actually enforce the Treaty are still happening here... if anything, they’ll be even less willing, because they’ll perceive German complaints as marginally more just.
The Allies did take this route after World War II: completely dissolving the German government and army, not establishing any new national government for four years, and insisting the eventual new army had to be under Allied command (through NATO). The reason it worked then is that everyone in Germany had seen they had lost, and the growing Cold War meant the Allies stayed very willing to intervene in German affairs. After World War I, though, neither of these factors are present.
If Versailles reads like this anyway... the Franco-British armies are going to withdraw soon, there’s going to be a new German republic, and it’s going to be even more unstable. Perhaps, just by random chance, the republic will fall to someone who’s not Hitler. But that’s not because of anything specific about the changes to the Treaty. Without changing French and British behavior in the late 20’s and 30’s, a harsher Versailles Treaty doesn’t matter.
Suppose you have a looser Versailles. It decreases reparations, doesn’t impose as harsh restrictions, and doesn’t single out Germany as carrying the blame for the war.
The problem is, any reparations and restrictions will still be a club for anti-republican pundits to beat the Weimar Republic with. As long as they were present, the outrage wasn’t proportionate to their actual size. The German people felt like they were winning; the treaty couldn’t but seem a betrayal.
Again, you might get someone not Hitler... but it’s not going to be thanks to the terms of the Treaty.
Suppose you decide Versailles isn’t going about it the right way. Austria-Hungary got broken up into new nations; so did the Ottoman and Russian Empires - why not Germany too? Let’s reverse 1871 and even 1866, and break Germany up into several new states!
The problem is - all the new nations forged out of Austria-Hungary, the Ottomans, and the Russian Empire had national identities they could adopt. True, many places didn’t feel part of the new nations (for instance, most of eastern Poland didn’t feel Polish). But, there was still a Polish (or Czech or Yugoslavian or other) national identity they could choose to take on, and enough people who did feel Polish (or Czech or Yugoslavian) that the new nations did survive. Woodrow Wilson still has a street in Prague named after him, because the people of Prague wanted to be Czechoslovakian and thanked Wilson for establishing it.
The German states didn’t have that.
Perhaps Bavaria had enough regional identity that it could take independence - even today, it has a few regional-specific political parties - but I don’t see that anywhere else. The French tried to make the Rhineland independent while they occupied it in the 1920’s, but their sponsored independence movements never got significant support. So, an independent Rhineland (or Hannover, or Saxony, or anything else) would probably only stay separate as long as Allied troops are there keeping it separate.
Suppose that it goes another way. United States President Wilson had come to Versailles with dreams of an equitable peace guaranteed by “collective security” behind a League of Nations. Everyone, he said, would promise to come to the aid of anyone who was ever invaded. With this, France and Britain could limit their own armies just like Germany, or else no one would need unique limits.
But that wouldn’t work either. Wilson got his League of Nations and promises of collective security, but we see that it didn’t prevent World War Two. It didn’t even prevent the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (another member country!) while it was firmly up and running - too many nations wanted Italian friendship. And after it failed then, no one would trust it again. A more Wilsonian peace wouldn’t change any of that.
(Plus, France would still insist on reparations; the war had been fought on their soil, so they legitimately did have a nation urgently needing repairs thanks to Germany.)
So, by the time the Versailles Peace Conference met, the die had already been cast. The Weimar Republic was already doomed unless it could actually provide Germany a good enough life they could forgive it its birth... and that was a very high standard. The German people might not have liked their old government - the war was a sore trial for both government and people - but they liked it more than a new government that had set itself up and seemingly promptly stabbed the army in the back. To get a better solution, you need to step back before Versailles.
Suppose we do - how far should we go?
I think one big change is to stop Wilson from insisting that the Kaiser has to be removed. Without that demand, the Kaiser will stay in power through the surrender. And, if he’s the one who surrenders, the Germans aren’t going to have such a convenient scapegoat for stabbing the army in the back.
The old imperial government definitely needs to be reformed, but that can be done after the peace. Perhaps, also, reparations could be laundered through the League of Nations so Germany isn’t directly paying France? It would still be a tough road... but from that point, one that I think is actually achievable.
But the real problem with Versailles was the collision of everyone’s hopes and dreams from four years of bitter war.
France and Britain, understandably, wanted something for their suffering. Germany, sensibly, also wanted something for its suffering. But, outside the idealistic world of President Wilson’s head, they couldn’t both get anything close to what they wanted. Any real treaty had to dissatisfy someone.
So, the only chance of a more-fair treaty would be a peace of exhaustion where no one won. Both sides were feeling one out at the end of 1916, trying to hint that the still-neutral President Wilson be a mediator... but Wilson flubbed his chance, and the war continued. Perhaps that could lead to a firmer peace?
Though, I fear that peace of exhaustion would also lead to more war - not a renewed World War, surely, but the nations falling to ripped-apart hopes and dreams. I don’t know what that would look like, but the chaos of Germany just after the war (with far-left and far-right and centrist militias openly battling in the streets) gives us a dark picture.
Historically, it did take exhaustion - exhaustion after a second World War - to bring peace to Europe.
But even then, it wasn’t just the exhaustion: it was the growing Cold War. Even before that, there were dreams and sketches of peace plans, but those had existed during and after World War One as well. Then, they fell to practicalities. But with the Cold War, they could blossom into actual western European integration and what became the European Union.
It wasn’t perfect, at all. But it was more perfect than Versailles, or even anything Versailles could have been.
Machiavelli was right that you should never do an enemy a small injury. France treated Germany badly enough to seriously anger them, but not enough to damage their long-term war making ability. And they paid for it.
A pretty good summary here, but I will have to quibble a little on the reasons behind Wilhelm's abdication.
While Wilson made it clear that his abdication was probably going to be a prerequisite for peace negotiations, the final impetus for everyone around him deciding that he had to go was when, as a result of the German admiralty deciding to take the fleet on a death ride into the North Sea because of the deteriorating situation, the sailors mutinied because they didn't want to die pointlessly, at which point Germany began falling apart internally. Realizing that Germany wouldn't survive if the war lasted much longer, the guys in charge basically told Wilhelm that the army no longer supported him, and at that point he bowed to the inevitable.
Also worth noting, by the way, is that if you look at the deliberations of the German high command and the upper-level political leadership, they spent late September to early November trying to figure how to avoid being the ones who surrendered to the Allies. One wonders what might have happened if the admirals had decided to not even float the "death ride" idea and spark the sailor's revolt. It's not implausible that the Germans might have dithered until the Allies outran their supply lines and had to stop for the winter, which would have given them months to put the army back together, further harness the lands taken in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and delude themselves into believing that they could pull it out.
Then, in spring 1919, the Allies break the German army, take the war into Germany, and march all the way to Berlin. Maybe history looks a little different then.