The war is over, and the process of writing the peace treaties begins, but this process
is fraught with peril, for the war was fought on a scale never before seen in human history,
and those treaties - for better or for worse - would have effects that would not only color
the world of 100 years ago, but even our world today.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War Epilogue Special.
Immediately after the war ended, many soldiers wondered what they would do now - being a
soldier was a job, and a routine, it gave a sense of purpose.
But for many non-soldiers liberation was the be all and end all.
Look at Belgium.
95% of the country had been occupied, it was stripped of its resources and its industry,
and 120,000 Belgians had been deported to be workers in Germany.
And those that remained certainly had no real civil liberties during occupation.
So when the Belgian army was advancing in October 1918, they weren’t just freeing
their land, they were going home - for the first time since 1914.
So while many people on both, or all, sides began to really wonder what the purpose of
the war was, the Belgians didn’t.
And the French people whose land was occupied for over four years?
They didn’t either.
But you gotta think, those Belgians and French didn’t just want land back, they wanted
revenge, and they wanted security.
And this they - and the world to some extent - expected from the peace settlements.
The Paris Peace Conference lasted from January 1919 to January 1920, and produced five peace
treaties.
The Treaty of Versailles with Germany, signed June 28, 1919.
The Treaty of Saint-Germain with Austria, signed September 10, 1919.
The Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria, signed November 27, 1919.
The Treaty of Trianon with Hungary, signed June 4, 1920.
The Treaty of Sevres with Turkey, signed August 10, 1920.
David Stevenson writes, “The peace treaties were the pre-eminent political legacy of the
conflict.
The struggle to enforce them was the central issue in postwar international politics.”
There was no precedent for the scale or the complexity of the process of the peace conference,
and what they did was pretty much just made up as they went along.
All the Allies attended the sessions, but the actual business was conducted initially
by the Council of Ten- the American, British, French, Italian, and Japanese heads of state
and foreign ministers.
But US President Wilson and British PM David Lloyd George left for extended stays at home,
and French PM Georges Clemenceau was temporarily out of action because of an assassination
attempt, and by the time they got it back together, those three had daily meetings with
Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando as the Council of Four.
They presented a treaty to Germany May 7th.
The senior German delegate to Versailles was shocked.
His summary was this: “Germany renounces its existence.”
Germany gave up 13% of its territory and 10% of its population.
The ability of Germany to wage war on land, at sea, or in the skies had already been eliminated
by the armistice.
In fact, the German fleet was now at Scapa Flow where the majority of lit was scuttled
by the commanders in June to prevent it being divided among the Allies.
What had been Austria-Hungary was now officially ripped apart into a variety of nations, but
even the new Republic of German-Austria and Hungary themselves were very small.
Hungary was now landlocked and just 28% its former size.
Bulgaria also had to give up land, but not nearly as much.
Army sizes were restricted for all of them.
Anyhow, they had to pay reparations.
There’s been a lot of talk about these, particularly the German ones and their fairness
or unfairness, so I want to look at that for a minute.
It wasn’t really the amount that mattered so much.
Heck, in the end Germany ended up paying less than the French had in 1871 after a far shorter
war fought on French soil.
Okay, there are those who argue that that was a cause of the global depression that
hit in 1873, but I digress.
Jumping ahead for a second, Germany suffered rampant inflation in the early 1920s, to the
point where literally your entire life savings could maybe buy a loaf of bread.
Well, the Allies did not accept reparation payments in worthless inflated German currency
and wanted something backed in gold.
Germany asked for a moratorium on payments just until they could get their economy sorted
out.
Britain said okay, France refused.
Germany did soon sort out the economy and the mark to a good extent, but by then the
damage was done- the unfairness of the reparations would be a rallying call in Germany in the
20s and 30s, particularly by Hitler and the Nazis.
What really mattered in 1919 was the rhetoric that came with the treaties.
Many saw the terms as too harsh, many not harsh enough, and there was a huge outcry
over article 231.
This was the “war guilt” clause in the treaties- each central power had to admit
that it was responsible for the war.
The reason for this was to justify reparations- if it’s your fault you have to pay.
Of course there was controversy over the general terms.
There were two of Wilson’s babies really at play here.
One was national self-determination.
Every national “race” should have its own lands.
Considering that the US was a nation made up mainly of immigrants, though, Wilson’s
stance against multi-ethnic empires or nations was pretty inconsistent, but in practical
reality, the borders drawn for these new nations caused 30 million Europeans to end up on the
“wrong” side of their national border.
Again, that would have a huge effect on Europe from the very beginning.
But Wilson’s other big idea, a League of Nations, would sort all that stuff out.
That’s what it would do- take care of international disputes and issues.
Looking back from nearly 100 years later, it was a failure.
Some of it you could have seen coming, I mean, how do you clearly draw ethnic divisions in
the Balkans?
Some of it was just bad faith negotiations- Italy joined the war and fought for 3.5 years
after being promised certain territory; how do you think they felt when those agreements
were not honored in 1919?
And Japan wanted a clause on racial equality inserted in the League’s Covenant so that
the League of Nations would treat the citizens of each other’s nations on an equal basis.
How do you think they felt when that was refused?
And yet, on the other hand, Japan’s claim to Shandong in China was recognized, though
China was also part of the Entente and what was that about national self-determination
again?
That racial equality clause, by the way, was approved by 11 of 16 countries, Britain and
American abstained, and Wilson said if it wasn’t unanimous it was out.
Opposition to the clause was spearheaded by Australian PM Billy Hughes, but Lloyd George
and Wilson kind of just let him run.
“The Allies failure at Versailles was a failure of resolve in implementing its terms.
There was no inevitable link between it and the outbreak of the Second World War 20 years
later.
The reality was that, given the enormity of the task that confronted the victors, they
drew up a settlement which promised far more than it proved able to deliver in practice.”
Thing is, the United States never ratified the peace treaties and never joined the League
of Nations.
There was never enough support for a 2/3 majority in the Senate, so the League, Wilson’s baby,
was hamstrung from the beginning.
The treaty with Turkey was never ratified by anyone, let alone enforced.
Mustafa Kemal and the Turkish nationalist movement had created a state that was deemed
to be NOT a successor state to the Ottoman Empire, and thus not to be blamed or punished
for the war.
But back to Germany and the Treaty of Versailles.
It was pretty clear straight off that the Germans weren’t going to voluntarily comply
with the treaty.
So the Allies had the prospect facing them of continuing military occupation or enforcement,
at a time when their soldiers just desperately wanted to go home and get on with their lives.
I agree with that quote from a minute ago and don’t think it’s really true that
the treaties and the armistices made a second world war inevitable.
There could have been a reconciliation with Germany under the terms and Germany could
have continued to have been kept militarily powerless, but the biggest problem facing
the allies after the treaties was the same as before- their disunity.
Heck, Russia was unapproachable since the Allies had bet and lost on the Whites winning
the Russian Civil War, Italy and Japan became unapproachable over time, and the other big
three stopped cooperating with each other since they had different long term goals.
I mean, Britain had gotten pretty much everything she wanted from the treaties, if Italy or
the US or whoever were unhappy, well... okay.
I think what Clemenceau told the French Parliament is pretty true, “The treaty will be what
you make of it.”
And what we made of it, and how we perceived the war, has changed again and again over
time.
Think of War Memorials- when they’re built certainly reflects the prevailing attitude.
Germany’s biggest WW1 memorial was built at Tannenberg in 1927; that was to commemorate
a great victory, not guilt or sacrifice.
And the literature?
“In 1929 Erich Maria Remarque published All Quiet on the Western Front...
Within a year Remarque’s book was translated into 28 languages, sold nearly 4 million copies,
and became an Academy Award winning film.
And yet it was less about the war than the problems of a generation unable to reintegrate
itself with postwar society...
Its message was one of shattered illusions...”
But it was not just a world of shattered illusions, it was a shattered world.
And as to what followed, for
better or worse.