The Illusion of Victory

by Thomas Fleming

  XIII

  At Versailles, the Germans toiled on a response to the treaty. Count Brockdorff-Rantzau refused to obey his government’s order to abandon the argument and retreat to Berlin. He remained convinced that the Germans had signed a contract in the armistice agreement for a peace based on the Fourteen Points. He and his staff sent a stream of objections to Clemenceau, who shared them with Wilson and Lloyd George, and ordered staffers to prepare rebuttals.

  The rattled German delegation did not improve its case by objecting to everything, from the reparations to minutiae such as the refusal to permit German missionaries to operate in the surrendered colonies. But most of the delegates’ wrath focused on the war guilt clause. They linked this objection to the open-ended reparations article, sensing that if they could eliminate the guilt clause, bargaining on reparations would be tilted in their favor.

  The Allies were startled by the intensity of the Germans’ resistance to the war guilt charge. But they had no inclination to yield the point, especially after the Germans published the treaty. Once the guilt charge became public knowledge in England and France and United States, hatred of “the Hun” became part of the political atmosphere in which the politicians were operating. Woodrow Wilson felt no compunction about backing it unreservedly, even though it violated his previous statements about the origin of war.

  Not a single objection was made in the U.S. Congress or the British Parliament about the treaty’s harshness. Instead of backing down, the Allies raised the denunciatory ante by telling the Germans that “the war was the greatest crime against humanity and the freedom of peoples that any nation calling itself civilized has ever consciously committed.”56

  Herbert Hoover was appalled to discover that if Germany refused to sign, the Allies were ready to reimpose the blockade. Clemenceau and Lloyd George had overruled Wilson’s objection to this decision. Hoover announced if this atrocity was repeated, he would resign instantly. He and his staff were in “a daily race” against the spread of Bolshevism. The food supplies they were importing barely fed Germany’s “pitifully undernourished” children, which left their elders still on the brink of starvation.57

  While the Allies rebutted the Germans’ objections, behind the scenes, Hoover and his relief staff worked to persuade Wilson and other members of the American delegation to make major changes in the treaty. A similar effort began among the British delegation, led by Jan Christian Smuts and John Maynard Keynes. The latter two dissenters made astonishing progress. As Lloyd George absorbed the implications of the whole treaty, his long-dormant liberal conscience began tormenting him. Not a little of these pricks were coming from genuine liberals in England, who were denouncing the treaty as ferociously as their American counterparts. Before long the prime minister was wondering aloud if major changes were needed.

  Lloyd George was especially shaken by a letter from Brockdorff-Rantzau on the economic consequences of the treaty, which the liberal Manchester Guardian published on May 15. The foreign minister noted that since Germany had become an industrial nation with a population of 67 million, it had been importing 12 million tons of food a year. This food was paid for by exports—about 15 million Germans made their living in foreign trade before the war. Now, stripped of its merchant fleet and its colonies, which supplied raw materials as well as foodstuffs, this already dire need for imported food was being compounded by the treaty, which deprived Germany of 21 percent of its homegrown corn and potato crops. Simultaneously, a third of its coal was being given to France and Poland, crippling its industrial capacity. All this added up to the deaths of many millions of people in Germany in the next few years. The nation’s health was already “broken” by the blockade. The treaty was nothing less than a mass “death sentence,” Brockdorff-Rantzau wrote. Lloyd George was so disturbed, he summoned the entire British cabinet to Paris for a weekend-long debate on whether the treaty should be revised.58

  The American dissenters made no such progress with Woodrow Wilson. He seemed unbothered when Joseph V. Fuller, one of the best minds on the delegation staff, resigned with a scorching letter that declared the treaty “bartered away our principles in a series of compromises with interests of imperialism and revenge.” General Tasker Bliss said he could not sign a statement that he “heartily and unreservedly” approved the treaty. In a letter to his wife, Bliss summed up his discouragement: “What a wretched mess it all is.” Henry White was similarly despondent:“We had such high hopes of this adventure; we believed God called us and now we are doing hell’s dirtiest work.”

  As the German responses to the treaty grew into a 20,000-word document, Jan Christian Smuts wrote to the president, saying he totally agreed with Berlin’s argument that it had signed a contract to make peace on the basis of the Fourteen Points and the treaty did not come close to doing this. Press Secretary Stannard Baker told the president the treaty was “unworkable.” Hoover recruited Norman H. Davis of the State Department to come with him to ask Wilson to revise the treaty. They pointed to the way Lloyd George was changing his mind and argued that Wilson could now outvote Clemenceau. Davis urged the president to set the reparations at a specific amount. Otherwise the German economy would remain paralyzed. Hoover descanted on the threat of starvation and Bolshevism.

  Wilson was unmoved. He told Ray Stannard Baker that Lloyd George was just “in a funk.” the prime minister was objecting to all sorts of things he had approved over Wilson’s objections. Besides, the British chameleon would never stand up to Clemenceau face-to-face. To calm the agitation in the American delegation, Wilson agreed to meet with thirty-nine of them. Face-to-face with their boss, only Hoover, Davis and Bliss spoke out strongly against the treaty. Wilson listened more or less patiently and then dismissed all the objections by claiming that he had not succumbed to “expediency”; the issue was whether he—and they—were “satisfied in their consciences” that they had done “the just thing.” the president insisted the Americans had done exactly that. The treaty was “a hard one,” but “a hard one was needed.” why this was so he did not say. Whereupon he ducked into his refuge—the League of Nations. Everything would be solved to everyone’s satisfaction when Germany was admitted to the league.59

  XIV

  When Lloyd George learned that Wilson would not consider any changes in the treaty, the prime minister did another political back flip and loaned his private secretary, Philip Kerr, to the Council of Four to draft a general reply to the German demands. Kerr not only rejected every German argument, but interlarded the 30,000-word document with billingsgate straight from Lord Northcliffe’s Daily Mail. He told the Germans they were responsible not only for starting the war but also for the “barbarous methods” and “criminal character” of the way they fought it. As for complaints that millions of Germans were being handed over to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy and France—Berlin had done the same thing to other nationalities at Brest-Litovsk. The treaty sought justice for the dead, wounded, orphaned and bereaved who had fought to free Europe from “Prussian despotism.” In a final insult to the liberals and socialists now in charge of Germany, Kerr sneered that there was “no guarantee” that the current government “represents a permanent change” from Kaiserism. Clemenceau, the revenge seeker personified, could not have written a more offensive response. Added to it was an ultimatum: Germany must sign within seven days, or the war would be renewed.60

  Foreign Minister Count Brockdorff-Rantzau realized he now had only one option—departure. Leaving a token committee behind, he and most of his delegation left for Germany to let the government decide whether to sign the treaty or defy the Allies. On the train, the count and his staff prepared a memorandum, advising a rejection. They called the war guilt clause “hateful and dishonorable” and condemned many other terms as “unbearable and impossible of fulfillment.”

  The government of the new German republic operated in Weimar, a city 150 miles southwest of Berlin. Famed as the eighteenth-century home of Goethe, Schiller and other poets, Weima
r was a symbol of liberalism. There Brockdorff-Rantzau found a cabinet deeply divided between irrec-oncilables and pragmatists. The latter were led by Matthias Erzberger, the stumpy forty-four-year-old head of the Catholic Center Party, which held ninety seats in the new National Assembly. Erzberger, who had signed the armistice, favored accepting the treaty, even though he called it a “demoniacal piece of work.” a refusal to sign would mean a renewal of the blockade and an invasion of Germany. The nation would collapse into chaotic fragments. Sign, Erzberger argued, and let the Allies find out that Germany would not—because it could not—fulfill most of the terms.

  A crucial player in this life-and-death game was the German army. The officer corps was incensed by the treaty’s reduction of the army to 100,000 men, without tanks, aircraft or heavy artillery. Minor Balkan nations had more men under arms. The operational details of the force were written into the peace treaty. Each soldier would serve twelve years, officers for twenty-five years. They could not serve in a reserve after their tour of duty. The number of field guns, howitzers, machine guns and trench mortars for each division was specified. The general staff was to be dissolved. Overseeing all these details was to be an “Allied Commission of Control.”61

  The government summoned the current quartermaster general, Wilhelm Groener, to Weimar to ask him a crucial question. If they refused to sign the treaty, would the army be able to defend Germany against an invasion? Groener had anticipated the question. He had sent officers into all parts of Germany to find out how much popular support they had for a fight to the finish. The answer that came back was unequivocal: none. Groener told the civilians the army, now barely 350,000 men, could not hope to defend the nation against the Allies, who had 200,000 troops already across the Rhine in bridgeheads established by the terms of the armistice.

  Nevertheless, the German cabinet deadlocked. Half favored Erzberger’s arguments in favor of signing; half rejected them. The irreconcilables were especially tormented by the guilt clause and the articles that required the surrender of the kaiser for trial as a war criminal, along with an as yet unnamed list of generals and admirals. They called these Schmachparagraphen—shame paragraphs. Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann resigned, and his government collapsed.

  With two days left in the Allied ultimatum, the president of the republic, Friedrich Ebert, cobbled together another government, led by Socialist Gustav Bauer, who had been minister of labor in the previous cabinet. Taking his cue from Erzberger, Bauer introduced in the National Assembly a resolution to sign the treaty, with the understanding that the new government would try to get the Schmachparagraphen eliminated. Through a representative whom Brockdorff-Rantzau had left in Versailles, the Germans said they would sign the treaty with the understanding that they did not accept guilt for the war or an obligation to deliver anyone for trial.

  On the same day, June 22, news reached Paris of an event that dashed any hope that the Allies would accept a deletion of the shame paragraphs. The German fleet, interned at Scapa Flow since the armistice, had been scuttled on orders from its commanding admiral. The Bauer government had nothing to do with the move. The admiral decided the navy’s honor required him to send the five battle cruisers, nine battleships, seven cruisers and fifty destroyers to the bottom of the sea to prevent them from being used to bombard German ports in the new war that seemed likely to erupt at any moment over the Schmachparagraphen.

  Lloyd George and the rest of the British delegation were enraged—and not a little mortified by the way the Germans got away with this double cross under the noses of their Grand Fleet. The French wondered aloud if the British let it happen to make sure they remained the world’s dominant sea power. Clemenceau had expected to get a hefty percentage of the German ships.

  Woodrow Wilson took charge of the situation. He told the Germans that “the time for discussion is past.” they had less than twenty-four hours to sign—or be invaded by thirty divisions backed by aircraft—and a renewed blockade that would cut off every scrap of food from the outside world. Herbert Hoover must have winced when the president used the blockade as the ultimate weapon.62

  It was decision time. President Ebert made one last call to Quartermaster General Groener. He told the general most of the cabinet were ready to fight if they could get the slightest assurance that the army had a chance to win the struggle. Groener asked for two hours to discuss the situation one more time with Field Marshal von Hindenburg. Long before the 120 minutes passed, the two soldiers had decided resistance was hopeless and ultimately suicidal. Along with the invasion from the west, Germany would have to face a Polish army from the east and a Czech army, commanded by French officers, from the south.

  People were marching through Berlin carrying signs:“Peace for God’s Sake” and “We Want Bread Not Bullets.” groener told Ebert the despicable treaty had to be signed. The Bauer government informed the National Assembly, but the politicians could not bring themselves to take a final vote. They said their vote on the previous day was sufficient authority, even though the Schmachparagraphen remained in the treaty.63

  The Bauer cabinet sent a note to Paris that made no attempt to conceal its defiance and disgust.“Yielding to overwhelming force . . . the government of the German Republic declares that it is ready to accept and sign the conditions of peace imposed by the Allied and Associated Powers.”64

  XV

  Once more the French displayed their appetite for revenge. The signing took place in the Great Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles, where the Germans had declared Wilhelm I, the current kaiser’s grandfather, emperor of Germany in 1871 after signing their victor’s peace in the Franco-Prussian war. The Allies’ eagerness to finish the business led them to ignore another historical fact, which cast a shadow of illegitimacy over the ceremony. It was five years to the day since Serbian terrorist Gavrilo Princip had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo.

  More than 1,000 people jammed into the 240-foot-long room, with its wall of seventeen huge mirrors and its allegorical paintings on the gilded ceiling. On other walls hung immense portraits of Louis XIV, the Sun King, who built the gigantic palace as a symbol of France’s power in the seventeenth century, when America was a scattering of settlements on the Atlantic seaboard. Before the mirrors was a long horseshoe table at which the Allied delegates sat. All except the Chinese took their seats. The men from Peking were boycotting the ceremony to protest the Allied surrender of Shantung Province to Japan. In front of the horseshoe table was a small table for the German delegates.

  Presently, at Clemenceau’s command, two German officials, the secretary for foreign affairs and the colonial secretary, walked to the small table. No one rose in recognition—a petty revenge for Foreign Minister Brockdorff-Rantzau’s failure to stand when he spoke at the Trianon on the day the draft treaty was handed to Germany. Wordlessly, after a brief statement by Clemenceau, the Germans signed. The Americans were next. The president signed “Woodrow,” but had great difficulty completing “Wilson.” Some historians consider this proof of arterial brain damage from the stroke he may have suffered in April. A psychologist might theorize that he had to struggle to sign a document that was a parody of his principles.

  As the rest of the delegates signed, a battery of guns began firing at the Saint-Cyr Military Academy. The audience watched with very little sense of awe or solemnity. The room buzzed with idle chatter. To Lloyd George’s consternation, some spectators asked the German signers for their autographs. After Jan Christian Smuts signed, he announced he did so under protest because the treaty was not going to achieve “real peace.” In Berlin, newspapers reported the ceremony with black borders on their front pages. Vorwärts, the more or less official government paper, declared: “We must never forget it is only a scrap of paper. Treaties based on violence can keep their validity only so long as force exists. Do not lose hope. The resurrection day comes.”65

  XVI

  Woodrow Wilson cabled a message to Joseph T
umulty announcing the treaty had been signed. He called it “a severe treaty in the duties and penalties it imposes upon Germany, but it is severe only because great wrongs done by Germany are to be righted and repaired.” However, it was “much more than a peace treaty with Germany.” It liberated many other “great peoples” and ended “an old and intolerable order” that enabled small groups of selfish men to rule others in the name of autocratic empires. Most important, it organized the free governments of the world in a permanent league to maintain “peace and right and justice.” It was “a great charter for a new order of things” and ground for “deep satisfaction, universal reassurance and confident hope.”66

  Tumulty rushed this defense of the treaty to Senator Gilbert Hitchcock, the Democratic minority leader of the Senate. It arrived while the Senate was debating an appropriations bill. Hitchcock interrupted the debate and read the text aloud. No one said a word. A copy of the treaty had already been published in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Senator Borah had already read it into the Congressional Record—and had denounced it. In private letters, Senator La Follette was calling it “a spoils grabbing compact of greed and hate.” the senators went back to debating money matters.67

  In the streets of Washington, D.C., and other cities, there were no celebrations. A reporter for the English Manchester Guardian decided the total absence of elation in the United States was explained by “everything that has occurred since the Armistice.” the net impact had been a confirmation of “the deep habit of distrusting the European way. Men may differ as to whether France should have the Saar or Britain the bulk of the African colonies, but they agree vaguely that it is not a very inspiring business, one way or another.”

  In Boston, Eamon de Valera, the provisional president of the yet unborn Irish republic, called the peace treaty a mockery. It would create “twenty new wars in place of the one nominally ended.” the League of Nations, he sneered, was simply a new “Holy Alliance.” with Great Britain in the driver’s seat, it could not “save democracy.”68