French army chief Foch also wanted to restrict Germany to the east of the Rhine, but his suggestion was for the creation of an independent buffer state militarily and economically linked to France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Britain. This, too, was rejected outright by Lloyd George and Wilson.
There is another reason Foch’s scheme would have been impractical. Konrad Adenauer, the mayor of Cologne and the later the first chancellor of the Federal Republic, seemed willing to participate in the secession of the Rhineland from the Reich. Early in 1919, he joined a group of Centre Party members who had become concerned about the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils that had formed during the November Revolution. They feared the spread of socialism, and they were apprehensive about the Berlin government’s school policy, which they saw as an assault on the Catholic religion and on local autonomy.
However, Adenauer soon found out that the Rhenish had no desire to be separated. This was in no way surprising. The Rhineland, assigned to Prussia in the Peace of Vienna, had (along with Westphalia) become Germany’s industrial leader during the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. This had brought rich benefits to its inhabitants. Many of their sons and daughters had died in what they saw as the defence of their fatherland. To now be forced to join a new state under the tutelage of the enemy was deeply resented. Adenauer carefully tested the possibility of an autonomous Rhineland state within the Reich to escape what was feared to be Prussian-Socialist domination, but his scheme found no significant support among the population.
Clemenceau could claim some success for his efforts. The French were given temporary ownership of the Saar coalmines for fifteen years. The League of Nations was to administer the region, and in 1933 the inhabitants were to decide in a plebiscite whether to remain independent, or become part of France, or re-unite with Germany. The Rhineland was to be demilitarised, and the French Rhenish occupation zones around the three bridgeheads would continue. The northern zone around the bridgehead of Cologne was to be evacuated in five years, the second zone around the bridgehead of Koblenz in ten years, and the third zone in the south around the bridgehead of Mainz in fifteen years — subject to Germany’s having met its reparation commitments. The Anglo-American Alliance was to continue under a separate Treaty of Guarantee with Britain and the United States.
The terms were attacked by Clemenceau’s opponents. President Poincaré described him as morally blind, a pawn in the pocket of the Anglo-Saxons, a swollen-head and sleepwalker, a scatterbrain and blunderer who, having signed the Armistice prematurely, was now bound to lead the nation into the abyss. 41 Foch wanted to indict Clemenceau for high treason before the High Court. But in the end their rage withered away. On 25 April, the French Council of Ministers unanimously backed the prime minister.
It soon turned out that Clemenceau had little reason to celebrate his success. The United States’ Senate failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which also meant the end of the Special Treaty with France. Senators had asked for amendments to the Versailles Treaty, but Wilson insisted on all or nothing. Not a single alteration was to be to his handiwork. Even his lifelong Republican opponent Henry Cabot Lodge regretted that the president made no effort to save his life’s great ambition, the creation of a global organisation to secure the peace and harmony of a democratic world. For France, the Special Treaty with the U.S. was not worth the proverbial crumpet. And the same can be said about the Treaty of Guarantee with Britain: it was dependent upon American acceptance of the Versailles Treaty. 42
Germany arrives
Germany’s unexpected and rapid transition from monarchy to republic initially took place under peaceful conditions. Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils that had formed all over Germany governed the country for ten weeks until the first democratic elections on 19 January 1919. The Majority Social Democrats had rediscovered their revolutionary spirit, and joined the Independent Socialists in the Council of Peoples’ Deputies that had taken over government in Berlin. The moderate Social Democrats wanted to ensure that there would be an orderly beginning to the life of the Republic, and that things would not drift towards chaos as in Russia a year earlier. There was widespread fear among the Germans, and also among the Allies, that Germany might follow the path of the Bolsheviks. This fear was unfounded because left-wing extremism was confined to a small minority on the fringe of the workers’ movements. Speedy agreements between the Majority Social Democrats and the army and industry leadership calmed anxiety. The election of 19 January 1919 ended the period of revolutionary government, and led to the formation of coalition government made up of Majority Social Democrats and members of the Centre Party and Liberal Parties.
Demobilisation of the armed forces was the first task to be completed. In some places there were scuffles between army officers and local Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils, but by and large the returning soldiers were given a hero’s welcome. In Berlin, they were greeted by the leader of the Majority Social Democrats, Friedrich Ebert, soon to become the Republic’s first president, who praised them for their bravery and claimed that ‘no enemy has conquered you’. Similar scenes were repeated in many cities and towns. The fact that Germany had actually lost the war seems to have been ignored.
The country’s desperate food shortage was given prime importance. The cessation of hostilities led to a slight increase in the weekly food rations. Whereas previously the army was given priority, the end of the war enabled a more equitable division. In particular, the release from army service of a large numbers of draught horses led to a temporary abundance of horse-meat, putting to an end the meatless weeks that had caused much hardship among the civilian population. Food imports were vitally important, and the Allies had agreed as an Armistice condition that Germany be allowed to bring in food, provided it used its own merchant shipping. But German ship-owners refused, because they feared that their ships, having left their harbours, would be confiscated.
A further difficulty arose over the method of payment. The German government suggested it could pay for its food purchases with a loan from the United States. When the Allies objected that such a loan would never pass Congress, the Germans offered to pay with their gold reserves. This caused anxiety among the French, who wanted the German gold for reparations. After several weeks, however, the French caved in, and by late March American food was arriving.
The Germans initially had great faith in Wilson’s Fourteen Points, despite the fact that they spelt out clearly that post-war Germany would be different and that the differences would not be in Germany’s favour. As German theologist and liberal politician Ernst Tröltsch saw it, people were living in a ‘dreamland’, ‘where everyone, without grasping the conditions and consequences, could portray the future in fantastic, pessimistic or heroic terms’. 43 Perhaps, as one historian suggests, the terrible sacrifices and efforts of the war had destroyed people’s ability to realistically judge their place in history. 44 In any case, most Germans viewed the post-war situation with optimism. Some sort of indemnity would have to be paid, but this would stay within reason and would not involve the costs of war. They expected, too, that the Republic would become a member of the League of Nations, that there was to be no significant territorial amputation, that Germany would keep its colonies, and that the principal of self-determination would decide whether the Austrians and Bohemians would become part of the nation.
Wishful thinking also extended to Germany’s political leaders. They would have had sufficient information about the Allies’ attitudes, but continued to believe that they were receiving full parity in Paris. They did not expect that the harsh treatment they had meted out to others would be reciprocated. When the Allies rejected complaints about their proposals by referring to the treaties imposed on France at Frankfurt and on Russia at Brest-Litovsk, the Germans insisted that negotiations should only be on the basis of the Fourteen Points and the Armistice. The German political leadership interpreted, or wilfully misinterpreted, the Fourteen Points and the Armistice
conditions as and when it suited them — something they continued to do throughout the course of the reparations. 45 The position Germany would take at Paris was to ignore the military verdict of the war and the fact that ‘peace without victory’ had long been overtaken by events, while trying to resume as much of its negotiating strength as was possible. Sally Marks’ assessment of the German stance on the reparation issue can be applied to the whole treaty:
As to tactics, [the German cabinet] agreed on loud and constant repetition of its views, numerous countercharges, and maximum propaganda to rouse world opinion, especially socialists, and to split the Entente, which it hoped was crumbling. Further, Germany would insist on absolute equality and an equal voice, demand neutral arbiters, and make an inflated offer, proposing to pay it in paper marks at the 1914 exchange rate or roughly triple their current value on neutral exchanges. In addition every means was to be used to lure the Allies into negotiation. 46
The Allies would not have a bar of any of this. They agreed that Germany should not be consulted formally before the peacemakers in Paris had formulated a common draft. The Allies’ statesmen, facing a myriad of domestic problems in the aftermath of the war, were neither willing nor able to be bogged down in lengthy negotiations with the former enemy. They knew the Germans would attempt to follow the example set by the French a century earlier during the Congress of Vienna — to draw out proceedings, attempt to split the alliance of their victorious opponents (which the French did successfully), and then use division in their ranks to achieve favourable terms for the loser. But almost a hundred years had passed. International communications and the media had advanced, illiteracy had almost been wiped out, and there were now democratic governments. The public was better informed, and was able to challenge policies that greatly disadvantaged or exploited them. Under the dynastic system, rulers could ride roughshod over their subjects. In 1919, after all the damage and blood-letting, the public would not have accepted that their leaders sit down with the enemy and leisurely put the war to rest.
There is still a view, and not only in Germany, that German participation in the Paris peacemaking process would have led to a more successful post-war arrangement. There is no evidence to support this view. The position of the German delegation that made its way to Paris at the end of April was that of the government: to retain the status quo of 1916 and to resist any attempt to reduce Germany’s pre-war territory or industrial capacity. The chief of the delegation, Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, the physical epitome of the stereotypical Prussian aristocrat, was just as arrogant. He had been selected because of his criticism of some of the extreme war policies of the OHL. The economic experts in the German delegation had all been members of the old industrial and commercial elite, and included Otto Wiedtfeld, a Krupp director; Wilhelm Cuno and Philipp Heineken, directors of the HAPAG and Norddeutscher Lloyd shipping lines; and Ewald Hilger, an Upper Silesian mining magnate. These men could be expected to object to a treaty that, apart from ceding Alsace-Lorraine, temporarily mortgaged a proportion of Germany’s future coal production, surrendered most of her merchant fleet, and threatened to sever Upper Silesia from the Reich.
The French government had ordered that the trains bringing the delegation to Paris should loiter so that their passengers might see first-hand the results of their invasion. The sight of miles upon miles of a devastated landscape and razed towns and villages affected some of the delegates. After seeing this, how could they not be daunted by the prospect of what they faced in the negotiations? Arriving at the station, they were carted away in heavily guarded buses to the Hôtel des Réservoir, where their luggage had been dumped in the courtyard. They had to carry it themselves to their rooms. The Hôtel des Réservoir was where the French leaders had stayed during the negotiations with Bismarck in 1871. It was now surrounded by a stockade, the French claiming — with some truth — that this was for the delegation’s own security. The writing was clearly on the wall.
CHAPTER FOUR
Versailles
The day of facing the facts for the Germans came on 7 May 1919, a week after their arrival at Versailles. Representatives of 27 nations had assembled in the dining-room of the Trianon Palace Hotel, where the final chapter of the war opened at three in the afternoon. Clemenceau wasted no time in coming to the point:
This is neither the time nor the place for superfluous words. You see before you the accredited representatives of the Allied and Associated Powers, both great and small, which have waged war without respite for more than four years, the pitiless war that was imposed on them. The time has come for a heavy reckoning of accounts. You have asked for peace. We are ready to grant it to you. 1
As the large white folio volume containing the peace conditions was handed to Brockdorff-Rantzau, the prime minister reminded the Germans that there was to be no discussion, that all observations had to be in writing, and that they had fifteen days to submit their comments. On completion, Clemenceau asked whether anyone else wanted to speak. The head of the German delegation did.
Acknowledging defeat and accusing the Allies of making Germany pay as the vanquished party and submit to punishment as the guilty one, Brockdorff-Rantzau immediately turned to the question of war guilt, which he called a lie. He claimed that Germany had been waging a defensive war, and insisted that it should not be burdened with sole responsibility. He maintained that the war had been the product of European imperialism, and blamed the Allies for cold-bloodedly causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of non-combatants by the continuation of their blockade. He also asked for a neutral commission to investigate objectively who was responsible for the outbreak of war, and he reiterated that peace was to be on the basis of the Fourteen Points and the Pre-Armistice Agreement. Germany accepted liability for civilian damage in Belgium and in occupied France, and would agree to contribute to their reconstruction with ‘the technical and financial participation of the victors’. He added that ‘experts on both sides will have to study how the German people can best meet their obligation of financial reparation without breaking down under the heavy load’. 2
Neither what he said nor the way he said it was well received. Brockdorff-Rantzau, ‘a most sinister looking person, an incarnation of the whole Junker system’, according to chief secretary of the war cabinet, Maurice Hankey, spoke in German, ‘in a harsh rasping voice’ and, contrary to international diplomatic protocol, remained seated. Billy Hughes, as the text was being translated, approached Lloyd George, asking him whether Clemenceau ‘would allow this fellow to go on like this’. Clemenceau had turned red with anger. Wilson was exasperated. ‘The Germans are really a stupid people’, he commented on the way out. ‘They always did the wrong thing during the war, and that is why I am here. They don’t understand human nature. This is the most tactless speech I ever heard’. Lloyd George agreed: ‘it was deplorable to let him talk’. His private secretary, Phillip Henry Kerr, summed up the feeling in the room: ‘At the start everybody felt a little sympathy with the Hun, but by the time Brockdorff-Rantzau had finished, most people were almost anxious to recommence the war’. 3
It had not been the aim of Brockdorff-Rantzau’s speech to soothe the Allies. Aside from the fact that it was chiefly addressed to the German domestic audience, it gave a clear indication that Germany would fight the Peace Treaty tooth and nail. The Trianon Palace address was the beginning of a long propaganda exercise to discredit the victors. The Germans would refer continuously over the next weeks to the ‘hunger blockade’ (which did not exist), and would wage an unrelenting campaign against the assumption of ‘unilateral war guilt’ — something that no country other than Germany detected in the treaty. Throughout its time in Paris, the German delegation, in the manner of Leon Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk, flooded the Allies with notes, constantly delayed procedures, and involved itself in as much public diplomacy as possible to engage the world’s sympathies. 4
At the same time, the German cabinet in Berlin pursued numerous attempts to erode
the treaty conditions. Like the delegation in Paris, it put the responsibility for the outbreak of war on Russia. It conceded only that the invasion of France through Belgium had violated international law, and hence would pay only for the damage done in those countries, not for the destruction in Poland, Russia, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, and Italy, nor for damage done to shipping. When this made no impression on the Allies, the German government made a counter-proposal that it claimed was in line with the Fourteen Points. Territorially, Germany would agree to a cessation of part of Poznan to Poland, but there had to be plebiscites in Alsace-Lorraine and northern Schleswig. Germany would provide Polish access to the sea. The Germans of Austria and Bohemia would be allowed to join the Reich, and there was to be no occupation of the Rhineland. Further points of the counter-proposal were immediate German entry into the League of Nations, and a German mandate over its colonies. Germany would keep its merchant fleet and, like the delegates, the government demanded a neutral enquiry into responsibility for the outbreak of war. In return, Germany offered to pay 100 billion goldmarks, the first payment to be made in 1926 and the rest in interest-free annual instalments amounting to no more than one billion per annum over the first ten years. Germany would also participate in the reconstruction of France and Belgium, provided it could join the Reparation Commission, the power of which was to be greatly reduced. 5
A Perfidious Distortion of History Page 12