A Perfidious Distortion of History

by Jurgen Tampke

  This proposal was also rejected by the Allies. Nevertheless, the strategy of the German peace delegation to spread disunity in the Allied camp does seem to have borne fruit as the signing of the treaty drew closer. In Britain, some politicians and a section of the public at large began to feel uncomfortable about the Peace Treaty, which they regarded as too harsh. The most outspoken criticism came from the South African delegate, Jan Christian Smuts. He attacked the reparation demands, which he judged as too high, conveniently overlooking his key role in deciding reparation payments. He also argued that some of the territorial clauses were a menace to Europe’s future. Lloyd George took the wind out of Smuts’ sails by raising the issue of German South-West Africa, about to become a South African mandate, which Smuts was in no way willing to give up.

  Even so, on 1 June, Lloyd George called a meeting of the British empire delegation at which he agreed to go back to the Council of Four to ask for modification of some terms, including the reparation issue. When he told Wilson and Clemenceau the next day that his colleagues would not authorise him to sign the treaty as it stood, they were incredulous. Horrified at the prospect of redoing months of work, they concluded that the British prime minister had lost his nerve. Wilson, who had had enough of the wily Welshman, accusing him privately of having no principles whatever of his own and that expediency was his sole guiding star, 6 refused to budge this time except on two points. Lloyd George managed a concession on Upper Silesia (where there would be a plebiscite) and an agreement that Germany could enter the league once Europe had settled down. On 16 June, the German delegation was told that they had three days to sign.

  The growing concern with which German people had been watching developments in Paris soon turned to despair and hatred. Woodrow Wilson, originally hailed as a saviour, became the object of unlimited scorn. Novelist Thomas Mann spewed his anger upon Clemenceau, in whom he saw a ‘poisonous old man … with oval eyes’, a sign that the French prime minister might possess the blood-stock which would ‘carry Western civilisation to its grave and create Khirgizian conditions’. 7 Reference to the barbaric east was also to be found in Max Weber’s comments. Weber, who had joined the German delegation as an expert adviser, claimed that there was no way that in August 1914 the German empire could avoid conflict with Russia. He claimed that ‘Tsarism [was] the most horrible system of subjugation of human beings and nations ever devised’ — matched only by the peace treaty the Allies were about to impose. 8 Leading Centre-Party deputy Konstantin Fehrenbach described the treaty as ‘the immortalisation [Verewigung] of the war’, predicting that ‘German women will give birth to children, and [that] these children will break the slave-chains and wash away the shame, which has been done to the German countenance’. 9 Historian Antony Lentin has hit the nail on the head:

  [T]here is no denying the historical importance of the profound psychological unwillingness to look facts in the face and the ‘apocalyptic’ despair that gripped many German thinkers by no means conservative in outlook. Victims not merely of imperial tradition and wartime propaganda, but of a heady succession of undeniable victories and massive annexation in the east, at the same time convinced that Germany had fought a war of self-defence, they gave little thought to the consequences of defeat and of Allied fears of Germany. This explains perhaps part of the depth of their shock and disillusion. One has the impression that Germany was as blinkered intellectually and imaginatively as it was blockaded physically: a ‘dreamland’ indeed. 10

  The German government now faced the reality of the treaty. ‘The hand that signed the treaty must wither’, commented chancellor Phillip Scheidemann on receiving the terms. He and his entire cabinet resigned, but not before adding the term Schandparagraph [disgrace-paragraph] to the illustrious list of derogatory German terms about the Allies’ peacemaking. Scheidemann’s resignation was a fitting end to a political life in which no objective biographer would find major merit. Hidden away in his drawers was documentary evidence that the German high command bore a major share of responsibility for August 1914. 11

  In the end, it was all to no avail. Following intelligence reports from Germany that the government was not willing to sign, the Allies on 20 June ordered the preparation of an assault into central Germany by over forty divisions. The British also took steps to renew the naval blockade. On 21 June, the German navy scuttled itself at Scapa Flow. By the time the British awoke to the operation, all but a few ships had been sunk. All told, 400,000 tons of shipping — a fortune in scrap metal — was gone.

  The Germans were divided as the deadline drew closer by the hour. Brockdorff-Rantzau demanded that Germany should stand firm and not sign; the Allies were bluffing, and there would be no occupation. Field Marshal Hindenburg also wanted to hold out: better an honourable defeat than a disgraceful peace. On 22 June, the German National Assembly voted in favour of signing, provided that Germany would not have to accept Article 231. The Allies did not budge: sign or we move. There was one final dramatic parliamentary session the next day. Catholic Deputy Matthias Erzberger, who had signed the Armistice and who held the most realistic view of the situation, urged that the treaty be signed. (He would be murdered by nationalist thugs two years later.) Army chief Wilhelm Groener informed the house that Germany was in no position to renew military action. At three that afternoon, by a margin of 237 to 138, the National Assembly voted to accept. The note reached the peacemakers one hour and twenty minutes before the deadline ran out.

  The signing ceremony took place on 28 June, the fifth anniversary of the assassination of the crown prince and his wife at Sarajevo. At 3.45 p.m., the German signatories, foreign minister Hermann Müller and minister of transport Johannes Bell, signed the treaty in the Hall of Mirrors. The audience included all of the plenipotentiaries who had witnessed the opening five months earlier. Only the Chinese were missing; they had left the conference in protest against the handing over to Japan of the former German base of Tsingtaou on the Shantung peninsula.

  The Treaty of Versailles — Parts I to VII

  It is necessary to analyse the content of the Versailles Peace Treaty to establish whether it contributed politically, economically, militarily, geographically, or in any other way to the failure of democracy in the Weimar Republic and the ‘seizure of power’ by the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Part I of the treaty contained the 26 paragraphs establishing the League of Nations. The German delegation had objected to not having been invited to become a foundation member, which, it claimed, violated promises president Wilson had made in his speeches to congress on 8 January and 27 September 1918. This was repudiated. Wilson maintained that he had made it clear from the outset that Germany would not be included because it had proven untrustworthy, but that after redeeming its character, ‘not by what happens at the peace table but by what follows’, it should be allowed to join. Although it is reasonable to question why Germany should agree to the establishment of an organisation to which it was barred entry, membership of the League can hardly be said to have been a major political issue before it did join in September 1926.

  Part II (Articles 27–30) defined Germany’s new borders. Part III dealt with ‘Political Clauses for Europe’ (Articles 31–117). Many of these articles were uncontroversial. As far as Luxembourg was concerned (Articles 42–43), for example, the Germans declared that the Grand Duchy would no longer enjoy the benefits of membership in the German Customs Union, to which the Allies responded that, because of the violation of its neutrality during the war, Luxembourg itself had already decided to quit the union. A plebiscite in Schleswig (Articles 109–114) was not questioned by either side. When it was held in February 1920, the vote went along ethnic lines: the northern parts voted to return to Denmark, the southern to remain with Germany. There was no objection from Germany to the dismantling of all military equipment on the island of Heligoland (Article 114). Germany reaffirmed Article 15 of the Armistice Agreement, renouncing the treaty of Brest-Litovsk and all subsequent treaties
with Russia (Article 115–116), and also declared that it had no intention of shifting the Austrian-German frontier by force (Article 80). No reference was made to Articles 81 to 86, which concerned the Czechoslovak state. In line with Armistice conditions, Articles 40 to 42 stipulated that the demilitarised zone on the left bank of the River Rhine was to extend 50 kilometres to the east. This provoked an angry German reaction, but the failure of the United States to ratify the military-assistance agreement with France, and Britain’s steady withdrawal from continental European affairs, meant that there was no military value in the left bank clauses, as Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland in March 1936 was to illustrate.

  With the exception of northern Schleswig, Germany objected to the loss of its pre-war territory. Belgium, which had severely suffered from four years of German occupation, was rewarded with the district of Prussian Moresnet near Liege, as well as the territory between the small towns of Eupen and Malmedy, all told about 400 square miles with a population of 50,000 (Articles 31–39). This region was heavily forested, and so Belgium recovered some of the timber it had lost during the war. Germany objected on the ground that the population was German — incorrect, as far as Malmedy was concerned, as it belonged to the Walloon (that is, French-speaking) part of Belgium. The Allies responded that Eupen and Malmedy had been separated from the neighbouring Belgian lands of Limburg, Liege, and Luxembourg in 1814–15 when these had been assigned to Prussia and when, they alleged, ‘no account was taken of the desires of the people, nor of geographical or linguistic frontiers’. Moreover, the region ‘continued in close economic and social relations with the adjacent portion of Belgium …’ and, at the same time, ‘had been made a basis for German militarism’. 12 However one may view the correctness of the decision to award Eupen and Malmedy to Belgium, the loss to Germany was negligible. The same goes for Germany’s handover to Lithuania of the Baltic port of Memel with its hinterland (Article 99), thus providing the newly founded state with a harbour. Memel’s population was about equally divided between Lithuanians and Germans.

  The return of Alsace-Lorraine to France (Articles 51–79), however, was no small matter. Germany had acquiesced in Article Eight of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, ‘that the wrong done by Prussia to France in 1871, as regards Alsace and Lorraine, which has disturbed the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, must be righted in order that peace again may be assured in the interest of all’. Nevertheless, Germany now maintained that Alsace-Lorraine was old German territory, having become part of the German empire more than a thousand years before. Claiming that ‘racial and political characteristics of the inhabitants have been so little influenced that even to-day four-fifths of the country’s population is still German in its language and customs’, 13 it argued that a plebiscite should be held here. This was refused outright. The Allies claimed that the inhabitants had been annexed against their will, and were only too ready to throw themselves back into the arms of France, ‘as into those of a long-lost mother’.

  Articles 45 to 50 dealt with the Saar Basin, the population of which was 90 per cent German. The French initially wanted to annex outright the Saar district, with its rich coalfields, to compensate for the destruction of mines in northern France and as part of the overall payment due from Germany for war damage. After heated debate in the Council of Four, Clemenceau had to settle for a compromise that gave the French fifteen years’ possession of the coalmines. As the Saar did in fact vote to return to Germany in 1934, production figures for the Saar coal industry, or indeed for Saarland generally, after that date cannot be included in the calculation of German economic losses caused by the Peace Treaty.

  By far the most territory Germany had to cede went to its new eastern neighbour. As part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Kingdom of Poland had in early modern times been a formidable power in eastern Europe, but by the eighteenth century political life in Poland had reached a stage of near anarchy. Its kings were the puppets of powers abroad and rival noble families within. With no effective government, the land-owning class, the szlachta, exploited the Polish peasantry to such a degree that their living conditions were the worst in rural Europe. Their status has been compared with that of West Indian slaves. 14 An ultra-conservative Catholic clergy, with its emphasis on otherworldly fulfilment, added to the burdens on Poland’s villages. In a rare act of political cannibalism in 1772, even by eighteenth-century European standards, the Russian empress, Catharine the Second, the Prussian king, Frederick the Second, and Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria carved the kingdom up among themselves. For those Poles who became part of Prussia, living conditions greatly improved. Most Polish patriots who clamoured for the restitution of their homeland came from those parts that had fallen under Habsburg and tsarist rule.

  After six unsuccessful uprisings through the course of the nineteenth century, World War I provided the chance for rebirth. Point Thirteen of the Fourteen Points had stipulated that there was to be an independent Polish state, ‘which should include the territories inhabited by indisputable Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea’. Given the geography of the region, this access could only be provided by the River Vistula, which runs into the Baltic just west of Danzig, on its way passing through the territory of the Prussian provinces of Pomerania, West Prussia, and Poznan. Originally purely Polish in population, 150 years of Prussian rule, with its vigorous Germanisation policy, had created a mixed population of Poles and Germans, with most of the land owned by Prussian Junkers. The part ceded to Poland by the treaty (Articles 87–98), after lengthy and often inimical deliberations in the Council of Four, was inhabited mainly by Poles. Attempts to enlarge this area, commonly referred to as the ‘corridor’, in Poland’s favour by incorporating into it parts of East Prussia were stopped by plebiscites. The corridor also surrounded the city of Danzig (the Polish Gdansk), where there was a major German population. Danzig became a Free City (Article 100–108) under the auspices of the League of Nations, but maintained its strong economic and cultural ties with the Reich.

  The fate of Upper Silesia, because of its large industrial area, was strongly contested by both sides. The population was 65 per cent Polish-speaking. A quarter of German coal came from here, four-fifths of it zinc, and almost a third of its lead. Both countries claimed that their economies could not function without Upper Silesian coal. A plebiscite held two years later brought no clear result — the north and west choosing to stay with Germany, and the south preferring to become part of Poland. The centre, where the industrial area was located, although largely Polish-speaking, returned a fifty-fifty vote.

  Many Poles may have decided to vote for Germany from fear of recrimination by their employers, as Germans owned most of the mines and steel mills, or in the belief that living conditions even in a defeated Germany were better than those in Poland. An independent commission set up by the League of Nations finally awarded 70 per cent of the total area to Germany, but handed two-thirds of the industrial part to Poland. However, Article 90 of the treaty, which had stipulated that for a period of fifteen years Germany could purchase all products of the mines at the same price as the Poles, was re-affirmed. Neither the German mine and steel-mill owners nor the rural landowners were dispossessed. Nevertheless, the Upper Silesian settlement accounts for the bulk of Germany’s industrial losses.

  What does this amount to? Almost all of the figures circulating about Germany’s territorial and population losses state that the Reich lost almost 70,000 square kilometres of its territory, amounting to 13 per cent, and 6.5 million inhabitants or 10.2 per cent of its population. Robert Boyce has recently queried these statistics. He points out that much of the land in question had been acquired in the previous half-century by military conquest, and was neither historically nor ethnically German. He stresses that even the Nazis made little protest over the loss of Alsace-Lorraine and northern Schleswig, but — with the exception of Eupen-Malmedy — focused all their anger upon German los
ses in the east. If one accepts this reasonable argument, the loss of territory is reduced to 9.4 per cent and of population to 7 per cent. Moreover, Boyce contends that German losses are overstated for three further reasons. First, a large number of people in pre-war German or Prussian territory were ethnically non-Germans. Second, when territory was transferred, some ethnic Germans refused to be transferred with it, but moved to other parts of Germany. Third, the German statistics that almost all historians use most likely overestimate the German losses. On this point, Boyce refers to a 1919 British study, which noted:

  The figures of the 1910 census are demonstrably falsified, and even if they were accurate they would describe a state of things artificially created by the police of ruthlessly suppressing the Polish language and of substituting German for Polish peasants on the land by the expenditure of public money to which the Poles as taxpayers are compelled to contribute, and this on top … of the presence of large numbers of German officials (railway porters and post office clerks, &c) and their families.

  However, even if the German population moving out of the transferred region is left to one side, the non-Germans are counted in the territorial changes, and the official German statistics are accepted, Boyce concludes that the population loss amounts to 1.8 per cent, a fraction of the 10 per cent invariably claimed. 15

  Similarly, just as the Upper Silesian mines and plants constitute the only industrial loss that can be substantiated, claims that Germany lost a third of its pre-war coal production and three-quarters of its iron capacity are dubious. The output of Germany’s coal and heavy industry had surpassed pre-war figures by the mid-1920s, much earlier than that of the United Kingdom, 16 and the same goes for the chemical and electrical sectors of Germany industry.

  There can be no genuine talk of a ‘Carthaginian Peace’. Had Germany won the war, it would have incorporated large parts of eastern Europe and European Russia, much of northern France, and the whole of Belgium and Luxembourg. Compared to this, and taking into account the terms imposed by Prussia on defeated states in the second half of the nineteenth century, German losses at Versailles were moderate.