X. World War I
Learning Objective:
Understand the European conflicts that led to World War I
The conflict between Russia and Austria over the control of
the Balkan peninsula, the struggle between Germany and France
over domination of the Continent itself, and the race for colonies
in Africa all helped create tensions that led to war in 1914.
Russia's primary interest centered on the Balkan peninsula
and the Dardanell straits. Russia was concerned because it wanted
a warm-water port and because of cultural factors. Russians
felt close kinship to the Balkan Christians, most of them Orthodox
and Slavic. Many Russians envisioned a supra-national state
embracing all Slavs under the Russian tsar. Until the mid-1870s
the Ottoman Empire controlled most of the Balkan peninsula except
for Greece, independent since 1829. In 1875 an anti-Turkish
uprising broke out among Balkan Christians. The Turks reacted
to the revolt with brutal massacres, which outraged people throughout
Europe. In April, 1877, claiming that he was coming to the aid
of the persecuted Balkan Christians, the Russian tsar declared
war on Turkey. Russia won the war and in the Treaty of San Stefano
(March, 1878) Turkey was expelled from most of the Balkan peninsula.
Several independent states were created. The new Balkan states
were in theory constitutional monarchies, but the usual method
of settling political disputes was by violence. Dissatisfied
groups frequently resorted to assassination and kidnapping.
The treaty assured Russia undisputed influence in the Balkans.
Until the war of 1877, Russian expansion into the Balkans had
run mainly into British opposition. From then on it met increasingly
with the resistance of Austria. Austria had only consented to
the Russian attack on Turkey in return for receiving the Turkish
provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Austria's interest in the
Balkans grew out of the unification of Italy and Germany. The
emergence of strong national states south and north worried
Austria and it sought to increase its strength and influence
in the Balkans. The conflict over the Balkans led to a deterioration
in relations between Russia and Austria.
The tension in the Balkans presented less of a threat to the
general peace than did the post-1870 antagonism between Germany
and France. At stake, fundamentally, was hegemony over Europe.
France had aspired to this hegemony since the 17th century,
and under Napoleon, had actually attained it. Except for distant
Russia, France had been traditionally the largest, the most
populous, the richest, and therefore the mightiest state on
the Continent. By 1870, it had ceased to be all these things.
The German Empire equaled its territory, vastly surpassed its
population (64 million to France's 39 million in 1911) and industrial
productivity, and, as the Franco-Prussian War had demonstrated,
excelled it in military power.
France and Germany leaders became convinced that only war could
truly solve their disagreements. The French wanted revenge for
their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. They wanted to recover
Alsace and Lorraine. Germany wanted to protect itself from a
French attack. Both sides sought allies—Germany with Austria,
France with Russia and Britain.
Russia allied with France because the Germans supported the
Austrians in the Balkans. The critical event in the rupture
between Britain and Germany was the naval race between the two
countries. In 1900 Germany began spending huge sums of money
on the construction of a high-seas naval fleet. The purpose
of this fleet was to create an offensive navy of sufficient
strength to menace the British Isles, in the expectation that
such a threat would force Britain either to withdraw a good
part of its navy to home waters and thereby endanger its empire,
or yield to German demands for territory and commercial advantages.
The navy, in other words, was to serve as an instrument of diplomatic
blackmail.
For Britain naval superiority was a matter of survival. Since
the early nineteenth century the British Isles imported a majority
of their basic necessities. Four-fifths of the wheat consumed
in Britain came from abroad. By obtaining control of the high
seas, a hostile power could force Britain into submission without
an invasion. It was to prevent this from happening that Britain
in 1889 proclaimed the "two-power standard," a formula
committing it to maintain a naval force superior to that of
the two next most powerful navies combined. Any country that
challenged this rule invited the enmity of Britain.
The naval race convinced British leaders that nothing short
of acknowledging German superiority on the Continent and on
the high seas would satisfy the Germans, and that it was essential
for Britain to safeguard its vital interests by extending full
support to the Franco-Russian bloc. In 1902 Britain signed a
defensive alliance with Japan, and in 1904 it entered into a
loose act of friendship with France. In 1907 Britain entered
into an agreement with Russia. The agreement did not call for
automatic military assistance, but it left no doubt with whom
Britain would side in the event that the Austro-German and Franco-Russian
blocs went to war.
By the second half of the 19th century it was widely believed
that imperial expansion could permit the absorption of excess
goods made possible by modern technology. In addition, colonies
gave countries access to raw materials, ports for their merchant
ships and navies, and the opportunity to prevent their enemies
from acquiring the same.
The rush for Africa began with the completion in 1869 of the
Suez Canal. The canal cut the route from Europe to Asia in half
and immediately acquired great commercial and military value,
especially for Britain which, along with France controlled the
canal. The canal gave Britain a base from which to establish
hegemony over northeast Africa. By 1914 the African continent
was so carved up by the great powers that only two countries,
Ethiopia (in 1896 Italy had been soundly defeated by the Ethiopians
in an attempt to colonize the country) and Liberia (founded
in 1822 as a colony for emancipated American slaves and virtually
a protectorate of the United States) retained their independence.
The immediate cause of World War I was the conflict between
Austria and Serbia. Serbia, small but vigorous and highly nationalistic,
stood in the path of Austrian expansion into the Balkans, competing
with it for the legacy of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire.
Gradually, the Austrian government concluded that Austrian interests
required Serbia to be crushed and it looked for an opportunity
to open hostilities. The occasion presented itself in June,
1914, when an Austrian-Serb terrorist assassinated Austrian
Crown Prince Francis Ferdinand and his wife during a visit to
Sarajevo. Although the assassin was an Austrian subject, and
Sarajevo, located in Bosinia, was Austrian territory, Vienna
charged Serbia with the responsibility for the crime. The dispute
initially appeared to be leading to yet another Balkan crisis
of the kind the world had learned to take in stride. But this
time the outcome was different because the intricate chain of
alliances forged in the preceding 35 years was brought into
play.
Before attacking Serbia, Austria requested German assurances
of support against Russia should Russia come to Serbia's aid.
The request placed the Germans in a quandary. They did not want
war with Russia and its ally France, yet Austria was the only
ally on whom they could count. The Germans could not let Austria
down without risking complete diplomatic isolation. On July
5 William II yielded to Austrian pressures and gave them the
desired assurance—the so-called "blank check"—of
unconditional support against Serbia. The Germans counted on
this assurance to intimidate Russia and forestall its intervention.
But if this device did not work they were prepared to fight.
Many German generals believed that time was working against
Germany because the Russians were making great strides in modernizing
their armed forces, and that the sooner war came, the better.
The Russians could not accept the destruction of Serbia, for
to have done so would have meant forfeiting all influenced in
the Balkans. But they too did not want to act without consulting
their ally. The French, like the Germans, felt that they risked
isolation if they failed to honor their treaty obligations,
and on July 25 pledged to the Russians support against Austria.
On July 28 Austria declared war on Serbia. The next day Austrian
artillery shelled Belgrade. Austria's haste was due to its desire
to destroy Serbia before the other powers had a chance to arbitrate
and settle the dispute.
At this point events got out of control. On August 1, Germany
declared war on Russia, and that very night, without a formal
declaration of war, Germany sent its troops into Belgium and
Luxembourg on their way to Paris. Europe, in the midst of the
summer holidays, was not aware of what these events portended.The
Germans knew that the violation of Belgian neutrality would
bring Britain into the war, but he Germans were not much perturbed
by this prospect. Britain had only 160,000 men under arms—a
minuscule force compared to Germany's 5 million or France's
4 million. The British navy could make its weight felt only
in a protracted war, and the Germans felt certain that by crossing
Belgium they could finish the war in two or three months. The
outbreak of war caught the Continent by surprise.
World War I differed fundamentally from all other wars that
had preceded it. It was the first industrial war—the first
in which the manpower and technology of the industrial era were
applied to the slaughter of human beings. Within a few weeks
after the outbreak of war 6 million men stood poised to fight.
Behind them were many millions who could be drawn upon as the
need arose. Such masses of soldiers could not be equipped and
armed by conventional arsenals; they required the services of
the nation's entire industrial plant. Countries like Russia,
Italy, and Austria-Hungary which lacked an industrial base found
themselves at a great disadvantage. By contrast, the superior
industrial capacity of Great Britain and the United States allowed
them to quickly mount strong fighting forces. The application
of industrial methods to warfare accounted for the unprecedented
destructiveness of World War I. Warfare acquired a new dimension:
it became total, calling for the full commitment of human and
economic resources.
Learning Objective:
Understand why the United States entered World War I.
Like Europeans, Americans were caught off guard by the opening
of hostilities. The slaughter of 1914-16 convinced them they
did not want to become involved in the conflict if they could
help it.
President Woodrow Wilson, his special advisor Colonel Edward
M. House, and his Secretary of State Robert Lansing also wanted
to keep the U.S. out of the war in order to achieve the country's
foreign policy objectives. They wanted to insure that no country
gained hegemony over Europe. If that happened American markets
could dry up (not only in Europe but in other parts of the world
because of the increased strength of the European power). If
the balance of power in Europe was upset American security would
be threatened. If for example, Germany defeated France and Britain,
its control of the French and British navies could give it control
of the North Atlantic. This control could threaten American
security and its access to markets and raw materials in regions
like Latin America.
The way to achieve our goals and avoid the war was through
a policy of neutrality and the adherence to certain legal principles.
The U.S. advocated an open door policy and freedom of the seas.
Wilson believed that if all countries abided by these principles
there would be a greater chance of stability in the world.
The first objective of Wilson's neutrality policy was to promote
the economic and commercial interests of the U.S. without going
to war. The recession of 1913-14 had caused government and business
interests to look to exports to help the economy. At first Wilson
believed that he could trade with both sides in the war. He
became just as angry at British violations of neutral rights
(e.g. mining the entrance to the Baltic Sea) as he did with
Germany's use of the submarine. But, Wilson soon realized that
since Britain controlled the seas the U.S. could not trade with
Germany. From 1914-16 American direct trade with Germany and
Austria declined from a little under $170 million to about $1.2
million. During the same period, U.S. trade with the Allies
increased from about $825 million to over $3.2 billion. In short,
the U.S. virtually became an Allied warehouse.
By the end of 1914 the Allies needed U.S. loans to continue
the war. Whether to grant the loans or not caused a great debate
within the Wilson administration, but if the loans were not
granted, Germany would win the war, and U.S. objectives would
be lost. At the end of the year Wilson approved loans to the
Allies By early 1917 American bankers and purchasers of Allied
bonds had loaned the Allies nearly $2.3 billion (the Central
Powers received $27 million).
On February 4, 1915, ostensibly in retaliation for the Allied
mining of the North Sea, Germany announced a submarine blockade
of the British Isles; within the war zone, all belligerent shipping
would be destroyed without warning and without making provisions
for the safety of crews and passengers. Germany cautioned the
U.S. to avoid the war zone on the grounds that Allied misuse
of neutral flags as a cover, and the ramming of U-boats when
they made a surface challenge, precluded the customary procedure
of visit and search. Therefore, the Germans claimed, they could
not always avoid accidental attacks on neutral ships.
Wilson refused to accept the German declaration because he
realized that it was American goods that was keeping Britain
and France in the war. Wilson argued that U.S. citizens and
ships had the right to use the high seas freely. On May 7, 1915,
off the Irish coast, the British passenger ship the Lusitania
was sunk by a German submarine. 1,198 people lost their lives
including 128 American citizens. Although the British denied
it at the time, the Lusitania was loaded with American munitions
for Britain and hence it sank in 18 minutes. The Germans did
not want war with the U.S. They foresaw that as an opponent
the U.S. could bring almost unlimited financial strength, industrial
resources, and fresh manpower into the struggle, and would greatly
boost Allied morale. On September 1, 1915 Germany pledged not
to sink passenger liners without warning and without provisions
for the safety of those on board—an indemnity was promised
for the losses of American life.
On March 24, 1916 the Germans torpedoed the Sussex, an unarmed
French channel steamer. Although no Americans died, the attack
clearly violated the earlier German pledge. On April 18 Wilson
warned the German government that he would break diplomatic
relations immediately unless it halted U-boat warfare against
belligerent merchant and passenger ships. The German's responded
with the Sussex pledge of May 4 promising that unresisting belligerent
merchant and passenger vessels would not be attacked without
warning and without provisions for the safety of those aboard.
The German note also stated that if the American government
failed to secure Allied observance of "freedom of the seas"
for neutrals to trade with either side in the war, Germany reserved
the right to alter its policy. The Sussex crisis thereby outlined
the issue so sharply that any renewal of submarine warfare would
cause the U.S. to enter the war.
After his reelection in 1916 ("he kept us out of war")
Wilson made a major effort to end the war on terms favorable
to the U.S. Wilson asked both sides to formulate their intentions.
Wilson wanted to act as the mediator in order to insure that
U.S. goals were achieved. Both sides refused the U.S. offer
of mediation. The war had become a sheer contest of wills—a
primitive struggle for national survival.
In February, 1917, the German government decided to resume
unrestricted submarine warfare. It announced its intention of
sinking any ship, regardless of flag, that entered the waters
designated as a "war zone" around Allied ports in
the Atlantic and Mediterranean. This step was a desperate gamble.
The Central Powers had at their disposal fewer human and material
resources than did the Allies. The Allied blockade was making
itself increasingly felt, causing serious food shortages. The
only chance of victory lay in a supreme effort to knock out
Britain, thereby freeing the Central Powers from the blockade.
The German navy thought it possible, by means of the submarine,
to sink 600,000 tons a shipping a month, at which rate Britain
would run out of food by the autumn of 1917. The Germans knew
that unrestricted submarine warfare would bring the U.S. into
the war, but this risk was considered worth taking because the
U.S. was so unprepared militarily that the Germans believed
that the war would end before its power could make itself felt.
As expected, unrestricted submarine warfare brought the U.S.
into the war since it endangered all aspects of America's goals.
Wilson broke diplomatic relations with Germany on February 3.
Several U.S. ships were sunk in March. The Zimmermann telegram
further inflamed U.S. public opinion. German Foreign Secretary
Arthur Zimmermann proposed to Mexico the conclusion of an alliance
against the U.S. in case of an American-German war. He proposed
that with the defeat of the U.S., Mexico would recover the territory
that it had lost in the Mexican War. The British intercepted
a copy of the telegram and when it was released to the American
public an uproar ensued. On April 2, Wilson asked Congress to
declare war against Germany, and on April 6, 1917, it did so.
Learning Objective:
Understand the American mobilization for the war.
At first, unrestricted submarine warfare was very successful.
In April, 1917 the U-boats sank 850,000 tons of Allied shipping.
But, the convoy system and new military countermeasures soon
brought the submarine threat under control. By late 1917 the
Allies so thoroughly commanded the seas that they were able
to transport over 2 million American soldiers to Europe without
a single casualty. Relying primarily upon conscription, the
U.S. raised armed forces numbering about five million men. General
John Pershing commanded the American Expeditionary Force (A.E.F.)
sent to France. Americans eventually held about one-fourth of
the entire Western Front.
Agencies such as the War Industries Board mobilized the incredibly
productive American economy. When the railroads could not handle
the extraordinary wartime traffic they were put under the control
of the U.S. government. The booming economy helped workers,
real income increased an average of 20 percent. Farmers also
benefited greatly from the war as the demand for their products
increased.
The Committee on Public Information flooded America with propaganda
materials designed to rally public opinion which was not universally
enthusiastic about the war (about 200,000 young men fled the
U.S.—most going to Mexico—to avoid conscription). Lurid movies,
such as "The Beast of Berlin" and "The Prussian
Cur," pamphlets, books, posters, and photographs inflamed
the war emotions of the people. Sauerkraut became "liberty
cabbage;" the teaching of German was dropped from many
school curriculums, and German-Americans were harassed. More
seriously, opponents or critics of the war were silenced, about
900 were imprisoned after Congress passed the Espionage Act
in 1917 and the Sabotage and Sedition Acts in 1918. These harsh
laws provided heavy fines and prison sentences for anyone obstructing
the draft or aiding the enemy, or uttering abuses against the
American government, flag, and uniform. Laws suppressed pacifist
and socialist dissent and the post office banned a number of
publications from the mails.
The government used the war as an opportunity to destroy the
International Workers of the World, a socialist labor union.
Socialists tended to oppose the war because they believed that
workers in every country had more in common with each other
than they did with the capitalists of their own country. Socialists
would ask: "Why should American workers kill German workers
to enrich the capitalists of each country?" In September
1917, Department of Justice agents made simultaneous raids on
48 IWW meeting halls across the country, seizing correspondence
and literature that would later become courtroom evidence. In
1918, 101 IWW leaders were tried for conspiring to hinder the
draft, encourage desertion, and intimidate others in connection
with labor disputes. All were found guilty. Fifteen were sentenced
to twenty years in prison; 33 were given 10 years, the rest
shorter sentences. They were fined a total of $2.5 million.
The IWW was shattered.
Learning Objective:
Understand the consequences of the war.
The Russian government fell under the pressure of the war and
the new Bolshevik government, which seized power at the beginning
of November,1917, sued for peace. The withdrawal of Russia from
the war enabled Germany to transfer forces from the East and
to mount one final supreme effort aimed at capturing Paris.
Timing was essential to the German plan: the offensive had to
succeed before U.S. troops could reach the Western Front in
sizable numbers. The attack was launched in March, 1918 with
the main brunt of the offensive falling on the British sector,
which nearly caved in. At its height, the German offensive came
to within 40 miles of Paris. But the Allies, reinforced in May
by several fresh American divisions, fought back furiously.
In July, 1918, they counterattacked. The Germans were exhausted
and short of men and material. The Allies broke through the
German fortifications and swept toward the pre-1914 frontiers.
In September, 1918, the Bulgarians sued for peace, followed
in October by the Turks. One by one the ethnic minorities of
Austria-Hungary proclaimed their independence, and on November
3 the Austrians capitulated. The next day violent revolts and
mutinies engulfed Germany. The Kaiser abdicated and fled to
Holland. Finally, on November 11, 1918 an armistice was signed
between the Allies and Germany.
The most immediate and tragic consequence of the war was the
loss of lives. There were about 10 million dead and nearly twice
that numbered wounded, many of them permanently mutilated. A
generation of European youth had been wiped out.
The known dead, in millions, were as follows: Germany, 1.8;
Russia, 1.7; France, 1.4; Austria-Hungary, 1.2; the United Kingdom,
1.0; Italy, 0.5. Serbia lost 360,000 men, the Ottoman Empire
325,000, Romania 250,000, and the United States 115,000. The
actual fatalities were certainly much greater, and have been
estimated as high as 13 million. There were also heavy civilian
losses, the worst in Anatolia, where in 1915 the Turks massacred
nearly 1 million Armenians.
Because of technology World War I became the world's first
"total" war. The phrase "home front" came
into use during the war, when the role of civilian production
became as important to victory as the soldiers in the trenches.
Artillery shell production, for example could hardly keep up
with demand. The Russian army's guns fired as many shells in
a day as Russian factories could make in a month. At the Third
Battle of Ypres in 1917, the 19 day British bombardment used
4.3 million shells—a year's production for 55,000 workers.
Since the mobilization of so huge number of men left vast gaps
in the normal work force—France put 20 percent of its entire
population into uniform, Germany 18 percent—the remaining adult
civilians had to be directed by government into whatever jobs
were needed to keep production going. In effect the civilian
economy was conscripted too: the governments of Europe quickly
took control over labor and raw materials, imposed rationing
on scarce goods, and created true war economies. Women flooded
into factories to replace men at the front, and most production
beyond the basic needs of subsistence was diverted from the
war effort.
Since the entire civilian population of a nation was now an
essential part of its war effort the "home front"
became a legitimate military target. German submarines sank
15 million tons of shipping bound for Britain, and during the
last two years of the war it is estimated that the British naval
blockade of Germany caused an excess of 800,000 civilian deaths
through malnourishment over the peacetime mortality rate.
Bombing civilians in cities with the deliberate purpose of
killing civilians, breaking moral, and disrupting war industry,
became the final step in the logic of total war. On September
8, 1915 the first zeppelin raid hit London, dropping 15 high-explosive
bombs and fifty-odd incendiaries. In all, the raid caused 72
casualties and destroyed $2.5 million worth of property. The
German raids on Britain in World War I, by Zeppelins and later
by bombers, were tiny by later standards: only 4,000 British
civilians were killed and wounded throughout the war. But the
raids were the precedent and the prototype for World War II,
and for all the cities that have been destroyed from the air
in the twentieth century — and for the strategy of nuclear
deterrence that now dominates the world. The delay was only
due to inadequate technology; after 1915 everybody was a legitimate
target.
The most important middle-term effect was the change in the
international position of Europe. The war deprived Europe of
the world hegemony it had enjoyed throughout the 19th century.
The war also caused immense material losses, destroying much
of the wealth accumulated during the preceding century. Europe,
before 1914 the world's banker, became by 1918 its debtor. The
United States came out of the war as the strongest Western state,
in large part because of the sales and loans it made to the
other belligerents had gained it a great deal of wealth. The
Russian Revolution brought to power a radical regime that immediately
declared war on the entire Western political and economic system.
The international position of Europe was further weakened by
provisions of the peace treaty which, by penalizing the defeated
powers, solved few of the problems that caused the war in 1914.
Twenty-five years later Europe was again at war.
In the long run perhaps the most profound consequence of the
war was the demoralization of Western man. The postwar atmosphere
was ripe for power-hungry demagogues to exploit the accumulated
resentments, especially among the war veterans, by focusing
them on concrete objects. Some of them blamed the useless carnage
or their country's defeat on the capitalists, others on the
Jews, yet others on the Communists. And since life had become
terribly cheap, it became possible to clamor for mass extermination
of the classes, races, and political groups allegedly responsible
for the war. For if a million men could have been sacrificed
for a few square miles of no man's land, why could not a similar
number by liquidated to assure a "constructive" aim
such as the creation of a classless or pure society? In other
words, why not kill off all the bourgeois or all the Jews or
all the Communists?
Learning Objective:
Understand the Treaty of Versailles.
The principal peace terms concluding World War I were drawn
up at a conference held at Paris beginning in January 1919,
and signed in June. The Treaty of Versailles set the surrender
conditions for Germany and at the same time provided for the
establishment of the League of Nations. Supplementary treaties
with the other Central Powers were signed later.
Although the representatives of 32 governments participated
in the deliberations and were consulted in cases involving their
interests, the terms of the treaty were in large measure set
by the major powers, the so-called Council of Four, composed
of President Woodrow Wilson and the Prime Ministers of Great
Britain (David Lloyd George), France (Georges Clemenceau), and
Italy (Vittorio Orlando). Japan constituted a fifth great power
on issues directly involving the Far East. The defeated powers
did not participated in the negotiations and had to sign a treaty
in which they had taken no part. The Soviet Union was also not
allowed to attend.
The Council of Four intended to lay the groundwork of a lasting
peace, but they differed greatly on how to go about it. Two
general approaches were discernible: the "hard" line
espoused by the French, and the "soft" line, advanced
by the U.S. The Italians sided with France, while the British
vacillated between the two positions.
Clemenceau saw German aggressiveness as the major cause of
international instability. He considered it essential to weaken
Germany to the point where it no longer would be able to wage
effective war. This goal meant a demilitarized Germany with
reduced territory. It was on his insistence that the British
maintained their naval blockade of Germany, preventing the flow
of food into a country on the verge of starvation, so as to
soften it and force it to accept onerous peace terms.
President Wilson, by contrast, did not regard Germany as the
principal source of instability or as the country responsible
for the outbreak of the Great War. To him the cause of the war
lay in fundamental flaws of the system regulating relations
between states: in secret diplomacy, thwarted aspirations to
national statehood, and, above all, the absence of institutions
capable of peacefully resolving international disputes. Wilson
saw himself as a reformer÷someone that would take the
middle-way between the conservatism of Clemenceau and the radicalism
of Lenin.
Wilson had specifically addressed these problems in a speech
before Congress on January 8, 1918. His "Fourteen Points"
speech called for: the evacuation of all Allied territory occupied
by the enemy; return of Alsace-Lorraine to France; creation
of an independent Poland with access to the sea; and autonomous
development for the peoples of the Austrian and Turkish empires.
He outlined certain general principles that should guide the
writing of the peace treaty: open diplomacy (no more secret
treaties); freedom of the seas in war and peace; reduction of
armaments to a level sufficient for national security; and the
adjustment of colonial claims with proper consideration for
the interests of colonial peoples as well as the claimant powers.
The fourteenth point, in Wilson's view, served as the key to
the peace: "A general association of nations must be formed
under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual
guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity
to great and small states alike."
Each of the Council of Four, in addition to serving as a diplomat,
also headed a political party dependent on a democratic electorate.
This electorate, in general, had little understanding of the
broader issues of international relations, and responded readily
to simplistic slogans made by demagogic politicians and irresponsible
journalists. Public opinion and partisan domestic politics thus
exerted an invisible but ever-present influence on the negotiations.
The Germans had originally agreed to an armistice on the basis
of Wilson's "Fourteen Points." The French, British,
and Italians did not much care for the proposal, but they went
along for fear that unless they did, the U.S. would sign a separate
peace treaty. The Fourteen Points were promptly lost sight of
during the peace negotiations and later on, the Germans and
Austrians could claim with some justice that they had been tricked
into signing an armistice.
The provisions of the Versailles peace treaty that pertained
to Germany may be grouped under three headings:
1) Territorial. Germany surrendered Alsace and Lorraine. German
territory west of the Rhine and within a belt thirty miles deep
to the east of it was declared permanently demilitarized. For
15 years the Saar region was placed under international administration,
to be followed by a plebiscite (at which time it voted to revert
to German control). Germany ceded to Poland the area of Posen
as well as a "corridor" to the Baltic. German overseas
colonies were taken away. These provisions deprived Germany
of one-seventh of its territory in Europe and one-tenth of its
population. The lost territories contained three-fourths of
Germany's iron resources and one-fourth of its coal.
2) Military. Germany was allowed an army of 100,000 men and
a minuscule navy. It was to have no heavy artillery, tanks,
military aviation, or submarines. Military conscription was
abolished.
3) Reparations. Germany had to pay the Allies $33 billion in
reparations.
The Germans protested these terms loudly but to no avail. They
were told that if they refused to sign, Allied troops would
occupy Germany and the British would maintain indefinitely their
naval blockade. During the 1920s the Versailles treaty was widely
regarded as a harsh and punitive peace. The bad conscience over
Versailles weakened the will of Europeans later to resist Hitler,
who rode to power on slogans pledging to rectify the treaty's
real and alleged injustices. Recent scholarship has taken a
more tolerant view of the treaty. If Germany had won the war
it would have almost certainly imposed harsher terms on the
Allies (the Treaty of Brest Litovsk illustrates German territorial
ambitions). It had been a custom of long standing in Europe
for the loser to pay for a war. Napoleon imposed an indemnity
on Prussia, and the Germans in turn, collected from France after
the war of 1870. After Hitler came to power, Germany easily
raised the money for rearmament that it had allegedly been unable
to pay in reparations.
The terms for the four other Central Powers essentially involved
territorial changes. Austria-Hungary was broken up. Serbia,
united with several Austrian provinces inhabited by Slavs, to
become Yugoslavia ("the country of southern Slavs").
The Czechs and Slovaks merged to form Czechoslovakia. Poland
regained its independence lost in the 18th century. Its territory
consisted of lands partly ceded by Germany and Austria, and
partly won from Soviet Russia in the war of 1920. Romania enlarged
at the expense of Hungary, acquiring the province of Transylvania.
Hungary separated from Austria and became fully independent.
The Italians gained several Austrian regions, including the
port city of Trieste. As a result of these losses Austria, which
in 1914 had been the second largest state in Europe, was reduced
to the status of an insignificant power. The peace treaty forbade
Austria from uniting with Germany. The Ottoman Empire lost all
of its non-Turkish territory, including Palestine, Syria, and
Iraq, which came under British or French control.
Woodrow Wilson made many concessions to the other Allied countries
on questions of territory and reparations in order to secure
what mattered to him most: the League of Nations, on which he
pinned his hopes for a lasting peace. Clemenceau realized this
fact and exploited it to wring concessions from the President.
The League, as created by the peace treaty, was conceived not
as a super-government but as an association of free sovereign
states. Its members merely undertook to help each other to repel
aggression and pledged to submit to arbitration their own disputes.
The League was intended to act as an organ of collective security,
obviating the need for military alliances, considered one of
the main causes of the war.
The League of Nations consisted of two chambers: a General
Assembly, composed of representatives of member states; and
a Council with executive functions made up of representatives
of the U.S., Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, as well as those
of four additional states, elected by the Assembly. The headquarters
of the League was Geneva. Operating under the League's auspices
were numerous international offices (labor bureau, economic
bureau, etc.). Its day-to-day business was carried out by a
Secretariat. Among the important responsibilities imposed on
the League were trusteeships of the colonies taken away from
the Central Powers (the so-called mandates).
Learning Objective:
Understand why the United States Senate refused to ratify the
Versailles Peace Treaty.
The success of the entire peace settlement depended in large
measure on the willingness of the U.S. to help with its execution.
The French had consented to moderate their claims on Germany
only because the U.S. and Britain assured them of joint protection
against German attack. A defensive treaty to this effect was
signed by the three powers on the same day the Germans agreed
to the Treaty of Versailles. Furthermore, the League of Nations
was Wilson's idea. Many European statesmen viewed it skeptically,
and agreed to the League only as a means of ensuring the permanent
involvement of the U.S. in European affairs.
Unfortunately, President Wilson made several major domestic
political blunders in his handling of the entire peace process.
In the off-year congressional elections of 1918 Wilson appealed
to the electorate to vote Democratic. He claimed that "the
return of a Republican majority" to Congress would "certainly
be interpreted on the other side of the water as a repudiation
of my leadership." Republicans charged that the President
had violated his own earlier plea that "politics is adjourned"
during the war, and that he impugned the loyalty of Republican
Congressmen who had cooperated in the war effort. When the Republicans
won control of both houses of Congress, it was easy for them
to claim that Wilson had asked for a popular vote of confidence
and lost (in the previous Congress the Democrats had a 6 seat
majority in the House and a majority of eleven in the Senate;
in the 1919-1921 Congress the Republicans had a majority of
50 in the House and two in the Senate). Wilson's actions impaired
his position at the peace conference and insured that the new
Congress was not political obligated to support his policies.
Wilson also made a serious error in his appointment of the
members of the American commission to negotiate the peace at
Paris. The President did not appoint a prominent Republican
or any members of the Senate to the commission. Moreover, Wilson
made no effort to consult powerful senators on what terms to
seek, despite the obvious fact that the Senate would have to
approve the treaty.
During the peace conference, Wilson left Paris in mid-February
for a quick return to the U.S. Critics, mostly Republicans,
were already attacking the League as a world superstate that
would seriously curtail American sovereignty. The opponents
of the League were led by Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge,
Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a personal
and political enemy of Wilson. Lodge hoped to handle the issue
in such a way as to humiliate Wilson (and the Democrats) and
to strengthen the Republicans. Lodge publicly urged that the
League be separated from the main body of the peace treaty,
and he warned against entangling alliances and a departure of
America's traditional policy of diplomatic freedom. A Republican
letter signed by 39 senators, six more than necessary to block
approval of a treaty, declared that they found unacceptable
the concept of the League of Nations as drafted. Wilson had
ample warning of the opposition's determination.
Wilson was able to obtain several modifications in the League
that he hoped would satisfy his critics — he exempted domestic
matters from League jurisdiction; and in effect sanctioned the
Monroe Doctrine as a regional understanding permissible under
the League Covenant. Wilson was unwilling to ask for additional
changes. He concluded that he had done everything reasonable
and that the Senate would either have to accept the League or
do the unbelievable and reject the entire peace treaty, and
he prepared to fight his opponents on that basis.
On July 10, 1919 Wilson presented the Treaty of Versailles
to the Senate for its ratification. The Senate was divided into
four major groups concerning the League. A small group of "Irreconcilables"
adamantly opposed participation in any kind of international
organization. They viewed the League as an intolerable diminution
of U.S. sovereignty and insisted that the wisest course for
America was noninvolvement in world affairs. Republican "Mild
Reservationists" favored membership with only a few changes
in the League Covenant. The "Strong Reservationists"
led by Senator Lodge, advocated more sweeping alterations to
the League Covenant. They particularly objected to Article X
which pledged the member nations' assistance to any other member
nation that had its territorial integrity and political independence
threatened by another country. These Senators believed that
American interests could best be protected through independent
action, based on a balance of power, rather than using collective
security through the League of Nations. Most Democrats supported
the President.
Lodge proposed a number of amendments (reservations) to the
Treaty that helped unify the Republicans and embarrassed the
Democrats. It Wilson accepted them, Republicans could claim
that they had repaired defects in the League and made it safe
for America to belong; if the President rejected them, he and
the Democratic party would bear the responsibility for the defeat
of the Treaty. In their final form, most of the fourteen Lodge
Reservations were petty in nature, designed primarily to reduce
the President's control over foreign policy. The most important
reservation provided that the U.S. would assume no obligation
to defend the integrity of other states or to use its armed
forces at the request of the League without the specific approval
of Congress.
Wilson feared that acceptance of the reservations might force
renegotiation of the peace treaty. He also hated Lodge. As Lodge
told a fellow Senator who expressed fear that Wilson might indeed
accept the reservations: "You do not take into consideration
the hatred that Woodrow Wilson has for me personally. Never
under any set of circumstances in this world could he be induced
to accept a treaty with Lodge reservations appended to it."
Wilson decided to take his case directly to the people. In September,
Wilson left on a speaking tour through the Midwestern and far-Western
states. After delivering over 30 major addresses in defense
of the League, he suffered a cerebral thrombosis in Pueblo,
Colorado that left him bedridden and partially paralyzed. For
the rest of his term no one had effective control of the executive
branch and it functioned largely by inertia.
Wilson's stroke apparently left him psychologically more rigid
and uncompromising than before (this behavior is characteristic
of stroke victims). Democratic Senators warned him that the
only hope for Senate approval of the Treaty was to compromise
with the Republicans and they urged him to do so. Wilson refused
to compromise, and he requested that loyal Democrats vote against
the Treaty with the Lodge Reservations. Since the Democrats
could not muster enough strength to approve the Treaty without
changes, its defeat was insured. The final vote on the Treaty
with the Reservations fell seven votes short of the necessary
two-thirds for approval, 49 for to 35 against. The most essential
element of the entire peace settlement was thus knocked out:
The League lost its main champion, and France lost the principal
guarantor of its security.
Wilson was determined to convert the 1920 presidential contest
into a national referendum on the League. Yet as Wilson should
have known, a presidential contest cannot provide a mandate
on a single issue. Traditional party loyalties, personalities,
and a variety of issues and grievances tended to eclipse or
confuse the question of the League in 1920. The Republican candidate,
Warren G. Harding, overwhelmed the Democratic candidate, James
M. Cox, by a plurality of over 7 million votes. The Republicans
also won heavy majorities in both houses of Congress. The election
was not a mandate on the League or any other single issue, but
Wilson's insistence on a "Solemn Referendum" helped
insure that the Republican victors would interpret the results
as a decisive popular rejection of the League. Wilson, by his
insistence on all or nothing, had killed his own idea. The Harding
administration signed a separate treaty of peace with Germany
in 1921 that reserved for the U.S. all of the privileges but
none of the obligations of the Versailles Treaty.
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Chapter >
Courtesy of George Burson, Aspen School District,
Aspen, Colorado.
