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1 Aims Agreed Before the Armistice
A The Fourteen Points In January 1918, President Wilson laid down 'Fourteen Points' which the major Allied nations agreed would form the basis of the peace and of the resettlement of Europe. Nine of the points covered the practical rearrangement of territories and frontiers it was hoped to carry out once victory was won. Germany was to evacuate all territory she had occupied during the war in France, Belgium, Russia and the Balkans. France was to be compensated by the return of Alsace-Lorraine. The old Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Empires were to be broken up and new independent nation states formed on the basis of national groupings of peoples such as Italians, Poles, Czechs and Serbs. B One of these nine points recommended the setting up of a `General association of nations with mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike' (Thomson). This was the basis of the future League of Nations. C The 'Fourteen Points' were laid down not only to make a just peace but also to prevent the outbreak of another war, and the remaining five points were aimed to remove what were considered to be the causes of the First World War. Secret treaties and secret diplomacy were to give way to open agreements openly arrived at. Freedom of navigation on the seas in peace and war was to remove naval rivalries, war-time naval blockades and submarine warfare. Equality of trade conditions between all nations making the peace was to diminish economic rivalry and tariffs. The reduction of armaments and the free, open adjustment of colonial claims, it was hoped, would remove the dangers of another armaments race and of colonial friction between the major powers. D These five points implied a desire for impartial justice among the major nations which simply did not exist in the highly emotional atmosphere which followed the ending of the First World War. Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George were dependent on Parliaments at home which rarely shared these idealistic sentiments. After four years of harsh war revenge was a more common sentiment than conciliation. President Wilson's own country refused to support the settlement of which he had been one of the main architects. E The Treaty of Versailles was not an openly' negotiated peace since neither Germany nor Austria were allowed to negotiate. There was no free, open and impartial settlement of colonial claims. The final settlement suffered therefore from the obvious contradictions between the idealism of the 'Fourteen Points' and the practical arrangements which were possible in the Europe of the post-war years. Even the sacred principle of national self-determination which was applied, set up problems of new national minorities which were just as difficult and dangerous as the old..
2 The Post-war Settlement
A The Conference of Paris, January 1919-20 Seventy delegates representing thirty-two nations were present at the Conference. As well as the major powers Britain, France, U.S.A., Italy and Japan and their allies, there were representatives from South American nations, from the Far East, including China and Siam and from Africa. The chief omissions were the neutral powers such as Sweden, Russia engaged in civil war, and the enemy powers, Germany, Austro-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey. The Conference was at first controlled by a Council of Ten, two representatives from each of the five major powers. Japan and Italy both left the Conference by April 1919, and the main decisions were therefore made by the French Premier, Clemenceau, the British Premier, Lloyd George, and the American President, Wilson.
B The New Balance of Power The old balance of power in Europe had rested largely on the empires of Germany, Austro-Hungary and Russia. With each of these empires in a state of collapse a new balance of power in Europe had to be built. The new settlement was to be based on independent nation states not on dynastic empires, and it must prevent a second outbreak of German military aggression in Europe while at the same time raising a barrier around Soviet Russia, for Communism was regarded as the new threat to democracy and order.
C The Treaty of Versailles, June 28, 1919 i The Treaty confirmed the evacuation of all occupied parts of France and Belgium by Germany and the restoration to France of Alsace-Lorraine. In addition the treaty laid down the following points. Germany had to surrender frontier areas around Eupen and Malmedy to Belgium. She lost the northern part of Schleswig to Denmark as the result of a plebiscite. She undertook not to fortify the left bank of the Rhine and to keep a zone of fifty kilometres wide free of fortification on the right bank. Her army was drastically reduced and the General Staff dissolved. She was forbidden to make tanks, heavy artillery or planes. Her navy was reduced to a small number of surface ships. She was not allowed to have submarines and the naval base at Heligoland was to be demolished. ii Germany ceded the coal-mines of the Saar to France for fifteen years. The Saar was administered by the League of Nations until 1935, when as the result of a plebiscite it went back to Germany. iii Germany lost all her colonies. They were handed over to the allied countries which had occupied them during the war, under a League of Nations mandate, which gave them the power to control and administer the areas. Britain, France, Belgium and South Africa took over the German colonies in Africa. German territories in the Pacific went to Japan, Australia and New Zealand. iv There was considerable disagreement among the Allied powers over the settlement with Germany in the West. France wanted to hold the Rhine bridgeheads permanently. Clemenceau was opposed by both Lloyd George and Wilson, who promised instead an Anglo-American guarantee of the French frontier. The Americans refused to ratify this guarantee and it lapsed. France was therefore permanently sensitive about her frontier with Germany and about her national security. v In Eastern Europe, Germany ceded a small area near Troppau to Czecho-Slovakia, the Baltic port of Memel to Lithuania, and the Polish corridor and the port of Danzig to Poland. Danzig became a Free City administered by the League of Nations. Germany had to give up the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which she had made with Russia in 1917 and to renounce any form of union with Austria. Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became independent nation states.
D Further Treaties i The Treaty of Saint Germain (September 1919) decided the fate of Austria, who gave up territory to Italy, Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania and Jugo-Slavia. Her army and navy were reduced. She agreed to pay reparations. The new Austria was a mere fragment of the old, one-quarter of the old territory with one-fifth of her previous population. ii The Treaty of Trianon was made with Hungary in June 1920. Hungary ceded to Rumania more territory than she kept. Three million Magyars were placed under foreign rule. A constricted, land-locked relic of the old Hungary was all that was left. iii What Germany, Austria and Hungary lost in Eastern Europe was gained by the new nations. Serbia was transformed into the much larger Jugo-Slavia. Czecho-Slovakia was carved out of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, while Rumania took Transylvania from Hungary, and Poland picked up territory from Austria in the south and from Germany in the north. The new states had to be given frontiers which were reasonable on economic and military grounds as well as from the point of view of national self-determination. This created new minority problems.
E Turkey and the Near East i In November 1917, Balfour made his famous promise to set up a national home for the Jews in Palestine after the war. Since the Arabs had helped the Allies in their struggle against the Turks, a joint Anglo-French statement, in November 1918, promised all the nations of the Turkish Empire freedom from Turkish rule. The Arab peoples interpreted this statement as meaning Palestine for the Arabs. ii At the San Remo Conference of April 1920, the Allied Supreme Council decided to give independence to the states of the Arabian peninsula, but the Mediterranean areas of the old Turkish Empire were to become mandated territories. Palestine, Iraq and Transjordania were entrusted to Britain. Syria and the Lebanon were handed over to France. The largest independent Arab state was Saudi Arabia built up by Ibn Saud. iii The Turkish Sultan accepted the Treaty of Sevres in August 1920, but its terms were rejected by Mustapha Kemal and his nationalist followers. Final agreement with Turkey and with Kemal as President of the new Turkish republic, was not achieved until the Treaty of Lausanne 1923, by which Turkey regained some territory at the expense of Greece. iv Two conflicting problems arose as the result of the settlement in the Near East. Arab nationalism aimed to throw off European control and to unite in some form of federation the various Arab states. The Jews on the other hand pinned their faith on the Balfour declaration and hoped to set up a Jewish national home in Palestine which would be independent of both Arab and European control.
F The Merits and Defects of the Versailles Settlement i No one could criticize the aims of the peace-makers or the good intentions of the principles they tried to follow. Shocked by the horrors of the most disastrous war in modern history, they tried to prevent a second outbreak by encouraging the free, national independence of racial groups, by weakening the old, dynastic, militaristic empires and by calling the nations of the world to a new experiment in international government. The number of nations involved, the complexity of a settlement which was truly world-wide, the highly emotional atmosphere in which they had to work, the shortage of time, all these factors made the practical results of the settlement and its methods fall a long way behind the high sounding principles on which it was supposed to be based. ii It was a mistake, however reasonable the settlement, to give the ex-enemy nations no real chance to sit around the peace table. The vacuum in Europe caused by the fall of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires and by the withdrawal of Soviet Russia was not adequately filled by the new medium-sized nations such as Czecho-Slovakia, Poland and Jugo-Slavia. Though the old minorities were freed, new minorities were created which were a powerful factor in the outbreak of the Second World War. Hitler became the champion of German minorities in Czecho-Slovakia and Poland and of the union of Austria and Germany which was expressly forbidden by the treaty. It must be said that there was machinery to modify and revise the settlement and given a real desire for peace as was shown by Briand, Austen Chamberlain and Stresemann between 1924 and 1929 (see Chapter 22, Section 3B) it was possible to bring Germany back to international peace and cooperation. As far as Hitler and the extreme nationalists were concerned it was amply shown that any settlement apart from complete surrender to German demands would have been unacceptable. iii The absence of Germany and Russia from the peace conference and the withdrawal of the U.S.A. from Europe weakened the Treaty of Versailles and gave it less chance of providing a long or stable peace. It is relevant to note that as early as 1922, Russia and Germany, the two 'outsiders', signed a treaty of friendship at Rapallo and turned their backs on the efforts of the Western powers to unite Europe in the task of economic reconstruction. Rapallo was the forerunner of the much more sinister German-Soviet Pact of 1939. iv All the major nations of Europe joined in the settlement of Vienna (1815) and in the Conference of Berlin (1878). The former gave Europe thirty-seven years of peace, the latter thirty-six years. Versailles gave only a breathing space of twenty-one years before Europe was plunged once again into a world war even more disastrous than the first.
Questions 1. Describe the main features of the new Europe built by the peace treaties of 1918-20. What do you consider to be the merits and defects of the settlement? 2. Show how the defeated powers were treated by the peace settlemen; OR explainhow the war and the peace affected Poles, Czechs and Serbs. 3. Desrcibe and explain the Fourteen Points.
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