Introduction
I
The present volume brings together the proceedings of an international
conference on the Treaty of Versailles. The 1919 peace treaty left an enduring
mark on 20th century historiography. The ultimate collapse of the Versailles
system remains undisputed, but the cause of that outcome still raises controversy.
A detailed examination of the motives and making of the treaty, as undertaken
here, goes a long way to explain whether that failure stemmed from inherent
weaknesses of the treaty or from postwar revisionism and economic instability.
There exists a solid basis for this reevaluation: Multiarchival studies
have appeared in the last 25 years that have minimized national bias, although
most have treated a specific national problem or taken a particular national
perspective.1 Still, an international research-oriented synthesis has remained
unavailable.
A group of German and American historians concluded in 1992 that in
light of these facts a reassessment of the peace settlement from an international
perspective after 75 years would prove timely. In May 1994, experts from
France, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, and the United States gathered
to reconstruct the process of treaty-making by discussing the latest archival
evidence and the extant literature. The conference took place under the
auspices of the Center for German and European Studies of the University
of California at Berkeley and the German Historical Institute of Washington
D.C.
The resulting reappraisal, as documented in this volume, constitutes a new synthesis of peace conference scholarship. The findings call attention to divergent peace aims within the American and Allied camps and underscore the degree to which the negotiators themselves considered the Versailles Treaty a work in progress. Many of the essays here situate the peace settlement in the context of postwar conditions in Europe. World War I had produced human suffering, destruction, and economic and political upheaval on an unprecedented scale. Europe in 1919 struck many observers as closer to another war than to a prolonged peace. Dealing with the sequelae therefore seemed analogous to the process that Tacitus described so aptly: "They make it a wilderness and call it peace."2 The peace treaty with Germany had to solve the most pressing material questions arising out of the war and simultaneously to lay the groundwork for a stable international system. Far from aiming at a punitive settlement, as several papers in this volume show, the United States and the Allies sought to preserve Germany, but to contain its power to fight future wars. Simultaneously they tried to establish a ring of independent states around the Reich. To ensure the existence and economic viability of those states constituted a main motive of the peace settlement.
A close examination of the proceedings in 1919 from the point of view of the main protagonists forms the core of our investigation. We have limited our analysis mainly to France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States as players or objects of deliberations. Our contributors seek to reconstruct the complex reality of peacemaking; the confluence of diplomacy, domestic pressures, alliances, and political ties; and the problems of material destruction, human loss, and political disruption in Europe. 3 Indeed, the arrangements concluded in 1919 affected every aspect of European life: as a reminder of the often overlooked social consequences of the peace we include a photograph of the women who cleaned the premises in preparation for the diplomatic liquidation of the Great War.
More than 75 years after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the peace settlement with Germany that ended World War I remains controversial. Beginning with Keynes's polemical attacks on the treaty, critics have blamed it for subsequent German vindictiveness and revisionism. Some have attributed the German economic and financial crisis of 1929-1933, and even the Depression itself, to what they deem the harsh indemnity provisions of the treaty. Others have claimed that the treaty helped the National Socialists gain power in 1933. A few public commentators have gone so far as to state that it contributed to the outbreak of World War II.4 Those criticisms reflect two main themes: The Versailles Treaty diminished the chances that Germany's social, economic, financial, and political situation would improve. Likewise, it is suggested, Germany's revisionism weakened the postwar European system. The treaty thereby proved unworkable and finally failed. George F. Kennan has recently argued that the "vindictiveness of British and French peace terms" helped pave the way for National Socialism and a renewal of hostilities. World War II resulted, in Kennan's view, from "the very silly and humiliating punitive peace imposed on Germany after World War I."5
Revisionist judgments continued to prevail in the public debate on the Versailles peace for several generations.6 In recent years, however, more positive evaluations, based on detailed archival research, have underscored the successes of the German peace compact. Whatever its shortcomings, the treaty lent itself to future revision and eventually led to an era of temporary stability between 1924 and 1931. By 1932 the reparations dispute was largely solved; the Rhineland occupation had come to an end; and Britain and the United States had signaled their readiness to enter into negotiations for a new settlement of the Polish Corridor. By contemporary standards, in short, the treaty did not prove an inflexible instrument. Had a worldwide Depression not supervened, the process of peaceful readjustment might have gone further. The peace settlement and its subsequent revisions, viewed from this perspective, represented the most stable arrangement that could have emerged from the contentious peacemaking process in Paris.
Scholarly opinion, while remaining divided, now tends to view the treaty
as the best compromise that the negotiators could have reached in the existing
circumstances.7 The delegations in Paris and their entourages had to work
quickly. Troops had to be sent home, food shipments needed to enter blockaded
ports, and revolutionary movements required containment. None of those
endeavors allowed for delay. Still, the labors of the conference proceeded
haltingly, owing to the involuted bureaucratic structure of the gathering.
The progress of deliberations from the preliminary preparations to the
organization of the League, and from the draft treaty to the final version
of the compact, made heavy demands on the organizational skills, patience,
mental and physical health, and political survival skills of the participants.8
Yet the broader public, to judge from newspaper opinion and textbook treatment,
clings to the impression of a Carthaginian settlement that gave the French
too much leeway to play a predominant role in Europe at Germany's expense.9
Recently, Hagen Schulze, in a book that seeks to set the tone for German
post-unification historiography, has characteristically denominated the
Versailles treaty as "a dictated peace." He describes the compact as a
"destructive middle course" for Germany that "put Germany under special
laws, took away its military power, ruined it economically, and humiliated
it politically".10 It seems more heuristically preferable to analyze the
strengths and weaknesses of the peace settlement by distinguishing between
long-range economic and political factors and the immediate domestic and
diplomatic developments that inevitably loomed so large in the consciousness
of the negotiators and their contemporaries.
II
Archive-based research about the Paris Peace Conference from an international
perspective took off in the 1960s when the main belligerents abandoned
the fifty-year rule for opening diplomatic records. The resulting works
built on a felicitous confluence of new materials and methods.11 The following
selective overview will highlight research trends in the international
history of the Treaty of Versailles.
Historical studies on the Paris Peace Conference started in World War
II, at a time when a reassessment of the earlier peace required no justification.
Previous accounts coming from the desks of participants had offered subjective
reflections, but rarely systematic analysis. With few exceptions, those
memories of the peace criticized the motives, making, and execution of
the accord severely. John Maynard Keynes's cleverly written account of
the Council of Four commanded lasting attention among popular writers,
although neither enlightened contemporaries nor historians considered it
fair-minded or well-informed. Wartime historical investigations provided
valuable groundwork for systematic research and included a substantial
source publication on the German delegation in Paris as well as a retrospective
assessment that became the standard account of the conference used during
World War II.12
Post-1945 research on Germany's role at the peace conference, resting
on the captured records of the Wilhelmstrasse, set the problem of the Reich's
response to peacemaking in 1918-1919 within a comparative framework and
employed German as well as non-German sources. A lucid portrait of German
diplomacy during the conference provided fresh insights while passing a
critical judgment on the treaty provisions.13
Fritz Fischer's revisionist evaluation of German World War I war aims,
first published in 1961, triggered an impassioned controversy in the Federal
Republic about the country's responsibility for the war. That seminal work
shaped the subsequent debate on the justice of the Versailles Treaty.14
Fischer's revelations followed a pioneering work on the Reich's Western
war aims that had won considerable acclaim in the United States. Nevertheless,
those findings had escaped notice by the general public in the Bundesrepublik15,
and Fischer's study met with ferocious criticisms at home. But reviews
from abroad tended to be positive. As a whole, the Fischer controversy
promoted fresh research in all the former belligerent countries.
Beginning in the 1970s, German historians began to exploit the German records dealing with Versailles more fully. The resulting studies treat German reparations policy, the Reich's conference diplomacy in May and June 1919, the fate of the emperor and the German military, as well as the debate about the treaty within the emerging political class of the Weimar Republic. These books provide a balanced review of Germany's difficulties in 1918 and 1919. The authors stress the continuity of Germany's foreign-policy aims as well as the constraints on German diplomacy that were imposed by domestic upheaval, the Allied blockade, and resulting isolation.
Some revisionist accounts have emerged as well: An acerbic monograph
on French plans for the settlement with Germany concludes that Paris's
ambitious territorial aims limited Germany's options for domestic political
reform. The critical debate about the treaty in the Federal Republic in
the wake of the Fischer controversy became more nuanced. Historians sought
an open exchange with their colleagues in other countries.16 A landmark
study of German and American policies from the Armistice to the peace exploited
archives on both sides of the water with equal diligence and delineated
the divergence between German expectations of the Fourteen Points and the
practical demands of Realpolitik that confronted President Wilson at the
end of World War I. Those studies of German reactions to the Armistice
and the peace complemented an array of investigations that had concentrated
on Germany's domestic situation in 1918-1919 at the expense of diplomatic
background.17 An important monograph treated the response of official German
historiography to the military defeat and the peace settlement. The author
explained why German historians embraced revisionism and how they shaped
public opinion during the 1920s.18 Problems pertaining to German demobilization
have been examined in an essay collection. A massive study of the German
inflation analyzes social and economic problems of demobilization and views
them in the larger context of wartime and postwar financial instability.
And a recent work traces the diplomacy of Bavaria from the Armistice to
the peace.19
The process of reevaluation proceeded apace in the former Allied nations
during the 1960s. The first generation of international histories of the
peace conference used American official records and British private collections.
They studied British and American war aims and yielded insights about the
transition from war to peace diplomacy.20 A revisionist interpretation
of the period as a clash between Anglo-American efforts to reconstitute
the liberal economic and social order and the "forces of movement" represented
by socialism and Soviet communism broadened the scope of inquiry, yet confined
analysis of diplomatic sources largely to printed documents.21
Owing to the sophisticated development of Cabinet machinery by Sir Maurice Hankey and the long traditions of the Foreign Office, British records on the Armistice and the peace conference were richer than those of other countries and allowed a detailed reconstruction of decision-making. The release of the official British files at the end of the 1960s stimulated a series of investigations of Lloyd George, the British delegation, as well as Foreign Office and Treasury planning and responses to the conference. A series of meticulously researched studies analyzed the evolution of British war aims, plans for the League of Nations, and the work of the Council of Four. Not surprisingly, controversial interpretations of Lloyd George's stand on reparations emerged that are reflected in this volume as well.22 Together those works led to a deeper understanding of British policy and the qualified success of the British Empire at the peace conference. A recent two-volume study provides a definitive account of British political, military, and naval strategy in the last two years of the conflict.23
France, the staunchest defender of the Versailles peace, stood at the
forefront of international scholarly enquiry. Paris's postwar quest for
security received widespread attention in the scholarly community. The
opening of French archival records on the peace conference in the 1960s
and 1970s stimulated works on war aims, the Armistice, and public opinion,
as well as a broad-gauged investigation of French politics and society
during the war and the peace settlement. As early as 1962 a pathbreaking
book on French policy toward Czechoslovakia and Poland appeared.24 New
studies since the late 1970s, based on records in several countries, likewise
explored postwar alliance diplomacy. Those publications set Franco-German
and French-American relations within the broader context of wartime conditions
and the evolution of postwar economic, financial, and political relations.
A monograph that examines domestic and foreign factors in French reparations
policy leading to the Dawes Plan offers a model for international history
in the postwar era.25 A recent multiarchival study on German and Allied
material war aims has set a new standard for comparative historical investigation
that emphasizes political and economic motives as well as decision-making
processes in Paris, London, Washington, and Berlin. On the whole, those
bilateral or multilateral works provide us with valuable case studies on
France's role in the making and execution of the Treaty.26 Future research
on the peace conference will profit from a new edition of Paul Mantoux's
notes of the Council of Four.27
Studies on the American role in the peacemaking, with the exception
of a monograph on economic peace planning, have concentrated biographically
on Wilson and to a lesser extent on House. A first work on the president
was written in the heat of World War II; and the experience of the war
may have influenced the critical assessment of his diplomacy. After 1945
the tone of interpretations became markedly more positive. A series of
exhaustively researched biographical studies based on the Wilson Papers
followed, including detailed volumes on the president's diplomacy during
the early stages of the war. Out of those endeavors grew a publication
of Wilson's papers that by general acknowledgement sets the standard for
scholarly manuscript editions.28 Recent biographies of the president and
his role in the peacemaking process include some studies that depart from
the hagiographic tradition in Wilson biography. However, one notable account
reaffirms the positive evaluation of Wilson's aims for the League of Nations
and the peace.29
A selective edition of House's diary in the 1920s first depicted the role of Wilson's chief advisor. A later study, though based on careful research, adopted an uncharitable tone, and House still awaits a dispassionate biographer. Likewise, the role of other American delegates and their advisors remains underresearched. A recent monograph, however, has outlined the role of American historians in peace planning. German-American relations after 1919 form the subject of a detailed account that analyzes mutual diplomatic ties, changing economic interests, as well as America's role in solving the reparations question. An examination of the German-American peace treaty of 1921 characterizes it as an attempt by the State Department to secure the substantive advantages of the treaty after the Senate had rejected that document.30
Germany's neighboring countries and the League of Nations, vital subjects
of the Paris deliberations, take a prominent place in the historical literature
on Versailles. A revealing account of Belgian diplomacy during the Paris
peace conference inspired further multiarchival research on the smaller
powers and newly erected states.31 Several studies have dealt with plans
for the League of Nations.32 Meanwhile other international bodies that
emanated from the peace treaty have not received much scholarly attention.
A lucid account of the Conference of Ambassadors constitutes an exception.33
III
Our reexamination of the peace starts with an analysis of American and Allied war aims and the making of the Armistice. It then portrays the leading peacemakers and their interaction with domestic interlocutors during the conference. The shaping of the territorial, economic, and financial provisions of the treaty forms the subject of the next section. The treaty's impact on Poland and Russia as well as its consequences for the postwar international system receive attention in the fourth part, while the concluding portion of this volume deals with contemporary reflections and reactions to the peace conference.
The section of this volume dealing with peace planning and the Armistice compares the original American, British, and French schemes for a settlement with Germany. It emphasizes that the haste with which the belligerents concluded the Armistice left critical issues, except for military and naval provisions, unresolved. As a consequence, the peace conference faced an immense workload.
Klaus Schwabe's essay depicts Brockdorff-Rantzau's diplomacy in 1918-1919 against the background of continuing unrest at home. Schwabe explains that the Reich confronted military defeat and therefore had to accept an imposed peace settlement. Wilson's Fourteen Points became the basis on which Berlin hoped to attain a lenient settlement. Failure of the negotiators in Paris to consult the Reich during the making of the treaty left Germany with a single realistic option: economic revisionism. Schwabe emphasizes that the resort to economic resistance reflected Germany's lack of choice rather than a purposeful continuity of pre- and postrevolutionary foreign policy aims.34 Alan Sharp, in commenting on Schwabe, observes that the conversion of German officials to Wilsonianism did not spring from genuine conviction but rather from the desire to salvage something from the jaws of defeat. In the second part of his argument, Schwabe delineates Brockdorff-Rantzau's attacks against the treaty. He maintains that Brockdorff's polemics represented the successful start of a campaign to undermine the treaty's legitimacy. The time was simply not ripe in 1919, Schwabe concludes, for reconciliation among the erstwhile foes.
In his discussion of French peace planning from December 1918 to February 1919 David Stevenson takes a different approach. As he demonstrates, security against future German attacks figured as the foremost French goal. The longing for security surpassed even the demand for reparations in importance. Stevenson makes clear that the French instrumentalized reparations to obtain a joint Allied occupation of the Rhineland and with it the promise of a future alliance against Germany. He calls attention to the traumatic quality of the French experience with German aggression and thereby explains French insistence on security during the conference.35 If the Allies had perpetuated their wartime alliance to ensure French security, Stevenson concludes, the treaty might have achieved more durable results.
Victory in 1918 or 1919? David French's discussion of the Armistice indicates that the sudden end of the war surprised the War Cabinet and left Whitehall little time to prepare their terms.36 The theme is further underlined in Alan Sharp's comment. Both present arguments that put British strategy during the peace conference into the perspective of insufficient preparation for peace.37 Notwithstanding the element of surprise, the naval provisions of the Armistice rated as an unqualified success for Great Britain. Better military and financial terms, as French points out, had to be obtained at the peace conference.
Thomas Knock describes American diplomacy leading to the Armistice. Wilson here emerges as a skillful leader, whose advocacy of the Fourteen Points in the pre-Armistice negotiations proved a qualified success. The president further served as the indispensable proselytizer for the League covenant and thus promoted what Knock defines as the substance of Wilsonianism.38 Our analysis of the relationship between home fronts and negotiators inevitably opens up the controversy about the merits of the treaty itself. The authors here indicate how domestic pressures influenced proceedings in Paris at various stages. Yet they also show that in no case did domestic concerns determine the final outcome. As Antony Lentin observes, public opinion at home produced more sound and fury than decisive impact in Paris. Clemenceau and Lloyd George emerge as quasi-sovereign interlocutors who negotiated on the basis of their country's long-term interests and remained mindful of the requirements of international cooperation as well as domestic support to enforce the treaty. Wilson, as Lentin points out, neglected to mobilize Democratic legislators to defend the treaty's provisions and thereby contributed to its failure.39
Erik Goldstein examines Lloyd George's stand toward peace negotiations in Paris as well as to his home front. Undoubtedly the Welsh wizard's pledges in the Khaki Election of 1918 shaped the treaty's war guilt and reparation clauses to some degree. Yet, as Goldstein emphasizes, Lloyd George was able gradually to insulate himself from domestic pressures. By the end of the conference, he stood ready to heed the advice of Keynes and others to leave the amount of reparations for future determination. The outcome of the reparations imbroglio, as Goldstein asserts, did not correspond to Lloyd George's original intentions in 1919. Lloyd George emerges here in a more positive light than in contemporary comments that likened him to a sharpshooter.40
If the peace treaty led to a less propitious outcome for France than portended in 1919, as Georges-Henri Soutou sees it, Clemenceau hardly deserves the blame. Soutou depicts the French premier as a resourceful negotiator who compromised on small issues and achieved his essential economic and strategic aims. If the ultimate outcome belied the assurances of the Treaty, the fault lay with later divergences of opinion between Paris, London, and Washington, which rendered the Anglo-American guarantees for France inoperable. Antony Lentin does not concur and faults the Tiger for his attempt to promote Rhenish separatism as a way of controlling domestic events in Germany.41
As Lawrence Gelfand argues in his essay, political participation in the peace settlement lay in U.S. national interest. Gelfand's depiction of the American delegation at the peace conference underscores the seriousness with which the United States envisioned the task of helping to construct a multilateral settlement on the other side of the Atlantic. If American concepts for the League of Nations failed to materialize, he maintains, that should not be attributed to a weakness in Wilson's leadership in 1919. Gelfand's discussion of memoirs from the American delegation supplements other essays here that examine contemporary reactions to the conference.42
Papers in section III and IV of this volume deal with the financial and economic provisions of the treaty and with the French pursuit of security. French dependence on continued support from Britain and America as well as the provisional character of the treaty emerge as the main themes. Stephen Schuker analyzes the French quest for strategic control of the Rhineland during the peace negotiations. He contrasts French losses during the war with superior German economic and demographic strength. According to Schuker, Clemenceau agreed to scale back French plans for a Rhineland detached from Germany to a temporary joint occupation of the Left Bank because he recognized French weakness after the war and understood how badly his country needed Anglo-American security guarantees.43 Schuker emphasizes that Colonel House expressed an open mind about the idea of detaching the Rhineland from Germany, but that the other Anglo-American principals flatly rejected such schemes. The emergent compromise, embodying the Guarantee Pact and the temporary Rhineland occupation, ultimately proved inadequate when Wilson failed to secure ratification of the peace and the treaties of guarantee and when the wartime alliance broke down. Standing outside the narrow prism of Wilsonian hagiography, Schuker nevertheless rehabilitates House as a protean figure in the tradition of realistic American internationalism and involvement in European affairs.44
Elisabeth Glaser traces the economic clauses of the treaty back to divergent war aims. She interprets French peace plans in this area as a quest for economic security against Germany and links those plans to French reparation demands. Because of their dependence on outside help, the French could not stand out against the Anglo-American resolve to encourage liberal trade rules after a transitory period of five years. Thus, the economic clauses of the Versailles Treaty constituted a compromise between the American Open Door Policies and the more restrictive schemes promoted by the Europeans during the war for political control of trade.
The fate of the League of Nations, the recreation of Poland, and the reaction of the Soviet Union to the treaty provide the focus for section IV. Piotr Wandycz traces the evolution of the Polish settlement. He identifies France as the main champion of a strong Poland, links French promotion of a viable Polish entity to Paris's security concerns, and concludes that geopolitical considerations, not preoccupations with self-determination, dominated the decisionmaking on Poland's borders. Wandycz defends the territorial settlement in the east as the minimum necessary to provide defendable Polish borders and underscores the depth of German opposition to a genuinely independent Poland. He suggests that the loss of Upper Silesia did not seriously hurt the German economy and that the Polish Corridor figured as a sine qua non for a viable Polish state.
In her historical reconstruction of the Polish minorities treaty, Carole Fink looks at the tangled nationalities problem of Eastern Europe from a different point of view. Elaborating a curious parallel to Wandycz's analysis of the Polish political settlement, Fink shows how the contradictory pressures on America and the West European Allies led to an unhappy compromise on the minority treaty that ultimately weakened the prospects for meaningful enforcement of minority rights in Eastern Europe. Although the Comité Juive lobbied vigorously for minority rights and even autonomy in Paris, the final outcome fell distinctly short by Wilsonian standards of self-determination.
Jon Jacobson's addresses the Soviet response to Versailles during the 1920s. He distinguishes between cautious official diplomacy carried out through the Narkomindel and Comintern sponsorship of class antagonism in postwar Germany. While the Soviet Union polemicized against Versailles and promoted revision through the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo, the Moscow regime simultaneously championed revolutionary opposition to the Weimar Republic by the German working class. Jacobson suggests that the dual policy of Communist leadership limited the Russia's room to maneuver and ultimately undermined Soviet security.
The fundamental flaw in the compact, some critics contend, was that Germany was excluded from drafting the Armistice and negotiating the peace treaty. The Armistice left the Reich without effective military defense. Germany was then forced by an ultimatum to subscribe to a formula attributing to it sole responsibility for the damages of war. The contributions by Fritz Klein, Klaus Schwabe, Wolfgang Mommsen, and Niall Ferguson trace the situation in Germany from the Armistice to the signing of the treaty. German illusions in the period between the Armistice and the publication of the draft treaty form the subject of Fritz Klein's essay. Klein describes the "dreamland" in which Germany chose to live during this period of uncertainty. The political and psychological motives for the retreat from reality were manifold. Conservative and nationalist forces did not wish to face military defeat; the German Left expressed disappointment that the visionary Wilson proved to be a Realpolitiker in the end. Klein discerns a path from Versailles to Hitler, but he turns that familiar interpretation on its head. That such a path was taken, seems by no means inevitable. Germany's fate sprang from the country's failure to face the consequences of defeat and from the implicit national consensus for revisionism.45
Wolfgang Mommsen challenges established wisdom about German options in June 1919 through his depiction of Max Weber's reactions to the treaty. Weber served as an advisor to the German delegation. The politicians-diplomats consulted the famous sociologist about possible responses to the draft treaty. Weber urged the delegation to risk Allied invasion rather than subject the Berlin government to domestic attack by accepting the treaty's crushing financial obligations. As Mommsen suggests, this rejectionist attitude was widespread among the German elites. The fervor of this hatred for Versailles would later contribute to the fall of the Weimar Republic.46
As other essays in this collection make clear, a consensus existed among the Allies that Germany should not be formally consulted before the parties assembled in Paris had agreed on a common draft. That consensus reflected a pragmatic resolution to maintain Allied-American unity in dealing with the former enemy. Perhaps an Allied invasion of Germany at the end of the war would have preserved the winning coalition and eased the task of imposing peace conditions. Such at least was the retrospective analysis commonly made in 1945.47
But the ambiguous outcome of the 1918 Armistice accurately reflected the complications of coalition warfare and the wide divergence of Allied war aims. Under the circumstances, the decision to reach consensus on the draft treaty before its presentation to Germany seemed prudent strategy. Given the pressures to repatriate and demobilize front-line forces, the work of the peace conference had to be concluded as soon as possible. Wilson and Lloyd George felt impelled to return home to deal with a myriad of domestic problems. This too rendered it urgent to wrap up the most proceedings expeditiously. Finally, the diverse threats of Bolshevism and the influenza pandemic led many negotiators to prefer a flawed settlement to further delay.
Pragmatic requirements characteristically influenced the shaping of the much-misunderstood Paragraph 231. The contents of that paragraph reflected the presumed legal necessity to define German responsibility for the war in order to specify and limit the Reich's obligations. The articles in this volume addressing German reactions to the peace suggest that the opposing views on the treaty typically derived from different individual and group expectations and divergent perceptions of national interest rather than from a search for objective historical truth.
William Keylor illuminates the contrast between negative popular perceptions of the Treaty of Versailles and the growing scholarly consensus that the treaty constituted a workable instrument, albeit one needing reinforcement by its signatories to endure. Keylor reviews Wilson's policy aims and contrasts these with the implementation of his objectives in Paris. He faults the president for raising excessive expectations through his high-flown rhetoric and offers a counterpoint to Knock's interpretation.48 Like Fink and others, he emphasizes the unresolved problems inherent in the settlement for Eastern Europe.
Antoine Fleury praises the work of the League of Nations in the 1920s as a beneficent and potentially revolutionary element in international politics. Diane Kunz, by contrast, faults the treaty for failing to make the League an effective instrument for international security. Kunz agrees with Marks and other authors that it was not the treaty itself, but rather its negative reception that increased the likelihood of future war. Long-term considerations of international security likewise inform Ronald Steel's essay. Steel compares the peace settlements of 1919 and 1945 with the end of the Cold War in 1989. His multifaceted contribution emphasizes the insoluble problems resulting from the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into small states without adequate minority protection under the dispensations of 1919.49
At the core of the persistent controversy over the Versailles Treaty lies the question of German war guilt. This book does not address the long-term sequelae of the war-guilt controversy. Nevertheless, the ongoing debate over war origins cannot fail to influence assessments of how the victors treated the losers. Historical research on World War I, now that the documentary record is available, confirms that Germany bore the main responsibility for starting the conflict. The Reich's civil and military leaders, fully aware of the potential risks, supported an offensive strategy in August 1914 that made a limited war impossible.50 The prosecution of total war by the German Empire in violation of nineteenth-century norms of conduct, the formulation of uniquely ambitious war aims, and their startling realization in the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty suggests that Germany, by any reasonable measure, bore a substantial responsibility for war damages.
A chief point of debate about the peace settlement, as reflected in this volume, is the extent to which Germany should and could be obliged to pay reparations to the Allied countries, and whether a German reparations levy could be fashioned so as to contribute to a recovery in Western and Central Europe. The continuing dispute about the burdens imposed by the treaty and the 1921 London Schedule of Payments illuminates a key element of the debate on the Versailles Treaty. Although a number of important studies on reparations have appeared in the past two decades, the subject remains controversial. The disagreements derive not only from the different perspectives of the authors, but also from their respective concentration on Allied or German records. Our volume presents and compares recent findings about the origins of the reparation stipulations, their relations to other treaty provisions, and their justification in wartime destruction, and projects for European reconstructions.51
Sally Marks stresses the contrast between original treaty provisions and eventual outcomes of the reparations clauses. She contrasts the comparative moderation of the initial payment mechanisms with Germany's unmeasured resentment of the reparations and war-guilt clauses. Marks suggests that the reparations provisions, though neither perfectly rational nor easy to fulfill, were less onerous in reality than German reactions made them appear. Yet the conflict between Germany and the Allies over reparations, as Marks observes, went beyond perceptions. Reparations would govern the distribution of monetary wealth and with it the balance of power. Marks does not view National Socialism as an inevitable outcome of the treaty provisions. But she follows Klein and others in identifying German resentment of the treaty as one cause of Hitler's rise.
Feldman, taking issue with Marks's views, claims that reparations fed the German inflation. Indeed, Feldman argues that the treaty's reparations provisions exerted a baleful influence on economy and society through 1932, although he also calls attention to other structural and policy failures that retarded effective reconstruction during the postwar years.52
Niall Ferguson also describes contemporary German reactions to the reparations clauses of the treaty. German bankers originally viewed inflation, as Ferguson suggests, as an apt way to soften the effects of a reparations levy.53 In contrast to Marks, Ferguson concludes that reparations became too burdensome for Weimar's economy, particularly when inflation spiraled out of control.
Reparations emerged as an early focal point for criticism of the treaty. Protests about territorial and financial provisions started when the first draft began to circulate. The debates at first took place within the delegations, but soon dominated the news media as well. Keynes's Economic Consequences of the Peace, which appeared at the end of 1919, rehearsed familiar objections to the territorial and financial provisions of the peace and used them as a basis for a personal condemnation of the statesmen responsible for it. Keynes's treatment set the tone for an array of subsequent publications of lesser literary quality. Section V analyzes contemporary views about peacemaking. The contributions here trace the genesis and dissemination of revisionist thinking.
As some of our authors demonstrate, the treaty formed merely a starting point for a subsequent reshaping of the international system.54 Changing economic and political conditions in the United States and the Allied countries, after the peace treaty was signed, precluded the envisioned restructuring of the international system. Not only did the United States fail to ratify the treaty, the Allied coalition largely fell apart. Each country focused on its domestic difficulties. Meanwhile, in Weimar Germany, revision of the treaty became the most important foreign policy goal. The means to achieve that end evolved over the coming fourteen years, but the principle was never questioned. Those destabilizing impulses did not originate with the treaty texts, and they cannot be attributed to defects in the treaty terms. They nevertheless shaped revisionist criticism of the treaty for generations. World War I in 1917 and 1918 had become a war of attrition. Throughout Europe public expectations of large indemnities, social benefits for veterans, and national grandeur had run high. Given the magnitude of suffering and sacrifice during the war, postwar resentment and disappointments appear inevitable.55 Still, we need a thorough understanding how those negative reactions shaped the subsequent public debate on the treaty.
The evolution of Wilson's views on Germany form the subject of Manfred Boemeke's contribution. Boemeke shows how Wilson's attitude toward the Reich evolved from hostility at the outset of the war to a more balanced view in the following months. Only the Treaty of Brest Litovsk, writes Boemeke, finally persuaded the president that the German people at large, and even the Social Democratic Party, supported the Reich's aggressive pursuit of the war. This change of Wilson's thinking affected his perception of German war guilt deeply. After Brest-Litovsk, Wilson's attitude toward Germany tilted sharply in a negative direction, yet still was not governed by irrational hatred. In Paris the president sought due punishment for the Reich within the confines of a just settlement.56
William Widenor discusses publications about the treaty by American participants in the conference. He examines the narratives of Ray Stannard Baker, Bernard M. Baruch, George Creel, Robert Howard Haskins, Edward M. House, Robert Lord, David Hunter Miller, and Joseph P. Tumulty. Widenor notes that political preferences and personal loyalties influenced the experts' accounts. Their chronicles likewise illuminate clashes between idealistic and pragmatic approaches. The American approach to peacemaking, he concludes, was neither as homogeneous nor as overbearing as hostile commentary would suggest.57
Michael Fry looks at reactions within the British Empire Delegation in Paris to the draft treaty. He registers the sharply critical mood within the British group and distinguishes between tactical and ideological revisionism. Proposals to soften the treaty were partly motivated by British perceptions of the Bolshevik threat. Negative comments grew so insistent that Lloyd George had to struggle to keep the dissenters from going public. Since he knew that the United States would not support a march on Berlin, the premier worked assiduously to get Germany to sign the draft treaty. Ultimately the desire to revise the peace settlement became the new orthodoxy in Whitehall, Fleet Street, and Oxbridge alike. Fry's piece adds substantially to our knowledge about Lloyd George's troubles with his colleagues.
Gordon Martel's comment on those chapters elaborates on the dissemination of revisionist thinking. Martel underlines the prevalence of hostile interpretations in the United States and Britain as opposed to France. He points to the need for further research on the lower-level officials who defined and promoted war aims to arrive at a better understanding of the events and interests that shaped the treaty.
As several contributions here suggest, the limitations of time and the requisites of procedure for drafting the treaty did not allow the framers of individual sections to examine the document as a whole before it went to press.58 Ultimately, however, conflicting national interests fed revisionism in Great Britain and the United States and underscored the familiar problems of making peace after coalition warfare.59 The devastations of the war, moreover, produced long-term economic and financial dislocation in all European countries. That dislocation fed anticapitalist sentiment and ultimately proved impossible to cure through state intervention on the economic level alone. As Keynes correctly discerned, Lenin was right when he said that there was no subtler means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.60 Still, Keynes failed to recall a further doleful insight about the origins of the postwar crisis: Krieg ist der Vater aller Dinge.
********
This book has been a collaborative effort. We would like to acknowledge the help of all who participated. The Gerda Henkel Foundation provided generous financial support. The Center for German and European Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C. funded the conference and the expanded version of the proceedings. Patricia La Hay and her colleagues on the staff of the Center for German and European Studies at Berkeley administered the conference masterfully. Joel Berg and Daniel S. Mattern expertly prepared the manuscript for publication.
This volume is dedicated to the memory of William C. McNeil. His tragic and sudden death on April 18, 1993, at the age of 46, deprived the history of international relations and political economy of one of its most promising practitioners. Chairman of the History Department at Barnard College at the time of his death, Professor McNeil was a beloved teacher as well as a fine scholar. He received his Ph.D. in history at Berkeley for the dissertation subsequently published as American Money and the Weimar Republic. Economics and Politics on the Eve of the Great Depression (New York, 1986). McNeil was always a lively and enthusiastic participant in conferences such as this one. He would certainly have loved to return to Berkeley on such an occasion. His colleagues and friends miss him deeply.
Berkeley/Washington D.C., August 1996
Gerald D. Feldman
Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt
Manfred Boemeke
Notes
1.See the historiographical survey, infra, and the bibliography at the end of this volume.
2.Tacitus, Agricola, chapter 42.
3.This volume does not discuss Italy's role at the peace conference, nor the questions of Tirol or the Adriatic. See René Albrecht-Carrié, Italy at the Paris Peace Conference (Hamden, Conn., 1934); Daniela Rossini, L'America riscopere l'Italia: L'Inquiry di Wilson e le origini della questione adriatica, 1917-1919 (Rome, 1992).
4.Public criticism started with John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York, 1920), esp. chap. 4. The scholarly debate in Germany is summarized in Hagen Schulze, Weimar: Deutschland, 1917-1933 (Berlin, 1982); and Karl-Dietrich Erdmann, Die Zeit der Weltkriege (Stuttgart, 1973). A.J. P. Taylor viewed World War II as a conflict over the Versailles settlement and argued that the treaty lacked moral validity and failed to solve the German problem. See A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (London and New York, 1963), 16, 28, 32, 44, 190; see also Gordon Martel, "The Revisionist as Moralist: A.J.P. Taylor and the Lessons of European History," Sally Marks, "1918 and After: The Postwar Era," and Stephen A. Schuker, "The End of Versailles," all in Gordon Martel, ed., The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered: The A.J.P. Taylor Debate after Twenty-Five Years (Boston, 1986), 1-16, 17-48, 49-72. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, "Von Weimar kann keine Rede sein," Die Zeit, no. 48, Nov. 20, 1992, asserts that the Allied and American reparations policies, based on the Versailles Treaty, ruined Germany's economy, which was already weakened by the war.
5.George F. Kennan, "The War to End War," originally published in the
New York Times, Nov. 11, 1984, reprinted in George F. Kennan, At A Century's
Ending: Reflections, 1982-1995 (New York, 1996), 17-19; and "Historical
Inevitability and World War (1890-1914)," talk given at the Kennan Institute,
Washington D.C., April 2, 1985, reprinted in Kennan, At a Century's Ending,
20-29. The
revisionist accounts of the treaty are discussed in William Widenor's
and Gordon Martel's contributions in this volume.
6.For an insightful analysis of this question see Gordon Martel, "First Things and Last: Revisionism and the Treaty of Versailles," in this volume.
7.Alan Sharp, The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919 (New York, 1991).
8.On the organization of the peace conference see Frank S. Marston, The Peace Conference of 1919: Organization and Procedure (London/New York, 1944).
9.See the contribution in this volume by William Keylor, who discusses these negative assessments. Recent critical German comments include those of Klaus Hildebrand, Das vergangene Reich: Deutsche Aussenpolitik von Bismarck bis Hitler, 1871-1945 (Stuttgart, 1995), 383-412; and Heinrich Klümpen, Deutsche Aussenpolitik zwischen Versailles und Rapallo: Revisionismus oder Neuorientierung? (Münster, 1992).
10.Hagen Schulze, Kleine deutsche Geschichte (Munich, 1996), 166.
11.A recent synthesis on the making of the Versailles Treaty outlines the historiography and provides a useful starting point: Alan Sharp, The Versailles Settlement; for postwar developments see Sally Marks, The Illusion of Peace (New York, 1989).
12.Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: A Biography. Vol. 1: Hopes Betrayed, 1883-1920 (New York/London, 1983); Paul Birdsall, Versailles Twenty Years After (London, 1941); Alma Luckau, The German Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference (New York, 1941).
13.Klaus Epstein, Matthias Erzberger and the Dilemma of German Democracy
(Princeton, N.J., 1959), 284-327. For the work of other
emigré historians on problems of World War I and postwar Europe
see Hartmut Lehmann et al., An Interrupted Past: German-Speaking Refugee
Historians in the United States after 1933 (New York, 1991).
14.Fritz Fischer, Germany's War Aims in the First World War (London, 1967).
15.Hans Gatzke, Germany's Drive to the West: A Study of Germany's Western War Aims during the First World War (Baltimore, 1950).
16.See the contributions in Helmut Rößler, ed., Ideologie und Machtpolitik 1919: Plan und Werk der Pariser Friedenskonferenzen 1919 (Berlin, 1966). Peter Krüger, Deutschland und die Reparationen 1918-1919: Die Genesis des Reparationsproblems in Deutschland zwischen Waffenstillstand und Versailler Friedensschluss (Stuttgart, 1973); idem, Die Aussenpolitik der Republik von Weimar (Darmstadt, 1985), 1-76; Udo Wengst, Graf Brockdorff-Rantzau und die aussenpolitischen Anfänge der Weimarer Republik (Bern and Frankfurt, 1973); Leo Haupts, Deutsche Friedenspolitik, 1918-1919: Eine Alternative zur Machtpolitik des Ersten Weltkrieges (Düsseldorf, 1976); Peter Grupp, Deutsche Aussenpolitik im Schatten von Versailles, 1918-1920: Zur Politik des Auswärtigen Amtes vom Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges und der Novemberrevolution bis zum Inkrafttreten des Versailler Vertrags (Paderborn, 1988).
17.Klaus Schwabe, Deutsche Revolution und Wilson-Frieden: Die amerikanische und deutsche Friedensstrategie zwischen Ideologie und Machtpolitik, 1918-1919 (Düsseldorf, 1971); Klaus Schwabe, Woodrow Wilson, Revolutionary Germany and Peacemaking, 1918-1919 (Princeton, N.J., 1985); Walter Schwengler, Völkerrecht, Versailler Vertrag und Auslieferungsfrage: Die Strafverfolgung von Kriegsverbrechen als Problem des Friedensschlusses 1919/20 (Stuttgart, 1982); Reinhard Rürup, "Demokratische Revolution und "dritter Weg: Die deutsche Revolution von 1918/19 in der neueren wissenschaftlichen Diskussion," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 8 (1983): 278-301, discusses the literature on Germany's domestic situation in 1918-1919.
18..Heinrich August Winkler, Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung:
Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik, 1918-1924 (Bonn
and Berlin, 1985), 206-227; Peter Krüger, "German Disappointment and
Anti-Western Resentment, 1918-1919," in Hans-Jürgen Schröder,
Confrontation and Cooperation: Germany and
the United States in the Era of World War I, 1900-1924 (Oxford and
Providence, R.I., 1993), 323-36; Ulrich Heinemann, Die verdrängte
Niederlage: Öffentlichkeit und Kriegsschuldfrage in der Weimarer Republik
(Göttingen, 1983).
19.Henning Köhler, Novemberrevolution und Frankreich: Die französische Deutschlandpolitik 1918-1919 (Düsseldorf, 1980); Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ed., Die Organisierung des Friedens: Demobilmachung, 1918-1920 (Göttingen, 1983); Siegfried Sutterlin, Munich in the Cobwebs of Berlin, Washington, and Moscow: Foreign Policy Tendencies in Bavaria, 1917-1919 (New York, 1995); Gerald D. Feldman, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914-1923 (New York, 1993), 99-155.
20.Seth P. Tillman, Anglo-American Relations at the Paris Peace Conference (Princeton, N.J., 1961); Lawrence E. Gelfand, The Inquiry (New Haven, Conn., 1963); David F. Trask, The United States in the Supreme War Council: American War Aims and Inter-Allied Strategy, 1917-1918 (Middletown, Conn., 1961); Harold I. Nelson, Land and Power: British and Allied Policy on Germany's Frontiers 1916-19 (London and Toronto, 1963).
21.Arno J. Mayer, Policy and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918-1919 (London, 1968); see also The Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917-1918 (New Haven, Conn., 1959); for a searching critique of Mayer see Lloyd E. Ambrosius, "The Orthodoxy of Revisionism: Woodrow Wilson and the New Left," Diplomatic History 1 (1977): 199-214.
22.See the pieces by Alan Sharp, Antony Lentin, and Michael Fry.
23.Victor H. Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 1914-1918 (Oxford, 1971); George W. Elcock, Portrait of a Decision: The Council of Four and the Treaty of Versailles (London, 1972); A careful edition of Sir James Headlam Morley's peace conference memoirs provides us with indispensable documentation on British decision making: Agnes Headlam Morley, Russell Bryant, Anna Ciencala, Sir James Headlam Morley: A Memoir of the Peace Conference 1919 (London, 1972); George W. Egerton, Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations: Strategy, Politics, and International Organization, 1914-1919 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1978); Robert E. Bunselmeyer, The Cost of War, 1914-1919: British Economic War Aims and the Origins of Reparations (Hamden, Conn., 1975); F. Gregory Campbell, "The Struggle for Upper Silesia, 1919-1922," Journal of Modern History 42 (1970): 361-85; Michael Dockrill and Zara Steiner, "The Foreign Office at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919," International History Review 2 (1980): 55-86; Michael Dockrill and J. Douglas Goold, Peace Without Promise: Britain and the Peace Conferences, 1919-1923 (London, 1981); Antony Lentin, David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and the Guilt of Germany: An Essay on the Pre-History of Appeasement (Baton Rouge, LA., 1985); Lorna Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany: British Policy towards Postwar German Disarmament, 1914-1919 (Boston/London, 1985); Gerard de Groot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (London, 1996); see also Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London, 1991 2; Erik Goldstein, Winning the Peace: British Diplomatic Strategy, Peace Planning, and the Paris Peace Conference, 1916-1920 (Oxford, 1991); David French, The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, 1916-1918 (Oxford, 1995); see also David French's account in this volume.
24.Pierre Renouvin, "Les Buts de guerre du gouvernement français, 1914-1918," Revue historique 235 (1966): 1-37; idem, L'Armistice de Réthondes, 11 novembre 1918 (Paris, 1969); Pierre Miquel, La Paix de Versailles et l'opinion publique française (Paris, 1972); Piotr S. Wandycz, France and Her Eastern Allies, 1919-1925: French-Czechoslovak-Polish Relations from the Paris Peace Conference to Locarno (Minneapolis, 1962); Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, La France et les Français, 1914-1920 (Paris, 1972).
25.Karlevo Hovi, Cordon sanitaire. The Emergence of the French East European Alliance Policy, 1917-1919 (Turku, 1975); Jacques Bariéty, Les Relations franco-allemandes après la Première Guerre Mondiale, 11 novembre 1918-10 janvier 1925: De l'exécution à la négociation (Paris, 1977); André Kaspi, Les temps des Américains: Le concours américain à la France en 1917-1918 (Paris, 1976); Stephen A. Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1976). See also J.F.V. Keiger, Poincaré (Cambridge, 1997).
26.David Stevenson, "French War Aims and the American Challenge, 1914-1918." Historical Journal 22 (1979): 877-94; idem, "Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Defence of Western Europe, 1914-1920," International History Review 4 (1982): 504-23; idem, French War Aims against Germany, 1914-1919 (Oxford, 1982); Marc Trachtenberg, Reparations in World Politics: France and European Economic Diplomacy, 1916-1923 (New York, 1980); by the same author "'A New Economic Order': Etienne Clémentel and French Economic Diplomacy, 1916-1923," French Historical Studies 10 (1977): 315-41; Walter A. McDougall, France's Rhineland Diplomacy, 1914-1924: The Last Bid for a Balance of Power in Europe (Princeton, N.J., 1978); Gitta Steinmeyer, Die Grundlagen der französischen Deutschlandpolitik, 1917-1919 (Stuttgart, 1979); Michael J. Carley, Revolution and Intervention: The French Government and the Russian Civil War, 1917-1919 (Kingston, Ontario/Montreal, 1983); Georges-Henri Soutou, L'Or et le sang: Les Buts de guerre économique de la Première Guerre Mondiale (Paris, 1989).
27.Arthur S. Link and Manfred F. Boemeke, eds., The Deliberations of the Council of Four: Notes of the Official Interpreter Paul Mantoux (Princeton, N.J., 1992).
28.Carl Parrini, Heir to Empire: United States Economic Diplomacy, 1916-1923 (Pittsburgh, 1969); Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace (Chicago, 1944); Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal (New York, 1945); Arthur S. Link, Wilson, the Diplomatist: A Look at His Major Foreign Policies (Baltimore, 1957); Arthur S. Link, President Wilson and His English Critics (Oxford, 1959); Arthur S. Link, Wilson, 5 vols. to date (Princeton, N.J., 1947-), particularly Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality (Princeton, N.J., 1960); Arthur S. Link et al., eds., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 69 vols. (1966-1992); Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1979); Arthur S. Link, ed., Woodrow Wilson and a Revolutionary World, 1913-1921 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982); Schwabe, Woodrow Wilson, Revolutionary Germany and Peacemaking.
29.Arthur Walworth, America's Moment 1918: American Diplomacy at the End of World War I (New York, 1977); idem, Wilson and His Peacemakers: American Diplomacy at the Peace Conference (New York, 1986); John M. Cooper, "The British Response to the House-Grey Memorandum: New Evidence and New Questions," Journal of American History 59 (1973): 958-71; John M. Cooper and Charles E. Neu, eds. The Wilson Era: Essays in Honor of Arthur S. Link (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1991); Lloyd E. Ambrosius, "Wilson, the Republicans, and French Security after World War I," Journal of American History 59 (1972): 341-52; idem, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition (Cambridge, 1987); Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (New York, 1992).
30.Charles Seymour, ed., The Intimate Papers of Colonel House (New York, 1928); Inga Floto, Colonel House in Paris: A Study of American Policy at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (Aarhus, 1973); Jonathan M. Nielson, American Historians in War and Peace: Patriotism, Diplomacy, and the Paris Peace Conference 1919 (Dubuque, Iowa, 1994); Werner Link, Die amerikanische Stabilisierungpolitik in Deutschland, 1921-1932 (Düsseldorf, 1970); Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt, "Von Versailles nach Berlin: Überlegungen zur Neugestaltung der deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen in der Ära Harding," in Norbert Finzsch and Hermann Wellenreuther, eds., Liberalitas: Festschrift für Erich Angermann (Stuttgart, 1992), 319-42.
31.See Carol Fink's article on the Polish Minority Treaty in this volume; Sally Marks, Innocent Abroad: Belgium at the Peace Conference of 1919 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1981); Hovi, Cordon Sanitaire; Kai Lundgreen-Nielsen, The Polish Problem at the Paris Peace Conference: A Study of the Great Powers and the Poles, 1918-1919 (Odense, 1979); idem, "The Mayer Thesis Reconsidered: The Poles and the Paris Peace Conference, 1919," International History Review 7 (1985): 68-102; Betty Miller Unterberger, The United States, Revolutionary Russia, and the Rise of Czechoslovakia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989); Piotr Wandycz, France and Her Eastern Allies, and Wandycz's article in this volume.
32.Egerton, Great Britain and the League of Nations, Knock, To End All Wars; Gelfand, Inquiry; for subsequent developments see Antoine Fleury's contribution in this volume.
33.Jürgen Heideking, Areopag der Diplomaten: Die Pariser Botschafterkonferenz der europäischen Hauptmächte und die Probleme der europäischen Politik, 1920-1931 (Husum, 1979); idem, "Vom Versailler Vertrag zur Genfer Abrüstungskonferenz: Das Scheitern der alliierten Militärkontrollpolitik gegenüber Deutschland nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg," Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 28 (1980): 45-68.
34.Schwabe expands arguments developed in his Deutsche Revolution und Wilson-Frieden, as well as by Krüger, Reparationen, and in Helmut Rößler, "Deutschland und Versailles," in Rößler, Ideologie und Machtpolitik, 210-43. On Wilson's Fourteen Points see also Thomas Knock's contribution in this volume.
35.Stevenson here elaborates arguments made in his French War Aims, and in his The First World War, 89-137, 236-305.
36.This theme is also discussed in French's Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, 260-85 and passim.
37.Michael Fry, infra, further elaborates these arguments. Lentin, infra, presents the counter-case against Lloyd George.
38.For the German reactions to Wilson's Fourteen Points and peace program see Klaus Schwabe's chapter in this book.
39.See also Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition.
40.André Tardieu, La Paix (Paris, 1921), 113.
41.Although working with different sources and in a different argumentative pattern Lentin here touches on themes developed by Köhler, Novemberrevolution und Frankreich. Schuker, infra, likewise presents a positive evaluation of Clemenceau's strategy.
42.Here Gelfand develops themes first discussed in his work on the preparation of the peace conference. See Gelfand, Inquiry. See also the contributions by Widenor, Knock, and Lentin in this volume.
43.See also Soutou's and Stevenson's chapters in this volume.
44.For another view on House, see Thomas Knock's contribution in this volume.
45.See also Fritz Klein, ed., Deutschland im Ersten Weltkrieg (Berlin, 1968).
46.Mommsen here expands themes developed in previous works on German intellectuals in World War I. See Klaus Schwabe, Wissenschaft und Kriegsmoral: Die deutschen Hochschullehrer und die politischen Grundfragen des Ersten Weltkrieges (Göttingen, 1969); and Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ed., Kultur und Krieg: Die Rolle der Intellektuellen, Künstler und Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg (München, 1996); see also his Max Weber und die deutsche Politik (Tübingen, 1974). For a comparative perspective on France, see Martha Hanna, The Mobilization of Intellect: French Scholars and Writers during the Great War (Cambridge, MA, 1996).
47.Compare Harry R. Rudin, Armistice 1918 (New Haven, 1944) with Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace they Sought (Princeton, 1957); and Ann Armstrong, Unconditional Surrender: The Impact of the Casablanca Policy Upon World War II (New Brunswick, N.J., 1961).
48.For a another critical evaluation see Lentin, Lloyd George, and Lentin's comment in this volume.
49.See also Carole Fink's contribution in this volume.
50.James Joll, The Origins of the First World War (New York, 1984); Volker R. Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914 (New York, 1973); Stephen Van Evera, "The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War" and Marc Trachtenberg, "The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914," both in Steven E. Miller, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Stephen Van Evera, eds., Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War (Princeton, N.J., 1991), 59-108, 195-225, respectively.
51.See the chapters by David Stevenson, Sally Marks, Niall Ferguson, and Gerald D. Feldman in this book; for a recent anti-reparations synthesis see Bruce Kent, The Spoils of War: The Politics, Economics, and Diplomacy of Reparations, 1918-1922 (Oxford, 1989). The different positions are summarized in Peter Krüger, "Die Reparationen und das Scheitern einer deutschen Verständigungspolitik auf der Pariser Friedenskonferenz im Jahre 1919," Historische Zeitschrift 221 (1975): 326-72; idem, "Das Reparationsproblem der Weimarer Republik in fragwürdiger Sicht: Kritische Überlegungen zur neuesten Forschung," Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 29 (1981): 21-47; Sally Marks, 'The Myth of Reparations," Central European History 11 (1978): 231-55; Stephen A. Schuker, "Origins of American Stabilization Policy in Europe: The Financial Dimension, 1918-1924," in Schröder, ed., Confrontation and Cooperation, 377-408.
52.See also idem, The Great Disorder, 385-97. 4145-28. 821-35, 854-58.
53.This theme had first been developed by Stephen A. Schuker, "Finance and Foreign Policy in the Era of German Inflation," in Otto Büsch and Gerald D. Feldman, eds., Historische Prozesse der deutschen Inflation, 1914-1924 (Berlin, 1978), 343-61, and Agnete von Specht, Politische und wirtschaftliche Hintergründe der deutschen Inflation, 1918-1923 (Frankfurt/Bern, 1982).
54.See, for example, the contributions of William Keylor, Thomas Knock, and Antony Lentin.
55.See, for example, Stuart I. Rochester, American Liberal Disillusionment in the Wake of World War I (University Park, PA, 1977).
56.Boemeke's contribution challenges Lentin's interpretation, David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson. See also Lentin's essay in this volume.
57.His account supplements that of Lawrence Gelfand. For the subsequent debate on the treaty in the U.S. Senate, see also Widenor's Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy (Berkeley, 1980).
58.See the contribution of Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt.
59.Donald Kagan, The Fall of the Athenian Empire (Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1987), 416-17.
60.Keynes, Economic Consequences, 236.