The history of the period from the armistice in
November 1918 until the conclusion of the
majority of the peace treaties a year later has a
dual aspect. On the one hand the victors, assembled
in Paris, argued about peace terms to be
imposed on Germany and its allies; they knew
that after four years of war and all the changes it
had brought about, the people of the West
longed for an immediate and a stable peace. At
Paris too, decisions would be taken to reconstruct
the map not only of Europe, but also of the
Middle East, Africa and China. A new framework
of conducting international relations would be
created by establishing the League of Nations.
All this represents just one side of the historical
development of this critical period.
The other side of the picture was that eastern,
central and southern Europe was daily becoming
more disorganised; in Turkey a nationalist revolution
would reject the peace terms altogether;
China continued to disintegrate, rent by internal
dissension and the pressure of the Japanese and
the West. The future of Russia and the ultimate
size of the territories that would fall under Soviet
control was one of the biggest uncertainties of all.
With the end of the war and the collapse of the
defeated rulers there was a threat of anarchy.
National and social conflicts erupted in revolution.
In Russia the war had not ended in time to
save the country from internal violence. For how
much of the rest of Europe was it now too late
as well? No previous war had ended in such chaos.
The peacemakers thus did not preside over an
empty map of the world waiting for settlement in
the light of their decision reached around the
conference table.
The great powers no longer disposed of huge
victorious armies. These were being rapidly
demobilised and war-weary peoples were not
ready to allow their leaders to gather fresh mass
armies. The leaders who mattered, the ‘big three’
– Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau – as the
representatives of democracies, were dependent
on assemblies and electorates and became increasingly
conscious of the limits of their ability simply
to follow the dictates of their own reasoning.
Another ‘Europe’ and ‘Asia’ were taking shape
beyond the control of the victors at Paris. They
were shaped by their own local antagonisms.
When the peace conference opened on 18 January
1919, just two months after the signing of the
armistices with Turkey, Austria, Hungary and
Germany, obviously the problem that most
weighed on Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd
George was the future of Germany. The armistice
terms had been harsh, but fell short of demanding
unconditional surrender. The German government
had applied to Wilson for an armistice on the
basis of the Fourteen Points, after Ludendorff and
Hindenburg had suddenly declared that the army
was in no condition to hold out a moment longer.
In accordance with Wilson’s clearly expressed reply
that the terms to be imposed on Germany would
be harsher still if the kaiser remained in power, the
generals themselves had cooperated in persuading
the kaiser to abdicate and depart for exile in the
Netherlands. And they were also ready to cooperate
with the new government of Social Democrats
in Berlin headed by Friedrich Ebert. Hindenburg
and his generals brought the German armies home
from France and Belgium in good order. They
were received more as victors than as defeated
troops by the German population. But, once on
German soil, these once great armies simply dissolved;
they did not wait to be demobilised according
to plans which did not exist. They just went
home. Only in the east, in Poland and the Baltic,
were there still army units left sufficiently powerful,
in the chaotic conditions of this region of Europe
caught up in civil wars and national conflicts, to
constitute a decisive military factor. To combat
Bolshevism, the Allied armistice conditions actually
required the Germans to remain in occupation
of the eastern and Baltic territories until Allied
troops could be spared to take over their responsibilities
as guardians against the ‘reds’.
Despite the changes in Germany and the
proclamation of a republic, the Allied attitude in
Paris did not noticeably alter. Whether ‘Junkers’
or ‘Social Democrats’, the Allies continued to
regard them as arrogant and dangerous Germans,
and treated them accordingly. But they also dealt
with the Germans at a distance, rejecting the
responsibility of occupying the country and confining
themselves to the strategic occupation of
part of the Rhineland alone. Considering the condition
of threatening anarchy, the Allies continued
to be haunted by the fear that the Germans
only wanted to use the armistice as a breathing
space to reorganise and resume the war. But there
were no German armies any longer in existence
in 1919 that could hope to put up a defence even
against the reduced strength of the Allied armies.
Yet the Allies kept up the fiercest pressure during
the weeks of the armistice. The blockade was
maintained from November 1918 through that
winter until March 1919; later this proved a good
propaganda point for the Nazis, who exaggerated
Allied callousness.
During that first winter and spring of 1918–19,
Germany was left to survive as best as it could. The
new democratic republic, soon known as the
Weimar Republic after the town in which its
constitution-making parliament met, could not
have had a worse start. Within Germany itself, a
vacuum of power, similar to that in Russia in 1917,
which rival groups sought to fill, threatened stability.
Everyone was aware of the parallel, not least
the new chancellor, Ebert. But Ebert, once a humble
saddle-maker, was a politician of considerable
experience and strength. He was determined not
to be cast in the role of the Russian Kerensky. For
Ebert, the most important tasks ahead were to
establish law and order, revive industry and
agriculture so that the German people could live,
preserve German unity and ensure that the ‘revolution’
that had begun with the kaiser’s departure
should itself lead to the orderly transfer of power
to a democratically elected parliamentary assembly.
Ebert was tough, and determined that Germany
should become a parliamentary democracy and not
a communist state. This was a programme that
won the support of the army generals, who recognised
that the Social Democratic republic would be
both the best immediate defence against anarchy
and Bolshevism and a screen acceptable to the
Allies behind which Germany’s traditional forces
could regroup.
Why did the Social Democrats leave the revolution
half-finished, retain the army and the
imperial administration, and leave society and
wealth undisturbed? Did they not thereby seal
their own doom and pave the way for the Nazis
a decade later? With hindsight one may legitimately
ask would Germany’s future have been
better with a ‘completed’ communist revolution?
The question is deceptively simple. It is unlikely
that the Allies would have allowed the communists
to retain power in Germany; an extensive
Allied occupation might then have resulted after
all. The breakdown of order within Germany left
the sincerely democratic socialists isolated and so
forced them to seek cooperation with the forces
that had upheld the kaiser’s Germany hitherto.
They had no other practical alternative.
A communist seizure of power would have represented
the will of only a small minority of
Germans; the great majority, including the workers,
did not desire to emulate Bolshevik Russia. All
over Germany in November 1918 ‘workers’ and
soldiers’ councils’ formed themselves spontaneously.
The movement began in Kiel where
sailors of the imperial navy mutinied, unwilling at
the end of the war to risk their lives senselessly to
satisfy their officers’ sense of honour. The officers
had planned to take the High Seas Fleet out to sea
to engage the British in one last glorious suicidal
battle. From Kiel the setting up of German soviets
spread to Hamburg and other parts, then to Berlin
and the rest of Germany. But not all these selfproclaimed
soldiers’ and workers’ councils, which
claimed to speak for the people, were in favour of
a Bolshevik state. In many more, moderate socialists
predominated and those who before the
armistice had been opposed to war (Independent
Socialists) now joined with the majority who
had supported war. In others the Independent
Socialists allied with the Spartacists, the name the
communist faction led by Karl Liebknecht and
Rosa Luxemburg had assumed.
In Berlin, the capital, the crucial struggle
between the socialist factions was decided. Ebert
had assumed the chancellorship, constitutionally
accepting this office from Prince Max von
Baden, the last imperial chancellor. His fellow
socialist Phillip Scheidemann, in the confusion
that followed, proclaimed a republic to anticipate
Liebknecht. Liebknecht simultaneously proclaimed
the ‘socialist republic’ to his followers.
Ebert would have preferred a constitutional monarchy,
but now the die was cast. Ebert and
Scheidemann won over the Independent Socialists
with concessions that would allow the Berlin
Soldiers’ and Workers’ Council ‘all power’ until
the constituent parliament met. The constituent
parliament was elected early in January 1919 and
assembled in Weimar in February to begin its
labours of drawing up a constitution for the whole
of Germany.
All this gives a false impression of orderliness.
During the winter and spring following the
armistice it was uncertain whether Ebert would
survive. Germany was torn by political strife of
unprecedented ferocity, and separatist movements
in several regions even suggested that Germany
might disintegrate. In the second-largest
state, Bavaria, political strife was unfolding. The
Independent Socialist leader Kurt Eisner had led
a revolution of workers and soldiers in Munich,
proclaimed the republic of Bavaria, and deposed
the royal house of Wittelsbach. All over Germany
the princes disappeared. They had counted for so
little, their disappearance made little impact now.
Eisner’s republic was not communist. Though he
had been opposed to the war, he was at one with
Ebert in desiring a democratic Bavaria, in a
Germany of loosely ‘federated’ states. Elections
duly held in January and February 1919 in
Bavaria resulted in the defeat of Eisner’s Independent
Socialist Party. On his way to the Bavarian
parliament to lay down office, Eisner was brutally
murdered in the street. This was the signal for
civil war in Bavaria, which slid into anarchy and
extremism.
December 1918 and January 1919 were the
decisive months in Berlin, too. There the Spartacists
decided to carry the revolution further
than the Social Democrats were prepared to go.
The Spartacists attempted an insurrection in
December, seizing Berlin’s public buildings, and
the Social Democrats, still having no efficient military
force of their own, appealed to the army.
Irregular volunteer army units were formed, the
so-called Free Corps; all sorts of freebooters, exofficers
and men who enjoyed violence joined;
there were few genuine Social Democrats among
these paramilitary units. The scene was set for
fighting among the factions, for bloodshed and
brutality. The Spartacist rising was put down and
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered
as they emerged from their hiding place. The
rising, followed by strikes and fresh disorders,
seriously threatened Ebert’s government in the
new year of 1919.
In Bavaria there were three rival governments –
two Bolshevik and one majority Socialist. The
showdown came in April 1919. The moderate
Socialists called on the Free Corps units for military
assistance. The Bolsheviks were bloodily suppressed
and in Munich many innocent people lost
their lives. It was a tragedy for Germany and the
world that the Weimar Republic was founded in
bloodshed, that the Social Democrats had to call
on the worst anti-democratic elements in the state
for support. This left a legacy of suspicion and
bitterness among the working people, split the
Socialists and so, in the end, helped the right-wing
extremists to power. The communists blamed the
Social Democrats, the Social Democrats the communists.
Representative constitutional government
survived but at what proved to be a heavy
price.
In Paris there was a keen awareness that to delay
the making of peace would endanger stability
even further. Germany should be presented with
the terms and given a short period for a written
submission embodying their reply. There should
be no meaningful negotiations with the Germans.
Better a ‘dictated’ peace quickly than a longdrawn-
out wrangle that allowed the Germans to
exploit Allied differences. It was a remarkable
achievement that despite these serious differences
– the French, in particular, looked for more
extensive territorial guarantees and reparations –
in the short space of four months an agreed treaty
was presented to the Germans on 7 May 1919.
This represented the compromises reached by
Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau. The
Italians took little part, deeply offended and dissatisfied
with their territorial gains in general and
the rejection of their claim for Fiume in particular.
There was no set agenda for the negotiations
in Paris. The crucial decisions were taken by
Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau and
then the details were left to the experts who
accompanied the statesmen in large numbers.
Clemenceau was aware of France’s basic weakness,
inferior in population and industrial production
to a Germany that was bound to recover.
How to provide then for French security? The
break-up and partition of Germany were not seriously
considered, though a separate Rhineland
would have served French interests. Germany,
albeit deprived of Alsace-Lorraine and of territory
in the east, remained intact as potentially the most
powerful European continental state.
One of the few undertakings of the Allies, and
incorporated in the Fourteen Points, was to
reconstitute an independent Polish nation and so
to undo the eighteenth-century partition of
Poland by Russia, Austria and Prussia. The carrying
out of this pledge created great difficulties in
redrawing Germany’s eastern frontier. The German
city of Danzig was separated from Germany
and turned into an autonomous free city for
which the League of Nations accepted certain
responsibilities and over which Poland enjoyed
specific rights. The wedge of Polish territory to
the sea created the ‘Polish corridor’ which henceforth
separated Germany from East Prussia. In
parts of Silesia a plebiscite in March 1921 and the
League decision in 1922 decided where the
precise frontier with Poland ran. But the peace
treaty placed several million German-speaking
peoples under foreign rule. In the west, apart
from Alsace-Lorraine and two small territories
which became Belgian, Germany lost no territory;
the Saarland, with its valuable coal, was placed
under the League, and the French were granted
the rights to the mines with the provision that
after fifteen years a plebiscite would allow the
population to choose their own future.
An important guarantee of French security
was the requirement that the Germans were not
permitted to fortify or station troops in the
Rhineland; all the German territory west of the
Rhine and bridgeheads across the Rhine, moreover,
were occupied by the Allies for fifteen years
and evacuation would only occur in three stages
every five years if Germany fulfilled the treaty conditions
of Versailles. But Clemenceau never lost
sight of the fact that France remained, even after
these German losses, inferior to its neighbour in
population and industrial potential, and therefore
militarily as well in the longer term. Clemenceau
realised that France would need the alliance of
Britain and the US even more after 1918. France
had been gravely weakened by the war. With
Bolshevik Russia no longer contributing to the
balance of Europe as tsarist Russia had done
before 1914, German preponderance on the continent
of Europe had potentially increased.
Clemenceau struggled in vain with Wilson and
Lloyd George in Paris to secure more permanent
guarantees than were provided by the occupation
of the Rhineland, which remained sovereign
German territory. He accepted in the end that
Germany could not be diminished further in the
west; that France could not attain the Rhine
frontier. He feared that, if he refused, Britain and
the US would cease all post-war support of
France. In place of ‘territorial’ guarantees, France
was offered a substitute: the promise of a postwar
alliance with Britain and the US. This treaty,
concluded in June 1919, was conditional upon
the consent of the Senate of the US. As it turned
out, Clemenceau had received payment with a
cheque that bounced, though Wilson at the time
was confident that the Senate would approve.
It became, from the French point of view, all
the more vital to write into the treaty provisions
for restricting the German army and armaments
and to have the means of supervising these provisions
to see that they were carried out. But for
how long could this be maintained? The German
army was reduced to a professional force of
100,000 men. Such a force was not even adequate
to ensure internal security. Add to this the
loss of the High Seas Fleet interned in British
waters, a prohibition to build an air force, an
Allied control commission to supervise the production
of light armaments that the Germans
were permitted to manufacture, and the total
picture is one of military impotence. Finally,
Germany lost all its colonies.
In Germany there was a tremendous outcry.
But already in 1919, among the military and the
more thoughtful politicians, it was realised that
the sources of Germany’s strength would recover
and its industries revive. Opportunities would
arise to modify or circumvent the restrictions
imposed by the ‘dictated’ Versailles Treaty. The
German public focused their anger on the ‘war
guilt’ article of the treaty. It was misunderstood
and considered out of context. It stated that
Germany had imposed war on the Allies by its
aggression and that of its allies. Today, looking at
the July crisis of 1914, there can be no real doubt
that Germany and Austria-Hungary were the
‘aggressors’. What the Germans could not be
expected to know was that this article (231) and
the one that followed represented a compromise
between the Allies on the question of reparations.
The French and British wished the Germans
to pay the ‘whole cost’ of the war. France’s
north-eastern industrial region had been devastated
while Germany was untouched. Britain and
France had incurred heavy war debts which the
US insisted had to be repaid. France and Britain
had to be satisfied with Article 231 whereby
Germany and its allies accepted responsibility for
causing all the loss and damage. But in Article
232 the Germans were not required actually to
pay for ‘the whole cost of the war’. The Germans
would have to pay only for losses caused to civilians
and their property. This represented a victory
for Wilson; Allied public opinion would be
appeased by the ‘war guilt’ clause.
Little thought was extended to German public
opinion. No agreement on a total sum was reached.
This was left for a Reparations Commission
to determine by May 1921. The Germans were
presented with the treaty draft on 7 May 1919.
Their voluminous protests and counter-proposals
delivered on 29 May were considered, a small
number of concessions made. They were then
presented with the unalterable final draft in the
form of a virtual ultimatum on 16 June. Unable to
resume the war, the Germans formally accepted
and signed the treaty on 28 June 1919. A week
earlier, the German fleet, interned in Scapa Flow,
was scuttled by the crews.
Had the Allies acted wisely in their treatment of
Germany? The financial thinking of the Allies, led
by the US, lacked realism. Reparations and war
debts, the growth of trade and employment were
international and not purely German problems.
John Maynard Keynes, the distinguished economist,
who had been sent to Paris to serve as one of
Britain’s financial experts, later in his famous book
on the peace treaty, The Economic Consequences of
the Peace, condemned the financial provisions.
The total amount of reparations payable by
Germany fixed in May 1921 – 132,000 million
gold marks – was actually not so excessive. But
only a prosperous, stable Germany in a relatively
free international market could contribute to general
European prosperity. Lloyd George understood
that to ‘punish’ Germany financially would
create a powerful competitor in export markets as
Germany sought the means to pay. If there was
to be security from Germany in the longer term,
then one way was to reduce German power by
dividing the country; but this offended prevailing
views of nationality. The other way was to ensure
that Germany’s political development would lead
to a fundamental change of attitudes: genuine
democracy coupled with a renunciation of nationalist
aspirations. Instead, the peace weakened the
democratic movement and heightened nationalist
feelings.
Besides Germany and Austria-Hungary, the other
great power defeated in war was Russia. The West
was perplexed by the Russian problem. Lenin’s
120 THE GREAT WAR, REVOLUTION AND THE SEARCH FOR STABILITY
Coal including lignite, and steel production, 1920–39 (million metric tons)
Coal and lignite Steel
1920 1929 1933 1939 1920 1929 1933 1939
Britain 233.0 262.0 210.4 235.0 9.2 9.8 7.1 13.4
France 25.3 55.0 48.0 50.2 2.7 9.7 6.5 8.0
Germany 220.0 337.0 237.0 400.0 7.8 16.2 7.6 23.7
Russia was openly hostile both to the victors and
the vanquished of 1918. They were all, in Lenin’s
eyes, imperialist bourgeois powers ripe for revolution.
There were voices in the West which called
for an all-out effort to kill the poisonous influence
of ‘Red’ Russia from the outset. But there was
also sympathy for its plight. Confused attempts
were made by France, Britain and the US to
provide support for the anti-Bolshevik forces in
Russia and so the West became embroiled,
though only feebly, in the chaos of the Russian
Civil War.
The communist seizure of power in November
1917 had initially gained control only of Petrograd
and Moscow. That seizure was not given the stamp
of approval by the rest of Russia. Lenin had
allowed elections for a constitutional parliament,
arranged by Kerensky’s provisional government.
This ‘constituent assembly’ which met in January
1918 was the most representative ever elected, and
the mass of the peasantry turned to the Socialist
Revolutionaries who constituted the majority of
the elected representatives. Only a quarter of them
were Bolsheviks. Lenin had no intention of allowing
the assembly to undo the Bolshevik revolution.
The assembly was forcibly dispersed on his orders.
It was the end of any genuine democratic process.
During 1918 Lenin was determined that the
Bolsheviks should seize power throughout Russia,
and dealt ruthlessly with opposition and insurrection
against Bolshevik rule. Lenin was not held
back by any moral scruple. Every other consideration
had to be subordinated then to the secure
achievement of Bolshevik power, which would act
as a torch to set alight revolution in the more
advanced West. Lenin’s eyes were fixed on the
world. Without a world revolution, he believed,
the purely Russian Revolution would not survive.
Lenin met the force of opponents with force
and terror. The terrorist police, which Lenin set
up in December 1917, was called the Cheka. This
organisation was given the right to kill opponents
and even those suspected of opposition, without
benefit of trial, by summary execution. The
authority of the state now stood behind the exercise
of brute lawless power. No questions would
be asked and the killing of some innocents was
accepted as inevitable in the interests of the consolidation
of communist power in Russia – ‘the
great goal’. Lenin’s successors were to accept such
exercise of terror, which reached its climax under
Stalin in the 1930s, not as a temporary necessity
in conflict but as a permanent part of Soviet
control over the population.
Soviet terror included the killing of the tsar
and his family in July 1918. Soviet ferocity was
partly responsible for resolute centres of opposition
to the Bolsheviks. Already before the
peace of Brest-Litovsk some of the non-Russian
peoples around the whole periphery of the old
Russian Empire had wanted independence. With
German help in 1918, states were being formed
in the Baltic (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia); Finland
became completely independent and the local
Bolshevik forces were defeated; the Ukraine
became an independent state; in central Asia independence
was claimed by the peoples living in
these regions; only Poland had been promised its
independence and sought to make good its claims
and, much more, to create a large Polish nation
by carving out territories from Russia proper. In
opposition to ‘Red’ Petrograd, to Moscow and
the central region controlled by the Bolsheviks,
other Russian forces, led by tsarist generals,
formed in many parts of Russia, sometimes in
cooperation but also sometimes in conflict with
local nationalist forces. These disparate military
groups and armies became known collectively as
White Russians, which suggested they possessed
more coherence than was actually the case. In
many regions there was a complete breakdown of
law and order and independent brigand armies
looted and lived off the countryside.
Among these independent and lawless armies
one of the strangest was the Czech Legion (of
some 50,000 officers and men) which had been
formed in Russia from prisoners of war to fight for
the Allied cause. After the Russian peace with
Germany the Czech Legion attempted to leave
Russia by way of the Trans-Siberian railway and the
port of Vladivostok in Siberia. Fearing Bolshevik
intentions, they came into open conflict with the
Bolsheviks sent to disarm them. In Siberia they
then formed a nucleus around which White
Russian forces gathered. The self-proclaimed
Supreme Ruler of Russia at the head of these partly
disciplined and frequently insubordinate troops
was Admiral Kolchak. The Allies had first intervened
in Russia in the hope of reopening a war
front in the east in order to relieve pressure on the
western front. After the conclusion of the war with
Germany, Britain and France were unsure whether
the Bolsheviks or the White Russians would ultimately
gain power. Lloyd George’s instincts at
Paris were sound in that he did not wish to make
an enemy of the Bolsheviks. He proposed Allied
‘mediation’ between the Russians fighting each
other quite irreconcilably. British intervention
was small and limited. The French made a more
determined but useless attempt, cooperating with
White Russian forces in the Ukraine from a base
in Odessa. The Japanese landed a large force
in Siberia, pursuing imperialist ambitions of their
own; and the Americans a smaller force at Vladivostok,
ostensibly to rescue the Czech Legion but
really to watch the Japanese. Allied intervention
was too small to make a significant impact on the
outcome of the civil war in Russia.
Lenin left it to Trotsky as commissar for war
to create a Red Army to complete the conquest
of the former Russian Empire and defeat all the
opposing forces. Their disunity made it easier for
Trotsky to defeat first one opponent and then the
next. Nevertheless, his achievement in recreating
an army for the revolution was remarkable. Army
discipline was reintroduced, as was the death
penalty. Trotsky was no less ruthless than Lenin
in the draconian measures he was ready to take
to achieve discipline. Former tsarist officers were
recruited to provide the necessary expertise and
‘political commissars’ were attached to the units
to ensure that the armies would continue to fight
for the right cause.
Lenin ended the period of civil war in 1920
partly by compromise and partly by conquest. He
recognised the independence of the Baltic states
of Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Poland
was, for communist Russia, the most critical
region. Poland was the gateway to Germany, and
so, Lenin believed, the gateway to world revolutions.
But the Poles proved too strong for the
Red Army, though not strong enough to defeat
it decisively. The war between Poland and Russia
lasted from the spring of 1920 until the following
October. Given only limited Allied help, the
Poles were really left to win or lose by themselves.
At first they succeeded spectacularly and reached
Kiev in the Ukraine. The Red Army then drove
them back and for a time Lenin hoped to overrun
Poland altogether and to instal a puppet communist
government. But at the gates of Warsaw
the Red Army was defeated in turn and Lenin
in 1921 accepted Polish independence. The remainder
of the Russian Empire was successfully
brought under communist control and the shortlived
independent states of the Ukraine, Georgia
and Transcaucasia were forcibly incorporated in
the Soviet Union.
Communist Russia had failed to spread the revolution.
The sparks that led to short-lived communist
takeovers in Hungary and Bavaria were
quickly extinguished. Russia had also failed to
thrust through Poland to the West. Equally the
West had failed either to overthrow the Bolsheviks
or to befriend them. For two decades from 1921
to 1941 the Soviet Union remained essentially cut
off, a large self-contained empire following its
own road to modernisation and living in a spirit of
hostile coexistence with the West.
Up to the last year of the war the Allies did not
desire to destroy the Habsburg Empire, which
was seen as a stabilising influence in south-eastern
Europe. Wilson’s Fourteen Points had promised
‘autonomous’ development to the peoples of the
empire, not independence. Reform, not destruction,
was the aim of the West. Within the Monarchy
itself the spirit of national independence
among the Slavs had grown immensely, stimulated
by the Bolshevik revolution and the Russian
call for the national independence of all peoples.
Now the Czechs and Slovaks wished to form a
national unit within a Habsburg federal state
where each nation would enjoy equal rights. The
Slovenes, Croats and Serbs of the Monarchy
wished to form an independent Yugoslav nation
and the Ruthenes demanded freedom from Polish
dependence. The Habsburg dynasty and ruling
classes could not respond adequately to these
aspirations even in the Austrian half of the
Monarchy; it was unthinkable that the Magyars
would accept a sufficiently liberal policy to win
over the Slavs, or even that they could have done
so as late as 1917. The Monarchy was tied to
dualism. Outside the Monarchy, émigrés were
winning the support of the Allies for the setting
up of independent nations. As the Monarchy
weakened under the impact of war, so these
émigré activities grew more important.
In 1918 Wilson became gradually converted to
the view that the Czechoslovaks and Yugoslavs
were oppressed nationalities whose efforts for freedom
deserved sympathy and support. Before the
conclusion of the armistice, the Czechoslovaks had
won Allied recognition as an ‘Allied nation’,
Poland had been promised independence, and the
Yugoslav cause, though not accorded the same
recognition, had at any rate become well publicised.
When Austria-Hungary appealed to Wilson
for an armistice on the basis of the Fourteen Points
in October 1918, Wilson replied that the situation
had changed and that autonomy for the other
nationalities was no longer sufficient. This was
strictly true. With defeat, the Hungarians and the
Slavs all hastened to dissociate themselves from
the Germans. Poland and Yugoslavia declared
their independence as did the Hungarians. The
German Austrians only had one option left, to dissociate
Austria from the dynasty, and declare
German Austria a republic. The revolution in
Vienna was bloodless as Charles I withdrew.
The Habsburg Empire broke apart before the
armistice on 3 November 1918 and there was no
way the Allies could have brought it together
again. But in no other part of the world was it
more difficult to reconcile Wilson’s ideals of
national self-determination and national frontiers
as the different peoples of the Balkans did not live
in tidily delineated lands. There would always be
people who formed majorities and minorities.
The defeat of the dominant Austrians and Hungarians
now determined that they and not the
Slavs, Romanians and Italians would constitute
new minorities within the ‘successor states’ of the
Habsburg Empire.
The Allies at Paris modified the central
European frontiers created by strong national leaders,
attempted to ensure good treatment of
minorities and enforced punitive conditions on the
defeated Hungarians and German Austrians; in its
essentials, however, power had been transferred to
the new nations already. Austria was reduced to a
small state of 6.5 million inhabitants. The peace
treaties forbade their union with Germany. The
principle of national self-determination was violated
as far as the defeated were concerned. The
Italians had been promised the natural frontier
of the Brenner Pass, even though this meant incorporating
nearly a quarter of a million Germanspeaking
Tyrolese into Italy. The new Czechoslovak
state was granted its ‘historic frontiers’,
which included Bohemia, and another 3.5 million
German-speaking Austrians and also Ruthenes
were divided between the Czechs and Poles and
separated from the Ukraine. Hungary was reduced
to the frontiers where only Magyars predominated.
Hungary was now a small state of some
8 million, nearly three-quarters of a million
Magyars being included in the Czechoslovak
state. The Hungarians remained fiercely resentful
of the enforced peace, and their aspirations to
revise the peace treaties aroused the fears of neighbouring
Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
A peace settlement in the Near East eluded the
‘peacemakers’ altogether. With the defeat of the
Ottoman Empire and the Turkish acceptance of an
armistice on 30 October 1918, the Arab people
had high hopes of achieving their independence.
The Americans, British and French were committed
by public declarations to the goal of setting
up governments that would express the will of the
peoples of the former Turkish Empire. But, during
the war Britain and France had also secretly
agreed on a division of influence in the Middle
East. To complicate the situation still further, the
British government had promised the Zionists
‘the establishment in Palestine of a National
Home for the Jewish people’ in what became
known as the Balfour Declaration (2 November
1917). How were all these conflicting aspirations
now to be reconciled? Wars and insurrections disturbed
Turkey and the Middle East for the next
five years.
The Arabs were denied truly independent
states except in what became Saudi Arabia. The
other Arab lands were placed under French and
British tutelage as ‘mandates’ despite the wishes
of the inhabitants. Iraq and Palestine became
British mandates and Syria and Lebanon, French.
Within a few years, the Arab states of Syria,
Lebanon, Transjordan and Iraq emerged but
remained firmly under British and French control.
Peace with Turkey proved even more difficult
to achieve. The Sultan’s government had
accepted the peace terms of the Treaty of Sèvres
in August 1920, but a Turkish general, Mustafa
Kemal, the founder of modern Turkey, led a
revolt against the peace terms. The Greeks, meanwhile,
were seeking to fulfil their own ambitions
and landed troops in Turkish Asia Minor. The
disunity of the Allies added to the confusion and
made the enforcement of the Treaty of Sèvres
quite impossible. By skilled diplomacy – by dividing
the Anglo-French alliance, and by securing
supplies from the French and Russians – Kemal
gathered and inspired a Turkish national movement
to free Turkey from the foreign invasions.
He defeated the Greeks in September 1922 and
then turned on the British troops stationed in the
Straits of Constantinople. In October 1922 Lloyd
George, unsupported by his former allies, was
forced to accept Kemal’s demands for a revision
of the peace treaty. This was accomplished by the
Lausanne Conference and a new treaty in July
1923 which freed Turkey from foreign occupation
and interference. Shortly afterwards Turkey
was proclaimed a republic and Kemal became the
first president. Of all the defeated powers, Turkey
alone challenged successfully the terms of peace
the Allies sought to impose.
It was clear to President Wilson that the effort of
reaching peace had involved unsatisfactory compromises
and that Allies and former enemies were
both deeply dissatisfied with some of the terms.
One ally, Italy, had left the conference over the
decision not to yield the port of Fiume to it, and
the Italians returned only for the formal concluding
ceremonies. The Japanese were offended
by their failure to have a ‘racial equality’ clause
incorporated in the Covenant of the League of
Nations. The Hungarians and Germans did not
regard the treaties as just and were determined to
revise them. Wilson nevertheless pinned his hope
for the future on the League of Nations.
The real purpose of the League of Nations was
to find a better way of solving disputes that could
lead to war than by the kind of devastating conflict
through which the world had just passed. In
the League great states and small states were to
find security with justice. Within ten years of its
founding, these high hopes seemed unlikely to be
fulfilled. Britain, France and the US would not
risk war in the 1930s to uphold the League’s
ideals when the aggressors were other great
powers – Japan, Italy and Germany and the Soviet
Union. The strength of the League depended on
its members and not on the rules and procedures
laid down; to be sure, if these had been applied
and observed they would most likely have preserved
peace. At the heart of the Covenant of the
League lay Article 10 whereby all the members
undertook to preserve the existing independence
of all other members. Furthermore, if there were
aggression against a member, or a threat of such
aggression, then the Council of League would
‘advise’ on the best way in which members could
fulfil their obligations. Possible sanctions of
increasing severity were set out in other articles
which, if adopted, would hurt the aggressor.
The weakness of the League was that each
member could in effect decide whether or not to
comply with a Council request to apply sanctions.
Furthermore, the Council, consisting of permanent
great-power members together with some
smaller states, could act only unanimously, so that
any one of its members could block all action.
The League was not a world government, lacked
armed force of its own and remained dependent
on the free cooperation of its members to behave
according to its principles and to join with others
in punishing those states that did not.
It was a heavy blow to the League when the US
repudiated Wilson’s efforts. Before a treaty to
which the US is a party can be valid, a two-thirds
majority of the Senate has to vote in its favour.
There were genuine misgivings about the wideranging
but unique commitment of Article 10,
whereby the US would literally be obliged ‘to preserve’
the independence of every nation in the
world. The president might have won the necessary
majority if he had dealt tactfully with the
opposition. But he would not admit the obvious
gap between the utopian aims of the League and
realistic national policies. Wilson rejected the
compromise of accepting Senate reservations to
the treaty and toured the country in September
1919 to appeal over the heads of the Senate to the
people. On his return to Washington, he suffered
a severe stroke. The chance of compromise with
the Senate was lost. The treaty without amendments
was lost twice when the Senate voted in
November 1919 and March 1920. But this did
not mean that the US was as yet ‘isolationist’. The
US would have joined the League with no more
reservations than, in practice, the other great
powers demanded for themselves. The treaty of
alliance with France signed together with Britain
at Paris in 1919 is often lost sight of in Wilson’s
debacle over the League. It was Wilson who lost
all interest in it. For him it was a question of the
League or nothing. The alliance treaty between
the US, France and Britain, if it had been ratified
by the Senate, could have altered subsequent history.
Opponents of universal and vague commitments
to the League, such as the powerful Senator
Henry Cabot Lodge, were in favour of this treaty
of alliance or, as it was called, guarantee. But the
treaty was never submitted to a Senate vote.
The presidential elections of 1920 reflected the
new mood of the people. With the slogan ‘Return
to Normalcy’ the Republican candidate Warren
Harding won by a large margin. The American
people turned their backs on Wilson’s leadership
and Wilson’s vision of America’s mission in the
world.
The conditions for a stable peace had not been
laid by 1920. The French, deprived of the treaty
of guarantee, were well aware how far Europe
was from achieving any balance of power. Much
now depended on the attitude the British would
take to the issues of the continent; much, too,
would depend on the course of German history.
Nor had any reconciliation of conflicting interests
been achieved in Asia. The Japanese had secured
Germany’s former rights in China in the province
of Shantung and so incensed the Chinese delegation
in Paris that it refused to sign the peace treaty
of Versailles. The sure foundations of peace had
not been achieved in 1919. Perhaps it was unrealistic
to expect they would be.
World History
