Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The reparations provisions of the treaties caused some of the most violent arguments at the Peace Conference and were a prolific source of controversy for more than a dozen years after the conference ended. The efforts of the Americans to establish some rational basis for reparations, either by an engineering survey of the actual damage to be repaired or an economic survey of Germany’s capacity to pay reparations, were shunted aside, largely because of French objections. At the same time, American efforts to restrict reparations to war damages, and not allow them to be extended to cover the much larger total of war costs, were blocked by the British, who would have obtained much less under damages than under costs. By proving to the French that the German capacity to pay was, in fact, limited, and that the French would get a much larger fraction of Germany’s payments under “damages” than under “costs,” the Americans were able to cut down on the British demands, although the South African delegate, General Smuts, was able to get military pensions inserted as one of the categories for which Germany had to pay. The French were torn between a desire to obtain as large a fraction as possible of Germany’s payments and a desire to pile on Germany such a crushing burden of indebtedness that Germany would be ruined beyond the point where it could threaten French security again.

The British delegation was sharply divided. The chief British financial delegates, Lords Cunliffe and Sumner, were so astronomically unrealistic in their estimates of Germany’s ability to pay that they were called the “heavenly twins,” while many younger members of the delegation led by John Maynard (later Lord) Keynes, either saw important economic limits on Germany’s ability to pay or felt that a policy of fellowship and fraternity should incline Britain toward a low estimate of Germany’s obligations. Feeling was so high on this issue that it proved impossible to set an exact figure for Germany’s reparations in the treaty itself. Instead a compromise, originally suggested by the American John Foster Dulles, was adopted. By this, Germany was forced to admit an unlimited, theoretical obligation to pay but was actually bound to pay for only a limited list of ten categories of obligations. The former admission has gone down in history as the “war-guilt clause” (Article 231 of the treaty). By it Germany accepted “the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.”

The following clause, Article 232, was concerned with the reparations obligation, listing ten categories of damages of which the tenth, concerned with pensions and inserted by General Smuts, represented a liability larger than the aggregate of the preceding nine categories together. Since a considerable period was needed for the Reparations Commission to discover the value of these categories, the Germans were required to begin immediate delivery to the victors of large quantities of property, chiefly coal and timber. Only in May 1921 was the full reparations obligation presented to the Germans. Amounting to 132 thousand million gold marks (about 32.5 billion dollars), this bill was accepted by Germany under pressure of a six-day ultimatum, which threatened to occupy the Ruhr Valley.

The reparations clauses of the other treaties were of little significance. Austria was unable to pay any reparations because of the weakened economic condition of that stump of the Habsburg Empire. Bulgaria and Hungary paid only small fractions of their obligations before all reparations were wiped out in the financial debacle of 1931-1932.

The treaties made at Paris had no enforcement provisions worthy of the name except for the highly inadequate Rhineland clauses which we have already mentioned. It is quite clear that the defeated Powers could be made to fulfill the provisions of these treaties only if the coalition which had won the war were to continue to work as a unit. This did not occur. The United States left the coalition as a result of the Republican victory over Wilson in the congressional elections of 1918 and the presidential election of 1920. Italy was alienated by the failure of the treaty to satisfy her ambitions in the Mediterranean and Africa. But these were only details. If the Anglo-French Entente had been maintained, the treaties could have been enforced without either the United States or Italy. It was not maintained. Britain and France saw the world from points of view so different that it was almost impossible to believe that they were looking at the same world. The reason for this was simple, although it had many complex consequences and implications.

Britain, after 1918, felt secure, while France felt completely insecure in the face of Germany. As a consequence of the war, even before the Treaty of Versailles was signed, Britain had obtained all her chief ambitions in respect to Germany. The German Navy was at the bottom of Scapa Flow, scuttled by the Germans themselves; the German merchant fleet was scattered, captured, and destroyed; the German colonial rivalry was ended and its areas occupied; the German commercial rivalry was crippled by the loss of its patents and industrial techniques, the destruction of all its commercial outlets and banking connections throughout the world, and the loss of its rapidly growing prewar markets. Britain had obtained these aims by December 1918 and needed no treaty to retain them.

France, on the other hand, had not obtained the one thing it wanted: security. In population and industrial strength Germany was far stronger than France, and still growing. It was evident that France had been able to defeat Germany only by a narrow margin in 1914-1918 and only because of the help of Britain, Russia, Italy, Belgium, and the United States. France had no guarantee that all these or even any of them would be at its side in any future war with Germany. In fact, it was quite clear that Russia and Italy would not be at its side. The refusal of the United States and Britain to give any guarantee to France against German aggression made it dubious that they would be ready to help either. Even if they were prepared to come to the rescue ultimately, there was no guarantee that France would be able to withstand the initial German assault in any future war as she had withstood, by the barest margin, the assault of 1914. Even if it could be withstood, and if Britain ultimately came to the rescue, France would have to fight, once again, as in the period 1914-1918, with the richest portion of France under enemy military occupation. In such circumstances, what guarantee would there be even of ultimate success? Doubts of this kind gave France a feeling of insecurity which practically became a psychosis, especially as France found its efforts to increase its security blocked at every turn by Britain. It seemed to France that the Treaty of Versailles, which had given Britain everything it could want from Germany, did not give France the one thing it wanted. As a result, it proved impossible to obtain any solution to the two other chief problems of international politics in the period 1919-1929. To these three problems of security, disarmament, and reparations, we now turn.

Security, 1919-1935

France sought security after 1918 by a series of alternatives. As a first choice, it wanted to detach the Rhineland from Germany; this was prevented by the Anglo-Americans. As a second choice, France wanted a “League with teeth,” that is, a League of Nations with an international police force empowered to take automatic and immediate action against an aggressor; this was blocked by the Anglo-Americans. As compensation for the loss of these first two choices, France accepted, as a third choice, an Anglo-American treaty of guarantee, but this was lost in 1919 by the refusal of the United States Senate to ratify the agreement and the refusal of Britain to assume the burden alone. In consequence, the French were forced back on a fourth choice—allies to the east of Germany. The chief steps in this were the creation of a “Little Entente” to enforce the Treaty of Trianon against Hungary in 1920-1921 and the bringing of France and Poland into this system to make it a coalition of “satisfied Powers.” The Little Entente was formed by a series of bilateral alliances between Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. This was widened by a French-Polish Treaty (February 1921) and a French-Czechoslovak Treaty (January 1924). This system contributed relatively little to French security because of the weakness of these allies (except Czechoslovakia) and the opposition of Britain to any French pressure against Germany along the Rhine, the only way in which France could guarantee Poland or Czechoslovakia against Germany. In consequence, France continued its agitation both for a British guarantee and to “put teeth” into the League of Nations.