PARIS 1919 (29 page)

Public opinion, that new and troubling element, was no help. There was a widespread feeling that someone must pay for such a dreadful war; but there was an equally strong longing for peace. The Allied publics spoke with loud and contradictory voices. In December 1918, the British public had wanted to string the kaiser up; four months later, it was not so sure. The French wanted to bring Germany low, but did they want to hand it over to Bolshevism? The Americans hoped to destroy German militarism but also to rehabilitate the German nation. The statesmen were feeling their way in Paris, trying at once to pay attention to their voters, stay true to their principles, and work out a deal they could all accept. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that they spent so much time in the early days on a relatively simple but highly symbolic issue: the fate of the kaiser.

In 1919 Kaiser Wilhelm, the third and last leader of the empire built by Bismarck, was a fidgety man in his early sixties living in a comfortable castle near Utrecht. At the end of the war, his armies melting away, he had uttered a few last boastful remarks about dying with his troops around him and then slipped away into exile in the Netherlands. Even his most loyal generals had been glad to see him go. His sudden enthusiasms and his equally sudden rages had always been hard to bear. Wilhelm had never grown up; the unloved, restless child had turned into a man who loved dressing up and playing cruel practical jokes. His erratic behavior and wild statements had done much to unsettle Europe before the Great War. He may have been clinically mad; from time to time before 1914 there was talk in Germany of declaring a regency.
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Queen Victoria had other difficult grandchildren; none, perhaps, did so much damage as he did. Under the “operetta regime,” as one critic put it, which ran Germany, the kaiser had a dangerous amount of power, especially over the military and foreign affairs. With a different personality, things might have turned out differently; as it was, the most powerful nation on the continent of Europe lurched and bullied its way toward the explosion of 1914.

The kaiser always made it clear that it was his Germany, his army and his navy. “He has utterly ruined his country and himself,” wrote his cousin George V of Britain in November 1918. “I look upon him as the greatest criminal known for having plunged the world into this ghastly war which has lasted over 4 years and 3 months with all its misery.”
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The king spoke for many people. As a shattered world looked for someone to blame, who better than the kaiser, together with his weak, womanizing son and his military leaders?

In Britain, the coalition had started out the postwar election campaign in high-minded fashion. “We must not allow,” said Lloyd George, “any sense of revenge, any spirit of greed, any grasping desire to over-rule the fundamental principles of justice.” It rapidly became clear that the electorate preferred talk of hanging the kaiser. Lloyd George himself seems to have deplored the language but shared the sentiments. He amused himself, annoyed colleagues such as Churchill and infuriated the king by thinking up elaborate schemes for trying the kaiser publicly in London, or perhaps at Dover Castle, and then shipping him off, after the inevitable guilty verdict, to the Falkland Islands. A Foreign Office official commented to his diary: “The papers write the greatest rubbish about hanging the Kaiser. They are as mad about him as they once were over Jumbo the Elephant. We ought to have better things to think about.”
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Sonnino, who had made and then abandoned Italy's treaty with the Central Powers, raised repeated objections. It would not do to establish precedents. Clemenceau had little patience for such arguments. “What is a precedent? I'll tell you. A man comes; he acts—for good or evil. Out of the good he does, we create a precedent. Out of the evil he does, criminals— individuals or heads of state—create the precedent for their crimes.” There were no precedents for Germany's crimes—“for the systematic destruction of wealth in order to end competition, for the torture of prisoners, for submarine piracy, for the abominable treatment of women in occupied countries.”
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In the London meetings before Wilson's arrival, talk of punishing the kaiser and his subordinates took up much time but all that was agreed in the end was that they should wait and see what Wilson thought. The American president was not sure. He loathed German militarism, of which the kaiser was such a potent symbol, but was it possible that Wilhelm had been coerced by his own general staff? The American experts, led by Lansing, were uneasy about the legality of proceeding against the Germans.

Wilson eventually agreed, unenthusiastically, to a commission to investigate responsibility for the war and appropriate penalties for the guilty. Its American members, who included Lansing, refused to agree that the Germans should be tried for crimes against humanity. Wilson warned his fellow peacemakers in the Council of Four that it would be much better to leave the kaiser alone with his disgrace: “Charles I was a contemptible character and the greatest liar in history; he was celebrated by poetry and transformed into a martyr by his execution.” In a spirit of compromise (and perhaps to get the amendment on the Monroe Doctrine that he wanted in the League covenant), Wilson finally agreed to a clause accusing Wilhelm of “a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties” and invited the government of the Netherlands to hand him over. The lesser German criminals were to be tried by special military tribunals once the German government had surrendered them. “The rabbit must first be caught” was the opinion of one of the American experts.
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By the spring of 1919, the public appetite for the chase was waning. When the Netherlands refused to give up the kaiser, the Allies, who could scarcely be seen to be bullying a small neutral country, acquiesced. On June 25, shortly before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the Council of Four discussed the matter one last time. The mood was jovial rather than vindictive. The kaiser should be brought to England, said Lloyd George. “Be careful not to let him sink,” said Clemenceau. “Yes, judgement in England, execution in France.” Where shall we send him afterward, wondered Lloyd George. Canada? Some island? “Please don't send him to Bermuda,” cried Wilson. “I want to go there myself!”
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The kaiser lived on until 1941, writing his memoirs, reading P. G. Wodehouse, drinking English tea, walking his dogs and fulminating against the international Jewish conspiracy which, he had discovered, had brought Germany and himself low. He thrilled to “the succession of miracles” when Hitler started the war in 1939, and he died just before the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The Allies eventually gave up the idea of trying any Germans themselves. They sent a list of names— including those of Hindenburg and Ludendorff—to the German government, which set up a special court. Out of the hundreds named, twelve were tried. Most were set free at once. A couple of submarine officers who sank lifeboats full of wounded received sentences of four years each; they escaped after a few weeks and were never found.
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14

Keeping Germany Down

THE MILITARY CLAUSES of the treaty, which the Council of Four had started to look at even before the midwinter break, warned that dealing with Germany was infinitely more difficult than dealing with the kaiser. Most people agreed that militarism and huge armed forces, especially the German, were bad for the world; indeed, books arguing that the arms race had caused the Great War were already starting to appear. One of Wilson's Fourteen Points talked about reducing national armaments “to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety,” and one of the selling points of the League was that it would provide such security that nations would willingly cut back on their armed forces. Lloyd George, who knew that conscription was deeply unpopular in Britain, seized on the idea with enthusiasm. Disarming the most powerful nation on the continent was clearly an important first step to the more general disarmament to be carried out by the League. Although it mattered much less, the Allies intended to impose stringent military conditions on the other defeated nations. They would also try, unsuccessfully, to persuade their friends in Europe, such as Czechoslovakia, Poland and Greece, to accept small armed forces.
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Disarmament was good in itself, but it was difficult to reach agreement on how much of an army Germany should be left with. The new German government had to be able to put down rebellion at home. Should it also be strong enough to hold off the Bolshevik threat from the east? The Allies could not do it for them. Neither could the states of central Europe. They were not only struggling to survive, but, as Hankey said severely, “there has not been the smallest sign of any serious attempt at combined effort to resist the Bolshevists among them. On the contrary, they show all the worst qualities that we have become accustomed to in the Balkan states.” The Germans, for all their flaws, were at least “a solid, patriotic, reliable and highly-organised people.” From the French point of view, however, German forces were always a danger. Foch in particular argued from the first that the Allies must confiscate German military equipment, occupy the Rhineland and its bridgeheads, destroy German fortifications along its frontiers with France and limit the German army to 100,000 men. These demands, he said implausibly, were merely military.
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One of the few top French generals to come out of the war with his reputation enhanced, Foch liked to refer to himself as a simple soldier. He was short, fair-haired, unassuming and rather sloppy in appearance. “At a distance of 15 feet,” in the opinion of an American expert, “one would never pick him for the generalissimo.” Born into a modest family in the Pyrenees, Foch was a devout Catholic and irreproachable family man who liked gardening and shooting and the theater (as long as it was nothing too modern) and hated politicians and Germans. The English general Henry Wilson, a great friend, revered his courage and refusal to give up, even in the darkest moments of the war. Foch, he said, had “an uncanny instinct as to the right thing to be done. He cannot always give you reasons.” On the other hand, the American commander, General Pershing, who clashed with him in the last days of the war, saw only “a narrow, small, self-opinionated man.” President Wilson grew to see him as the embodiment of French vengefulness and blindness. He also found him dull.
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Clemenceau, who had known him for years, was always ambivalent. “He was a great General,” he told the Supreme Council in 1919, but “not a military Pope.” During the war he had weighed General Pétain against Foch as supreme Allied commander. “I found myself between two men, one of whom told me we were finished and the other who came and went like a mad man and who wanted to fight. I said to myself ‘Let's try Foch!'” And Clemenceau felt he had been right. “I always see him,” he said, “in March 1918, more confident, more fervent than ever, showing himself truly like a great leader, and having only one idea: to fight, and to go on until the enemy gave up.” But Clemenceau had reservations. “During the war,” he said, “it was necessary for me to see Foch practically every day in order to keep him from doing something foolish.”
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Clemenceau never could trust any soldier entirely, especially not a religious one. He did not name Foch as a French delegate to the Peace Conference and made it clear that Foch would attend its meetings only when he was invited. Foch never forgave him: “It is really extraordinary that M. Clemenceau did not think of me in the first place as a suitable person to overcome the resistance of President Wilson and Lloyd George.” When Foch and his supporters nevertheless tried to influence the peace negotiations, Clemenceau became increasingly impatient. There were dreadful scenes. During one, in the Supreme Council, Foch marched out and sat in the anteroom. When his colleagues tried to persuade him to go back in, his shouts of “Never, Never, Never” could be heard clearly within. Clemenceau thought of dismissing him from time to time, but could never quite bring himself to do so. “Leave the people their idols,” he said, “they have to have them.”
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Foch had insisted on writing strict provisions into the initial armistice agreement of November 11, 1918. During the Peace Conference, he warned that the Germans were not complying with the clauses of the armistice; they were not demobilizing fast enough, not handing over their weapons. The Allies, he said, must keep large armies in existence, especially in the Rhineland, or they would not be able to enforce the peace terms. The British and the Americans were skeptical. Wilson thought the French “hysterical,” and when Pershing told him that Foch was exaggerating German strength, he promptly passed the opinion on to Lloyd George.
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When the armistice came up for renewal, which it did at monthly intervals, Foch tried to insert new provisions. “It was not sportsmanlike,” said Wilson. “Little and irritating secondary demands were continually being added to the armistice conditions whilst at the same time reports were being received to the effect that the previously accepted terms were not being fulfilled.” How could they persuade the Germans to accept them? Foch's answer was blunt: “By war.” Clemenceau, a little reluctantly, backed him up. “He knew the German people well. They become ferocious when any one retires before them.” On February 12, after considerable debate, the Supreme Council came to a compromise: the armistice was to be renewed indefinitely, without the addition of any significant changes, and Foch was put in charge of a committee to draw up detailed military terms for the peace treaty. In the continuing confusion over whether they were drawing up a preliminary treaty or the final one, no one was sure whether the military terms were going to be presented first, on the installment plan, or incorporated in some comprehensive and final document.
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When Foch's committee reported back on March 3, it recommended a small German army with basic equipment but no frills such as a general staff or tanks. Foch asked the Supreme Council for an immediate decision. He wanted to be able to start negotiations with German representatives within three weeks. Given the rate of demobilization of the Allied armies, he and his Allied colleagues could not guarantee that they would have the upper hand for much longer. The British and the American peacemakers were unsympathetic. “This,” said Balfour, “was equivalent to holding a pistol at the head of the Council.” Nor did he want to make a decision in Lloyd George's absence, since some of Foch's proposals were controversial.
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Where Foch wanted a German army of 140,000 conscripts who would serve for one year only, the British representative on his committee, Henry Wilson, favored 200,000 volunteers who would serve for a number of years. The British tried to persuade the French that training thousands of men per year would produce a huge pool of experienced soldiers. He would hate, said Lloyd George, to leave France facing that threat. Foch replied that he was not worried about quantity but about quality. Long-serving soldiers could easily become the nucleus of a much larger force. The Germans, “flocks of sheep,” would end up with lots of officers to drive them.
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Lloyd George took Clemenceau aside and persuaded him to abandon a conscript German army. Foch only discovered this at the next meeting of the Supreme Council; he remonstrated furiously with Clemenceau, who refused to budge. All he achieved was a lower cap, of 100,000, on the German army. “So,” wrote Henry Wilson, “I got my principle, but not my numbers, and Foch got his numbers but not his principle. An amazing state of affairs.”
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The military clauses were put aside to await Woodrow Wilson's return.

Foch, like many of his compatriots, wanted far more than a disarmed Germany. He wanted a much smaller one. Germany, all the peacemakers agreed, must shrink. Where and by how much was the problem. Poland was demanding Upper Silesia, with its coalfields, and the port of Danzig (now Gda
sk). Lithuania, if it survived, wanted the Baltic port of Memel (now Klaip
da) and a slice of territory stretching inland. Those borders in the east, which were part of the much larger settlement of Central Europe, were to cause much trouble.

On the northwest, Germany's borders were settled relatively easily. Neutral Denmark put in a claim to the northern part of Schleswig-Holstein, a pair of duchies whose fate had much disturbed Europe in the middle of the previous century. With a mixed population of Germans and Danes and a legal status of great antiquity and bewildering complexity (Bismarck always said that only two men in Europe understood the issue—he was one and the other was in an asylum), they had been seized by Prussia as it began the creation of modern Germany. The German government had done its best to make the inhabitants German, but despite its best efforts an overwhelming majority in the northern part still spoke Danish. The Danish government beseeched the Peace Conference to act quickly. The collapse of the old German regime had produced revolutionary councils in Schleswig-Holstein as elsewhere, but they were still behaving as Germans. Danish speakers were being prevented from holding meetings, their windows were being smashed and, perhaps worst of all in such a prosperous farming area, their cows were being confiscated.
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No one wanted to reopen the old legal questions, but fortunately there was the new principle of self-determination to hand. The Supreme Council decided that the question should be referred to the committee examining Belgium's claims against Germany. It duly reported back in favor of two plebiscites, the first of the handful ordered by the peacemakers. In February 1920, an international commission supervised a vote by all men and women over the age of twenty. The results closely mirrored the language divisions; the northern zone voted for incorporation in Denmark, the southern to stay with Germany. The border remains unchanged today.

It was not so easy to settle Germany's borders in the west, when France's need for compensation and security ran up against the principle of self-determination and the old British fears of a strong France dominating the Continent. At the northern tip of Alsace lay the rich German coalfields of the Saar. France needed coal, and its own mines had largely been destroyed by the Germans. Besides, as Clemenceau reminded the British ambassador just after the armistice, Britain had once thought of giving the Saar to the French at the end of the Napoleonic Wars; why not take the opportunity now to erase “any bitter recollection they might have of Waterloo”?

The Saar, however, was only a small piece of the much larger territory on the west bank of the Rhine that stretched north from Alsace-Lorraine to the Netherlands. The Rhineland, Clemenceau argued, should be removed from German control to ensure France's security. “The Rhine was the natural boundary of Gaul and Germany.” Perhaps the Allies could create an independent state with its neutrality guaranteed, just as Belgium's had been done, by the powers. “I can see,” reported the British ambassador, “that he intends to press for that very strongly.” Clemenceau in fact was prepared to compromise on many of France's demands as long as the overriding goal of security was met. Indeed, he was even willing to consider, though little came of it, limited cooperation with Germany, with the two countries working together on rebuilding the devastated areas of France and perhaps developing fruitful economic links.
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