Martel Gordon. A Companion to Europe 1900-1945

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conferences in early 1920. The Treaty of Trianon was signed with Hungary on June

4 and the Ottomans signed Sèvres on August 10, 1920, apparently concluding the

process. The Turks, who had accepted the most abject of the armistice conditions of

all the defeated enemies in 1919, and who had been last in the peacemaking queue,

now revolted against the Ottoman system and the peace settlement. The new secular

state of Turkey, led by Mustafa Kemal, became the only one of the former Central

Powers to negotiate a peace settlement. The ﬁnal act of World War I ended in

Lausanne on July 24, 1923; peacemaking had lasted longer than the ﬁghting.

National self-determination

The peacemakers had to decide what had caused the war, and then propose their

prescriptions for cure and the prevention of future conﬂict. Wilson’s ideas, inevitably,

dominated. His world vision was that of a Gladstonian liberal with a belief in the

basic goodness of his fellow humans. For Wilson, Europe’s problems in 1914 lay in

multinational empires that denied their subjects proper expression of their cultural

and political rights and an international system that did not allow the good sense of

informed and rational public opinion to curtail the aggressive behavior of autocratic

states. “This war,” he said on February 11, 1918, “had its roots in the disregard of

the rights of small nations and of nationalities which lacked the union and the force

to make good their claim to determine their own allegiances and their own forms

of political life.”

Wilson believed that people should choose their states and their

governments and would be able to guide those governments away from dangerous

adventures in foreign policy.

Both sets of warring multinational empires indulged in the potentially suicidal

practice of encouraging revolts by the discontented national minorities of their oppo-

nents, though often in a rather half-hearted and ambiguous manner. The Central

Powers targeted the Irish, Indians, and Poles; the Entente also targeted the Poles as

well as Arabs and Czechs (whom they were assured were Czechoslovaks). Wilson’s

advocacy, and the circumstance that swept away the old order in Europe, transformed

this ambivalent tactic of war into “an imperative principle of action,” leaving national

self-determination as the one credible basis for the new states system. Wilson’s

concept of nationality was, however, civic rather than ethnic, thus placing him ﬁrmly

in a western liberal philosophical camp. For him, the accident of birth had no bearing

on someone’s allegiance to a state, hence people had the right (with certain caveats)

to self-determine their nationality (by which Wilson really meant citizenship). East

Europeans saw things very differently and believed that nationality was ethnically

determined by birth, race, and religion. The two concepts did not readily mix.

National self-determination was, wrote Lansing, “a phrase simply loaded with

dynamite.”

In eastern and central Europe Wilson’s principle encountered a compli-

cated intermingling of ethnic and religious groups that deﬁed the creation of homog-

enous states. Competing nationalities (of which there were many more than he had

imagined) accepted no compromise to their ambitious plans for statehood. The

practical considerations of defense, economic viability, and communication needs vied

with linguistic and historical allegiances and considerations of administrative conve-

nience, all suggesting differing lines of demarcation. In addition there were the

ambitions and fears of the great powers, some of which regretted Wilson’s demand

peacemaking after world war i 269

“that peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sover-

eignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game.”

The need to match the wishes of inhabitants with wider geopolitical considerations

created a number of crisis points: the Rhineland, the Saar, Upper Silesia, the Banat

of Temesvar, and the South Tyrol. The problem is best encapsulated in the attempt

to deliver Wilson’s thirteenth point, which proposed an “independent Polish state”

including territories “inhabited by indisputably Polish populations” assured of “a free

and secure access to the sea.” Russia’s collapse removed one embarrassment – Wilson

was suggesting independence to the subjects of a wartime partner. The subsequent

collapse of the Central Powers meant Poland existed before the peacemakers met.

Here, as elsewhere, it was not the conference that created the new states; its role was

to recognize their existence and adjudicate their disputed boundaries. But how were

“indisputably Polish populations” to be deﬁned? How could his requirement that

the new state should have access to the Baltic be squared with the problem that the

land linking the Polish heartland to the sea was not “indisputably Polish” and that

the obvious port, Danzig, was indisputably German? Polish ambitions for the restored

state backed by French plans to deprive Germany of as many resources as possible

threatened Anglo-American hopes of a solution acceptable to Germany. The confer-

ence decided to make Danzig a free city, under the League, but linked economically

to Poland. A corridor of land, whittled away by Lloyd George’s insistence that the

location of railway lines should not consign unwilling inhabitants into another state,

linked Poland to Danzig and separated East and West Prussia. Plebiscites in Allenstein

and Marienwerder went in favor of Germany and the Germans left on the wrong

side of the new Polish frontier were guaranteed minority rights, illustrating two

methods used by the conference in attempts to soften its decisions and their

outcomes.

In 1914 there were some 60 million Europeans living in states in which they were

minority nationalities. After 1919 that was reduced to 30 millions, though the

problem was not necessarily halved because every person left on the wrong side of a

new frontier was living proof that the principle had not been applied. On average 25

percent of the populations of the new states were still minorities; it would take the

Holocaust and ruthless “ethnic cleansing” after 1945 to reduce that to 7 percent

by 1970. Hitler’s use of the Sudetenland Germans’ discontent to destabilize

Czechoslovakia in 1938 realized one of the peacemakers’ nightmares.

The League of Nations

Wilson insisted that the ﬁrst priority be the drafting of the Covenant of the League

of Nations. He chaired all but one of the drafting commission’s ten meetings in

eleven days from February 3–14 and was, with one of the British delegates, Lord

Robert Cecil, the main force driving the League’s creation. Wilson’s fourteenth point

demanded that “A general association of nations must be formed under speciﬁc

covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence

and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”

The idea was partly a development of growing internationalism in the prewar

period, partly an enhancement of the existing European concert, and partly driven

by what were perceived as the ﬂaws in the existing structures that had permitted the

270 alan sharp

precipitate collapse of peace in July 1914. It had gained support on both sides of the

lines and both sides of the Atlantic as the consequences of that collapse became more

and more tragic. It was at once simple and yet full of complications. War must not

break out quickly; there must be attempts to settle any dispute. During that delay

the weight of informed public opinion would change the minds of those intent on

conﬂict. If a member state went to war with another member, without exhausting

all the League’s dispute-resolving mechanisms, then the rest of the League was bound

to assist the victim of that aggression. In Wilson’s original draft that obligation had

been expressed as an automatic requirement to be at war with the aggressor. This

posed, in its starkest form, the dilemma of creating a collective security system in a

world of sovereign states. The guarantee on which any state could base its security

must be automatic and unambiguous. That required that the members surrender

their sovereignty over their most sensitive and important decision: whether or not to

go to war. As Lansing pointed out, the American Constitution did not allow this,

only Congress could declare war. The ﬁnal version thus stated that the aggressor

would be “deemed to have committed an act of war against all other members.” This

enabled each individual member’s government to decide what its response to

that act of war would be. This safeguarded national sovereignty but did little for the

credibility of the League’s guarantee, which would now be, at best, a delayed response

of uncertain composition.

Cecil claimed: “For the most part there is no attempt to rely on anything like a

superstate: no attempt to rely on force to carry out a decision of the Council or the

Assembly of the League. What we rely on is public opinion . . . and if we are wrong

about it, then the whole thing is wrong.”

One of the French delegates whispered, in an audible aside, “Am I at a Peace

Conference or in a madhouse?” The French wanted something more secure than

public sentiment, preferring the League to have armed forces and a general staff to

provide its members with assistance. It was, however, mainly an Anglo-American

document that emerged, relying on delay and the force of world opinion to deter

preemptive aggressive attacks. It did contain an impressive promise in Article 10 of

the Covenant to “respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial

integrity and political independence of all members of the League” but, as Cecil

remarked, “Yes, but do any of us mean it?”

This uncertainty was reinforced by pos-

sible contradictions between preserving the territorial status quo as promised here,

and the possibility of peaceful change set out in Article 19, which gave members the

right to refer to the League “treaties which have become inapplicable and . . . inter-

national conditions whose continuance might endanger the peace of the world.”

Wilson set great store in the ability of the League to put right the inevitable mistakes

and injustices that the peacemakers would, under such severe pressure, commit. If,

however, one state’s territorial integrity was perceived to be a condition endangering

world peace, which Article would prevail?

The League expressed the hopes of many that World War I should not be repeated

and it was impossible for any democratic government to ignore the force of that

sentiment in any public expression of its policies. Yet most policy makers remained

unconvinced about collective security and happier in a balance-of-power world where

states looked after their own security and made suitable alliances with limited numbers

of other states. So they said one thing and did another and this was revealed dramati-

peacemaking after world war i 271

cally in the Abyssinian crisis of 1935, when the need to maintain good relations with

Italy for the sake of the balance of power clashed with collective security obligations

to Abyssinia, a League member against whom Italy had committed aggression. The

British government tried to juggle both policies but, predictably, failed. The League

collapsed and Italy became the ally of Nazi Germany, the state against which Britain

and France were seeking Italian support. The League did undertake good work in

minority protection, disease control, and in hindering trades in drugs and women

for prostitution. It oversaw the government of the Saar and Danzig and had respon-

sibilities for former colonial territories. It did make a difference in disputes involving

small powers but, in its main mission, to transform the way in which international

relations were conducted and to prevent another major war, it failed. Nonetheless, a

quarter of a century later, the peacemakers of 1945 believed that the experiment

should be repeated and created a new version of the League of Nations, this time

calling it the United Nations.

Reparations

If the League represented the noblest of the peace conference’s aspirations, the bitter

disputes about the amount and type of compensation Germany would have to pay

for the damage caused by the war showed a very different side to the negotiations.

The American banker Thomas Lamont, who was engaged in those discussions,

declared: “The subject of reparations caused more trouble, contention, hard feeling

and delay at the Paris Peace Conference than any other point of the Treaty.”

The

questions were deceptively simple: how much damage had been done; what part of

that damage should Germany repair; should Germany’s liability be determined by

adding up all the legitimate bills against it; or should the allies try to establish what

Germany could afford and then agree a ﬁgure, certainly less than any calculation of

its total debt, which the allies would nonetheless accept as discharging all Germany’s

responsibilities (a ﬁxed sum)? There were, of course, complicating factors. How were

these calculations to be made? What would be a reasonable estimate of Germany’s

capacity to pay after it recovered from its present weakened condition? How would

Germany actually pay? For how long? And who would get what in terms of receipts?

As with the broader negotiations each of these variables intertwined and affected

thinking about the others.

Underlying all these questions, however, was an even deeper issue, well expressed

by Sally Marks:

At heart, reparations were about two fundamental and closely related questions: who

won the war and who would pay for it, or at least the cost of undoing the damage . . . If

the Allies, and especially France, had to assume reconstruction costs on top of domestic

and foreign war debts, whereas Germany was left with only domestic debts, they would

be the losers, and German economic dominance would be tantamount to victory.

Reparations would both deny Germany that victory and spread the pain of undoing the

damage done.

The term “reparations” reminds us that one of the main issues in Paris was whether

Germany should pay simply for damage to civilian property (reparations) or should

272 alan sharp

pay for the whole cost of the war (an indemnity). Historically, the rule was that the

loser paid, but, as part of his higher moral package of peacemaking, Wilson rejected

this in his “Four Principles” speech of February 11, 1918: “There shall be no annexa-

tions, no contributions, no punitive damages.” He had, however, mentioned on

several occasions in the Fourteen Points, that invaded territories should be “evacuated

and restored.” Lloyd George and Clemenceau included in Lansing’s note of November

5 the pious hope that “the Allied Governments feel no doubt ought to be allowed

to exist as to what this provision implies.”

By it they understand that compensation will be made by Germany for all the damage

done to the civilian population of the Allies and their property by the aggression of

Germany by land, by sea and from the air.

This seemed to be conclusive, but when the Paris conference opened Britain

and France both made claims for full war costs, driven in part by domestic

expectations ﬁred by politicians’ promises that it would be Germany, not allied

taxpayers, who would foot the bill. Wilson was adamant, there would be no

indemnity, Lloyd George and Clemenceau were equally determined and the confer-

ence was threatened. Two American delegates, the young John Foster Dulles

and Norman Davis, produced a compromise: Germany should, morally, pay for

all war costs, but, because it could not possibly afford this, would be asked

only to pay for civilian damages. This formed the basis of Articles 231 and 232.

Article 231 stated:

Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the 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.

Article 232 then recognized

that the resources of Germany are not adequate . . . to make complete reparation for

all the loss and damage. The Allied and Associated Governments, however, require . . .

that she will make compensation for all damage done to the civilian population . . . and

to their property.

This is one of the classic examples of something done for what seemed to be

compelling reasons at the time but which proved to be rich in unintended conse-

quences. Germany seized on what it claimed was an accusation of sole German

responsibility for the outbreak of the war. The “war guilt” clause proved a useful

lever for Germans trying to undermine the credibility of the settlement, but of more

practical importance at the time was what would be deﬁned as “damage to the

civilian population.”

This was signiﬁcant both to Germany because it would be a major factor in

setting its eventual bill, and to the Allies because it would help to determine

their individual shares of the receipts. If civilian damage was interpreted strictly

then France and Belgium, where most of the ﬁghting in the west had occurred,

would get the lion’s share. Britain would get relatively minor sums to cover its

peacemaking after world war i 273

merchant shipping losses and bomb and gun damage caused by German air and sea

raids. Australia and the other British Dominions, which had spent more men and

money than Belgium, would get nothing. For domestic and imperial reasons,

therefore, Lloyd George needed a wider deﬁnition. His South African colleague,

Jan Smuts, a lawyer by trade, provided Wilson with an excuse to offer what he

saw as a fairer division of German payments between the Allies. Smuts argued that

civilian conscripts were not, properly speaking, military personnel, but civilians in

uniform and hence pensions paid to injured soldiers and their dependants could

be categorized as “civilian damage.” Wilson’s heart, if not his head, was persuaded.

“Logic? I don’t give a damn for logic, if you will excuse my French. I am going to

include pensions.”

Wilson almost certainly believed that the conference would name a ﬁxed sum

and hence that his decision would not increase German liability, merely the

distribution of the receipts. Various ﬁgures of varying credibility were mentioned,

with British claims often the most extravagant.

Lloyd George later claimed that his

policy had been more moderate but that he was trapped by the implacability of his

advisors, Lords Cunliffe and Sumner, “the Heavenly Twins.”

Here, as elsewhere,

Lloyd George’s truthfulness has been questioned. A ﬁxed sum proved politically

inexpedient in 1919, so the conference agreed to postpone the quantiﬁcation of

Germany’s debt, perhaps to allow realistic expectations to evolve. Germany

thus signed a “blank check” on which no numbers would appear for two years.

When in May 1921 the reparations commission set the bill at £6.6 billion, roughly

half represented pensions and other allowances. Given the terms of the bonds

Germany was required to deliver, payment much beyond £3 billion was never

anticipated, the rest was “phoney money” for the beneﬁt of public expectations.

Germany’s capacity to earn and to transfer such sums has been much debated, though

Gerald Feldman has suggested that “apparently the only people who really believed

that the Germans could fulﬁll their reparations obligations . . . are some histori-

ans.”

Nonetheless the cost of the war and its aftermath did represent genuine

burdens. A more generous attitude from America about the debts incurred by the

Allies in order to ﬁght the war might have helped, but Wilson and his successors

would admit no linkage between reparations and inter-Allied debts. As President

Calvin Coolidge apparently remarked: “They hired the money, didn’t they?”

Reparations bedeviled international relations and international ﬁnance throughout

the 1920s, providing a useful tool for discontented revisionists.

Conclusion

The Versailles settlement recognized the creation of nine new states. It deprived

Germany of over 6.5 million people and 27,000 square miles of land (10 percent

and 13 percent, respectively, of its prewar resources). Germany’s losses included

Alsace-Lorraine, Eupen and Malmédy, northern Schleswig, Danzig and the Polish

corridor (which split East and West Prussia), Posen, Memel, and half of Upper Silesia.

The Saar coalmines went to France, the territory was ceded for 15 years to the

League, after which a plebiscite would decide its fate. The Rhineland was demilita-

rized permanently and occupied by the Allies for 15 years. Germany also lost over 1

million square miles of colonial possessions, with 14 million inhabitants, surrendered

274 alan sharp

technically to the League, though the mandates system was little more than a cam-

ouﬂage for an imperial division of the spoils. It was forbidden an air force, heavy

artillery, tanks, poison gas, and a general staff, with its army restricted to 100,000

long-service volunteers and its tiny navy to 15,000 men. It was obligated to deliver

as yet unnamed “war criminals” (the Dutch were pressed to surrender Kaiser Wilhelm

II but refused) and it had agreed to pay as yet unspeciﬁed reparations to the victors.

It was forbidden union with the rump state of Austria. The Sudetenland, with 3

million German speakers, remained part of Czechoslovakia. Germany did not accept

the verdict or the results of the settlement and attacks on the diktat (which it was)

and “slave treaty” (which it was not) became standard fare for disgruntled right-wing

nationalists throughout the 1920s. It should be noted, however, that Nazi electoral

success had inﬁnitely more to do with 1929 than 1919.

Elsewhere, the Balkan states, with the exception of Bulgaria (which experienced

minor losses of territory and population), made important gains – with Yugoslavia

(technically until 1929 the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes) the biggest

winner. Serbia in 1914 had 33,900 square miles and 4,600,000 people; Yugoslavia

by 1921 had 101,250 square miles and a population of 13,635,000. Greece and

Romania also made signiﬁcant gains, while Austria, Hungary, and Turkey were the

losers. The Balkans seemed much less fragmented than in 1914, though eastern and

central Europe went in the opposite direction. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,

Poland, and Czechoslovakia (in addition to Yugoslavia and the rump states of Austria

and Hungary) ﬁlled the vacuum left by the collapsed empires, creating thousands of

miles of new frontiers. In the middle east the settlement created new states and con-

tributed towards tensions that still occupy newspapers and television screens today –

Mesopotamia (now Iraq), Transjordania (Jordan), the Hijaz (Saudi Arabia), Syria,

and Lebanon, together with the enduring problem of the twice, or thrice, promised

land, Palestine (Israel). In the near east Turkey made Lausanne an important part of

its founding myth.

The peace treaties at the end of World War I were truly a global settlement, reﬂect-

ing the scope of the conﬂict and the struggle to come to terms with an unfamiliar

world. Some powers had lost their previous status: for Germany and Russia, reborn

as the Soviet Union, this was temporary, for Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman

Empire, permanent. Others, namely the United States and Japan, emerged as major

international players, while the European victors, France and the United Kingdom

(and the ambivalent Italy), seemed to have greater inﬂuence and control than they

could actually sustain. Facing an enormous task, after an exhausting war and aware

of their daunting responsibilities, the peacemakers strove to recreate order from the

shipwreck of the old world. Nicolson’s 1933 judgment (before Hitler’s ambitions

were clear and before contemporaries knew they were living in the interwar period)

was harsh on himself and his colleagues: “We came to Paris convinced that the new

order was about to be established; we left it convinced that the old order had merely

fouled the new.”

A more realistic judgment might be that the settlements were not

perfect and contained many potential seeds of future conﬂict, but yet also the poten-

tial for a more hopeful world. The outcome depended on the decisions of later

leaders, but was also heavily inﬂuenced by tensions that had existed before the Paris

Conference met and that would continue after the Four had vanished into political

oblivion. Our contemporary record of dealing with virulent ethnic nationalism,

peacemaking after world war i 275

ideological extremism, and the collapse of only one major empire, should at least

give pause to those who would condemn too readily the efforts of those trying to

make the world anew in 1919.

NOTES

1 Keith Eubank,

The Summit Conferences 1919–1969 (Oklahoma: Oklahoma University

Press, 1966).

2 Margaret MacMillan,

Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End

War (London: John Murray, 2001), p. 1 and, quoting Wilson, p. 7.

3 See Manfred Boemeke, Gerald Feldman, and Elisabeth Glaser, eds, “Introduction,” in

The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1998), pp. 11–20; Zara Steiner, “The Treaty of Versailles Revisited,” in Michael

Dockrill and John Fisher, eds, The Paris Peace Conference 1919: Peace without Victory?

(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 13–33; Mark Mazower, “Two Cheers for Versailles,”

History Today 49/7 (1999): 8–14.

4 Jay Winter and Blaine Baggett,

1914–1918: The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth

Century (London: BBC Books, 1996), p. 338.

5 CAB 491B, 26.10.18, in CAB 23/14, National Archives, Kew.

6 Esmé Howard Diary 18.1.19 D/HW1/5 in the Cumbrian Record Ofﬁce, Carlisle.

7 Harold Nicolson,

Peacemaking 1919 (London: Constable, 1933), p. 100.

8 Ibid, p. 242 (author’s translation).

9 Quoted by David Perman,

The Shaping of the Czechoslovak State (Leiden: Brill, 1962),

p. 169.

10 John Maynard Keynes,

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: Macmillan,

1919).

11 Harold Temperley, ed.,

A History of the Peace Conference of Paris, 6 vols (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1920 onwards), vol. 1, p. 438.

12 Robert Lansing,

The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative (New York: Houghton

Mifﬂin, 1921), p. 97.

13 Temperley,

Peace Conference, vol. 1, p. 437.

14 All quoted by A. Sharp,

The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919 (Basingstoke:

Macmillan, 1991), pp. 62, 57.

15 Quoted by MacMillan,

Peacemakers, p. 191.

16 Sally Marks, “Smoke and Mirrors: In Smoke-Filled Rooms and the Galerie des Glaces,”

in Versailles After 75 Years, Boemeke et al., eds, pp. 337–8.

17 Arthur Walworth,

Wilson and His Peacemakers: American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace

Conference, 1919 (New York: Norton, 1986), p. 281. Antony Lentin in “Maynard Keynes

and the ‘Bamboozlement’ of Woodrow Wilson: What Really Happened at Paris? (Wilson,

Lloyd George, Pensions and Pre-Armistice Agreement),” Diplomacy and Statecraft 15/4

(2004): 725–63, argues that Smuts’ claim, while not accepted by Wilson’s American

advisors, was not dismissed as readily as a legal concept as some historians (including the

present writer) have done.

18 The ﬁgures of £3–5 billion occurred in several contexts, but British claims began at £24

billion and rarely fell below £8 billion. See Sharp, Versailles, pp. 89–96.

19 They were called this because they were always together and demanded astronomical

sums. A. Lentin, Lloyd George and the Lost Peace: From Versailles to Hitler, 1919–1940

(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 23–46.

20 G. Feldman, in

Versailles after 75 Years, Boemeke et al., eds, p. 445.

276 alan sharp

21 See Arthur Turner, The Cost of War: British Policy on French War Debts 1918–1932

(Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1998).

22 Nicolson,

Peacemaking, p. 187.

GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

Anthony Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power in Europe 1914–1940

(London: Arnold, 1995). A good survey of French foreign policy.

Lloyd Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1987) and Klaus Schwabe, Woodrow Wilson, Revolutionary

Germany, and Peacemaking 1918–1919 (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press,

1985). Excellent studies from differing angles.

Manfred Boemeke, Gerald Feldman, and Elisabeth Glaser, eds, The Treaty of Versailles: A

Reassessment after 75 Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Michael

Dockrill and John Fisher, eds, The Paris Peace Conference 1919: Peace without Victory?

(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001). The proceedings of two international conferences involving

most of the leading specialists.

Michael Dockrill and J. Douglas Goold, Peace Without Promise: Britain and the Peace

Conferences 1919–1923 (London: Batsford, 1981) and Erik Goldstein, Winning the Peace:

British Diplomatic Strategy, Peace Planning and the Paris Peace Conference 1916–1920

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). Reliable overviews of British policies.

Seamus Dunn and T. G. Fraser, eds, Europe and Ethnicity: World War I and Contemporary

Ethnic Conﬂict (London: Routledge, 1996) and Derek Heater, National Self-Determination:

Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994). Helpful studies of the

ethnic conﬂict legacies of the war.

Bruce Kent, The Spoils of War: The Politics, Economics and Diplomacy of Reparations, 1918–

1932, revd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Paperbacks, 1991) and Marc Trachtenberg, Reparation

in World Politics: France and European Economic Diplomacy 1916–1923 (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1980). Good analyses of a controversial subject.

Antony Lentin, Guilt at Versailles: Lloyd George and the Pre-History of Appeasement (London:

Methuen, 1985). Witty, acerbic, and informative.

F. S. Northedge, The League of Nations: Its Life and Times 1920–1946 (Leicester: Leicester

University Press, 1986). An accessible history of the League.

Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York: Random

House, 2001); also published as Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt

to End War (London: John Murray, 2001). Elegantly written and wide ranging.

Sally Marks, The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe, 1918–1933, 2nd edn

(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003). Splendid analysis of the aftermath.

Alan Sharp, The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919 (Basingstoke: Macmillan,

1991). A succinct overview.

Chapter Eighteen

Demobilization and Discontent

James M. Diehl

In 1929 the perceptive French historian Elie Halévy noted: “Certainly no responsible

statesman would have said, at the beginning of 1914, that he felt safe against the

perils of some kind of revolutionary outburst.”

As the international crisis deepened

in the summer of 1914, all of the future European belligerent powers were experi-

encing severe domestic crises. In each country the Forces of Order, composed of the

traditional elites and their conservative allies, were being challenged by the Forces of

Movement, represented primarily by rapidly growing socialist parties.

The long-held view that the outbreak of war was greeted with general enthusiasm

has proven to be exaggerated.

Some among the Forces of Order welcomed the war,

seeing it as an opportunity to rally support to the existing state and repress opposition.

Some intellectuals greeted the war with enthusiasm, believing it would regenerate

complacent and stiﬂing bourgeois societies. The oft-pictured crowds shown celebrat-

ing the war’s outbreak in cities and capitols were largely middle class. In working-class

districts there were demonstrations against war, followed by sullen acceptance, as labor

leaders rallied to their governments. In the countryside, the war’s outbreak was met

by resigned acceptance. In all countries the war’s outbreak produced a series of social

truces and, at least initially, national unity was achieved. Domestic issues were buried

in the face of the common external threat. Regardless of what else they thought about

it, Europeans were convinced that the war would be short.

The War

Instead of quick victory, the war produced a prolonged, bloody stalemate. Instead

of the expected “great adventure,” the war became a nightmare of muddy trenches,

rats, lice, and death. Terrifying bombardments, unprecedented and unimaginable

mayhem, and, above all, unending slaughter with no discernable progress became

the hallmarks of what was to become known as the Great War. The stark contrast

between expectations and reality came as a great shock, especially for middle-class

soldiers, who had been raised on romantic images of war. For working-class soldiers,

the contrast was less dramatic, since the routine of backbreaking, boring, mundane