A hundred years ago
from Lars Syll
The treaty includes no provisions for the economic rehabilitation of Europe — nothing to make the defeated Central Empires into good neighbours, nothing to stabilize the new states of Europe …
The Council of Four paid no attention to these issues … Reparation was their main excursion into the economic field, and they settled it as a problem of theology, of politics, of electoral chicane, from every point of view except that of the economic future of the states whose destiny they were handling …
The danger confronting us, therefore, is the rapid depression of the standard of life of the European populations to a point which will mean actual starvation for some … And these in their distress may overturn the remnants of organization, and submerge civilization itself in their attempts to satisfy desperately the overwhelming needs of the individual …
In a very short time, therefore, Germany will not be in a position to give bread and work to her numerous millions of inhabitants, who are prevented from earning their livelihood by navigation and trade … “We do not know, and indeed we doubt,” the Report concludes, “whether the delegates of the Allied and Associated Powers realize the inevitable consequences which will take place … Those who sign this treaty will sign the death sentence of many millions of German men, women, and children.”
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Real-World Economics Review Blog 
Indeed. The ultimate wisdom of graciousness has always been the route to peace and prosperity….not enforced austerity by governments….or the monopolistic paradigm of finance.
Yes, particularly after a great war. We, however, should stop our historical nostalgic obsession with competent management of devastated capitalism and address new wars and issues that surround us. No disrespect to Keynes, who was indeed extremely intelligent, and should be taught as a key Economist.
Some wise words here, but unrealistic considering the tenor of the times, the Brits were in a mood to sequeeze every German till the pip squeaked. And what of those who did not ratify the treaty, the Americans. They insisted on their loans to the allies being repaid, they refused the Treaty and the League, and they left the French in the lurch by refusing to guarantee with the British their defense in case of another German invasion. The problem was more political than economic. If America had taken on the guarantor’s role in 1920 events would have turned out better for all of us. But the USA didn’t just like Trump is doing now, with scary consequences for all.
I gather Woodrow Wilson wanted a better settlement, but he was out-voted and then voted out. The Womens International League for Peace and Freedom also advocated to stop the war (first) and then for a workable settlement. So did others but they were out shouted.
Noisy among the vengeful, i’m ashamed to say, was Australia’s nasty little Prime Minister Billie Hughes, a very divisive figure at home and abroad.
A handful of willful men, Republicans in the Senate, denied him the majority needed for ratification. He was not personally voted out, but ill from a stroke (his wife ran the country). Harding’s victory in the 1920 election certain voted any prospect of resurrecting ratification. It’s a shameful era in US history with the Republicans leading the way. Sound familiar?
Virtually no group in the US liked the Treaties ending World War I. German-Americans believed Germany had been treated unfairly, Italian-Americans believed Italy had been cheated out of its fair share of war spoils, Irish-Americans hated Wilson for not bring up Irish independence at the treaty meetings. Liberals were disappointed with the harshness of the treaty, if not with the League itself. Many Americans were dubious about promises to use American arms in what they felt were other nations’ disputes. In the Senate, a strong group of “irreconcilables” representing extreme isolationist views — William E. Borah, Philander C. Knox, Hiram Johnson, Robert M. La Follette, and others — gathered their forces to oppose the treaty and Wilson. And there was Wilson’s sworn foe, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
But there was every evidence that a majority of the public favored American membership in the League. Plus, more than the necessary two-thirds of the senators were willing to vote for some form of League membership, although tact and flexibility were required to get the treaty ratified. But Wilson turned a cold shoulder to compromise. He consistently refused to consider modifications in the Covenant of the League that might have made it acceptable to the men who were holding out against it. When it appeared, the public was turning against the League, Wilson decided to take the case to the public. But Wilson’s health had been poor since the negotiations in Paris. He physically collapsed after speaking in over 40 cities. With Wilson out and Lodge’s constant sniping at the Treaty and League, both failed to be ratified by the Senate in November 1919 by a vote of 53-38. So much sentiment for the League remained in the country and the Senate, however, that the issue was brought up again in March, 1920. The Wilsonian Democrats were still under instructions from their sick leader to reject the treaty so long as reservations were attached. Some of them broke with his instructions and voted for the treaty, and it received a small majority, 49-35. But this was far short of the constitutional two-thirds. The League of Nations, along with the Treaty of Versailles, was defeated. Wilson had gambled for total victory and had achieved total defeat. Legally, the war with Germany did not end for the United States until July 2, 1921, when Congress passed a joint resolution declaring that hostilities were over and reserving to the United States the rights and privileges of a victorious power.
With the election of Republican Warren Harding in 1920, the League virtually disappeared from politics. The ramifications of this American circus on the League would not begin to kill Americans, and many, many others for another 20 years. Harding rolled to victory in part due to other, more frightening changes in the US. In fact, there appears to have been an immense reaction against Wilson and everything he represented – against the idealism and self-criticism of the Progressive era, against reform, the war, political intensity, self-sacrifice, and personal discipline. And in the end, against democracy. In addition, those who had been troubled by America’s entry into the war, by the conduct of the war, or by the high prices, taxes, hysteria, and repression that came with it, were against Wilson or anyone who might inherit his mantle. America would move away from democracy for the next 20 years.
Ken, I think the key issue in the postWWI settlement was not American failure to join the League, but its failure to give security guarantees to France against another German invasion. French insecurity because of a lack of an American and British guarantee, provoked the French Right into very harsh treatment of Germany in the 1920s on the grounds of French weakness; if they did not enforce German compliance, the Germans would rearm and invade them. – which is what happened to France. The American behavior during the Fall of France in 1940 was shameful; they did not show up until June 1944. Then, the Americans claim the French should be overjoyed because they liberated them, when in fact, the Americans betrayed them, because Wilson promised France a mutual defense treaty in 1920. When I did extensive research on French history in private family archives, I wrote families (1960s) to secure access to documents; whether I got access or not, almost invariably when answering my letters, the women (and the correspondents were mainly women) would end their letters with a list of the men in their families, grandfathers, fathers, husbands, sons, who were mort pour la France. In such an interwar environment, the absence of that security guarantee shaped events fatally.
The American behavior during the Fall of France in 1940 was shameful
Really? The thing was that it happened so fast. What could have been done even if the USA had wanted to? Not much, I think, especially considering the small size of the US armed forces. And in the real world the people of the USA were very much against entering another European conflict.
Calgagus, as France fell in the Spring and Summer of 1940, Churchill was trying to rally the allies to fight the Germans, but Roosevelt instead of, in the crisis, rallying behind de Gaulle, recognized the Vichy regime, until 1942, was that shameful? The Vichyites just thought that it was being sensible, but what a sorry lot of people they were following the Nazis into crimes against humanity. But the fog of war made everything unclear, about where to jump and when, to save one’s skin. It was a little bit like the French revolution; when Fouche was asked what he did then, he replied J’ai survecu (I survived).
Robert, I don’t disagree with your points. But as I note above tact and flexibility were required in the US to get the treaty ratified. Wilson’s and the Senate’s obstinance stopped US ratification. Many steps beyond ratification, which did not happen is security guarantees for France and the UK. Wilson would never have been able to convince the Senate or the American public to pledge to send American soldiers and sailors to defend either the UK or France. The public had lost all interest in Europe and European wars and politics. As to how much this had changed in the years just before WWII began in Europe is unclear. Certainly, many Americans were expecting a war with Japan, to defend American territories in the Pacific. The American Pacific fleet wasn’t a show piece. It was meant for war. But then racism being what it was then in the US, many Americans believed the American Pacific fleet would defeat the Japanese in a few months, at most. There was still lots of opposition to the US getting involved in any European wars. The Roosevelt Administration of course circumvented the public and sometimes even Congress to aid the UK once Europe had fallen to the Nazis. And even if the US had been inclined to intervene in France, I don’t see how that would have been physically possible. The British, just across the English Channel tried to intervene and escaped only by the skin of their teeth. America entered the war against Nazi Germany after Germany declared war on the US. Otherwise moving a declaration of war resolution against Germany through the Congress after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor would surely have taken months, perhaps a year or even longer. Americans, like the French and British had bad memories of WWI and little desire to go through it again. As to the western front in Europe, the year-long delay in launching it can be attributed more to the British than the Americans, though Americans were by no means in a big hurry to begin that fight.
Ken, it was a war people did not want to fight, including Germans, so they put it off until Hitler and the Japanese military forced it on them. Its not a bad axiom: avoid killing at all costs, because one doesn’t know when or where it will end, and the extent it will take place — an axiom which Mr. Trump should follow now.
Robert, war has been a part of most human cultures for thousands of years. But then something changed. The human imagination created ways to prosecute war that turned a strategic and useful tool of politics and diplomacy into a rampant slaughter. The Maxim gun was invented by American-born British inventor Hiram Maxim in 1884. The Maxim Gun fired over 500 rounds per minute accurately up to 300 yards. Maxim’s machine gun would not initially be used by Europeans to kill one another, but by the continent’s imperial powers to slaughter their colonial enemies by the thousands. In fact, Maxim’s gun was so effective at keeping the peace in Britain’s sprawling empire, Queen Victoria bestowed a knighthood on the inventor in 1900. And then it was used in World War I. When the Maxim met soldiers in the trenches of France, slaughter followed. Historians have hotly debated whether the Maxim killed more people than any other gun in history. And while it would be hard to prove or disprove this contention, by all accounts, it clearly made a dent to say the very least. World War I brought other products of human imagination to the battle fields. Poison gas, high explosives, heavy artillery, the tank, etc. Being strategic and focused in war became impossible. War became a display place for technologies. So while for World War I and World War II, German, Japanese, and Italian militaries certainly share the blame for the wars, we mustn’t ignore the role in this of capitalists selling technologies of death.
Indeed. The ultimate wisdom of graciousness has always been the route to peace and prosperity….not enforced austerity by governments….or the monopolistic paradigm of finance.