Crucible

by Charles Emmerson

  VERSAILLES, FRANCE: The day has arrived. The day the Germans sign.

  An American businessman hitches a lift with a few diplomats to Versailles, and blags his way through the security cordon by showing the guards a Pall Mall cigarette case, emblazoned with a golden coat of arms. French lancers in sky-blue uniforms line the avenue leading to the palace, their horses perfectly still. Inside, cuirassiers wearing gilded helmets line the staircases. The Hall of Mirrors fills with representatives from around the world. The guests are made to sit on red velvet benches. Edward House signs souvenir programmes. Attendants hiss for quiet.

  Then, through a side door, two Germans, one tall and one short, are marched into the room: a wine-dealer’s son from Saarbrücken and a Catholic notary from Essen. Everything is calculated to humiliate the Germans, to demonstrate the cruel twist of fate. The room is the same room in which the German Empire, now defunct, was declared in 1871. The table on which the current treaty is to be signed is the one on which France’s earlier defeat was sealed. When one German comes up to sign the treaty, he finds his pen does not work and is handed a fountain pen by a secretary. It is five years to the day since the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was murdered in Sarajevo.

  The French guns boom as the last of the powers sign the document. The windows tremble. In private, a last-minute push is made to try and settle the question of Italy’s claims on the Adriatic before Woodrow catches the train to Normandy and the boat home. But such unresolved matters are considered entirely secondary to the German peace treaty and the creation of the League.

  A separate settlement for Austria and Hungary does not require the presence of the President of the United States. The details can be hashed out amongst lesser mortals. (Within a few weeks the French are sending notes to the British on such essential issues as the urgent need for the return of the stained glass from Colmar Cathedral, which the Habsburgs carried off in 1815 when they helped defeat Napoleon.) As for the Ottomans, there is no doubt the empire will be severely pruned. Woodrow declares he has ‘never seen anything more stupid’ than an Ottoman presentation in Paris asking that its borders in Thrace and Anatolia be retained. But exactly how much the map of Anatolia will be redrawn is still uncertain.

  Woodrow sleeps late each morning on the boat back to America. Every evening he attends the movies. He shares gossip from the peace conference, recalling one time Clemenceau told the Belgian premier, ‘the best thing you can do for Belgium is to die or resign’. On Independence Day, he makes a speech to the American soldiers on board, telling them that ‘this is the most tremendous Fourth of July that men ever imagined, for we have opened its franchise to all the world’, and praising the role of immigrants in building the United States.

  One day on board, Woodrow is handed a list of names of thirty-two Senators who will oppose ratification of the treaty unless certain American reservations can be lodged, including one which would absolve the United States of some of its key responsibilities to the League. Thirty-two, as near as damn it to a blocking minority. Woodrow will have to fight.

  MODLIN, POLAND: A young French military officer, currently serving with the Polish army outside Warsaw, expresses his doubts about Versailles. He knows the Germans well. Too well, perhaps. ‘They will do nothing, give up nothing, pay nothing’, Charles de Gaulle writes to his mother, ‘unless we make them do something, give up something or pay something–and not just through the use of force, but through the use of the utmost brutality.’

  In Poland, Charles feels that he is at last doing something useful for his country. It is good to be a soldier again, to be an active participant in the fates of nations, rather than a prisoner of the enemy, trapped behind barbed wire. As part of the French military mission to Poland, de Gaulle dedicates himself to the task at hand: creating a strong and unified Polish army as a bulwark against both the Bolsheviks and the Germans. For the moment the French-trained contingent of the Polish army is, as de Gaulle tells his mother, ‘the only serious military force between Prussia and Siberia’.

  Unlike some of his compatriots, Charles has no time for carousing around Warsaw, exploiting the status of French officers as the country’s heroic saviours. He judges the capital ‘without any cachet’. He is positively disgusted by White Russian émigrés who continue to live their lives as if they were in St Petersburg in 1913. Most of all, he hates the ‘insolent and useless’ soldiers of other Allied countries–America, Britain and Italy–who he accuses of being only interested in making money. ‘Like most of my compatriots’, he writes, ‘I’ve ended the war with a generalised dislike of foreigners’.

  De Gaulle spends his time in camp preparing his lectures, including a particularly well-received lesson on how a breakdown in morale brings about defeat, based largely on his close reading of German newspapers in 1918. He lives in expectation of fresh disaster at any minute: another war, an invasion, a revolution. ‘You see, our generation is the generation of catastrophes’, Charles tells a Polish officer.

  Personal catastrophe strikes in July when he returns to his room after supper to find that the lock to his chalet has been broken and some money stolen from inside his tunic pocket. Two pairs of shoes and the young captain’s bedsheets have also been taken. ‘I am furious, humiliated and very embarrassed’, Charles writes home.

  URALS–TSARITSYN–MOSCOW: After his rapid advance westwards in the spring, Admiral Kolchak is now being chased back towards the Urals. In Paris, the powers hesitate as to whether to grant him diplomatic recognition. They send him a political questionnaire instead.

  The real danger to the Bolsheviks is now in the south. At first the threat is underestimated. ‘I think that Kharkov stands in no greater danger than Tver, Penza, Moscow or any other city of the Soviet Republic’, Trotsky says in June. Within days of the war commissar’s confident assessment the city is in the hands of Denikin’s White army, which continues to thrust deeper into Ukraine on its left and towards the Volga on its right. At the end of the month, using British tanks on the ground and supported by a volunteer squadron of British aircraft from the air, Wrangel’s forces sweep into Tsaritsyn, the city where Stalin made his bloody mark the year before. The lower reaches of the Volga, much of southern Russia, the Cossack steppe and rich industrial region of eastern Ukraine are again in White hands. The commander of the Red Army–Leon Trotsky’s choice for the job, a reliable Latvian–is replaced. Trotsky, ill and exhausted, storms out of a meeting to discuss the issue, proudly offering his own resignation as war commissar. It is refused.

  Consolidate or capitalise? Denikin weighs up his options. Foreign support is running thin. The French have withdrawn from the Russian mess; the British plan to pull out their troops soon. The Whites are outnumbered. They have little hope of recruiting as quickly as the Red Army. Time is not on Denikin’s side. If he does not strike now, he may lose his chance to land the fatal blow. His thoughts are full of grand, old-fashioned ideals: honour, motherland, duty, fortitude, redemption.

  At headquarters in freshly conquered Tsaritsyn, a large map is spread out. Denikin points out the railway lines radiating from Moscow like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. He proposes that his White armies spread out over a broad front and then fight their way north along three lines of axis, until they converge victoriously upon their final goal. The order is called Directive Moscow. Wrangel objects. Dividing the army into three forces is a mistake. Why not let it advance along a narrower front, as one? Denikin slaps him down. ‘I see!’ he exclaims. ‘You want to be the first man to set foot in Moscow.’

  Lenin issues another of his furious instructions. ‘All Soviet officials must pull themselves together like soldiers’, he demands. The impatient revolutionary declares war on ‘organisational fuss’: ‘speechifying must be prohibited, opinions must be exchanged as rapidly as possible and confined to information and precisely formulated practical proposals.’

  MT. CLEMENS, MICHIGAN: For several weeks over midsummer, the American public is treated to the spectacle of America’s mo
st successful industrialist, Henry Ford, claiming one million dollars in libel damages from a Chicago newspaper that dared to call him an ignorant idealist for his apparent pacifism early in the war.

  The quiet Michigan town is overrun with reporters. Ford’s legal and media team take over the floor of a downtown office building. A wall is covered with a map of the United States dotted with different flags showing the location of friendly and hostile news reports on the case. Various professors take the stand to argue that Ford’s views on war are in line with those of such great luminaries as Martin Luther and Victor Hugo.

  Then Ford takes the stand. When asked the year of the American Revolution, he answers 1812. He does not seem to understand the basic principles of the constitution. Ford describes anarchy as ‘overthrowing the government and throwing bombs’. An idealist, he says, is ‘anyone who helps another make a profit’. He is made to look a simpleton. He does not seem to mind.

  HENRY FORD: I admit I am ignorant about most things.

  OPPOSITION ATTORNEY: You admit it?

  HENRY FORD: About most things… I am not ignorant about all things.

  ATTORNEY: You know about automobiles, of course?

  FORD: No, I don’t know a great deal about—

  ATTORNEY: You know about business?

  FORD: I don’t know about business. Know just a little.

  ATTORNEY: But you don’t know very much about history?

  FORD: Not very much about history.

  ATTORNEY: And you don’t believe in art?

  FORD: I am coming to like it a little better than I did.

  ATTORNEY: Since when?

  FORD: Because I was criticized for saying what I did about art.

  ATTORNEY: You don’t care anything about music?

  FORD: I never said that.

  ATTORNEY: You like the banjo and the fiddle?

  FORD: I like the banjo, yes.

  A jury of farmers find in favour of Ford. They award him six cents in damages. But America loves him. ‘You are my ideal of a self-made man whose opinions are sincere and justly righteous’, writes one admirer.

  MUNICH: Escaping demobilisation again, the pale Austrian with the trim moustache enrols in a propaganda course organised by the army to train up patriotic political agitators.

  One instructor, a member of the Thule Society, provides a furious critique of international capitalism, describing the way that Anglo-American finance controls the whole world through the instrument of financial interest, enslaving productive capital in the process. Another identifies Britain as Germany’s long-term geopolitical enemy. There is consensus around the injustice of Versailles and much loose talk about the Jews. Political pamphlets are shared around. This jumble of ideas converges on the essential notion that Germany is surrounded by enemies and that its rebirth lies within. To the former dispatch-runner it is intoxicating.

  One day at the end of a class, one of the lecturers finds him holding a small group of fellow soldiers in thrall with his repetition of what he has learned, delivered in a thick Austrian accent. His fervour rises as he speaks, as if he has just discovered the explanation for world events that he was looking for, and needs to communicate it to the world. Adolf Hitler has found a talent.

  ERZURUM, EASTERN OTTOMAN EMPIRE: Who does Mustafa Kemal represent? The Sultan, the Turkish people, the army, or just himself? He has made clear his scorn for the government in Istanbul, declaring them incapable of defending the nation’s integrity and unity while under occupation. Yet he still wears the gold cordon of an aide-de-camp to the Sultan and, despite ill-temperedly resigning his commission some weeks ago, he still wears the uniform of a general in the Sultan’s army.

  Over the last few weeks, his calls for resistance to schemes of foreign domination have grown louder and, to the ears of the British and French, more dangerous. They have found an echo across the country, where Greek units have already clashed with Ottoman soldiers. They have attracted attention in other countries too. Nationalists in Germany celebrate Kemal as a man prepared to fight against a ‘Turkish Versailles’.

  In Erzurum, it is time to weld disparate acts and vague words together into something more solid: a movement. Representatives of patriotic organisations from the Black Sea region and eastern Anatolia gather in Erzurum in a low, dark stone building, once an Armenian school, built with thick walls to keep it cool in the region’s baking summers and warm in its harsh winters. The town is sparsely built: a stop on the railway line, an outpost in the empire’s eastern highlands, a garrison town eight hundred miles east of the capital. The plains around are treeless. Some locals remember a pogrom here against the Armenians in 1895; nearly all remember the town’s bloody occupation by the armies of the Russian Tsar in 1916. This is where General Yudenich made his name.

  A sheep is sacrificed in a religious ceremony as the nationalist congress opens. Prayers are recited. There are only a few dozen delegates. Kemal is immediately elected chairman. Loyalty to the Sultan is declared. But there is no doubting that the new organisation is a challenge to the authority of his government. It does not take a devious mind to see that Mustafa Kemal is bidding for the leadership of something grander than the East Anatolia Society for the Defence of National Rights. Another general in Erzurum–and potential rival–ignores an order from Istanbul to arrest him.

  One delegate questions whether an officer in uniform should preside over what is supposedly a loyal, democratic upswelling of the people. Kemal, ever aware of the importance of appearance, borrows morning dress from the local governor. A step is taken in his transformation from loyal Ottoman general to Turkish patriotic leader. In private, Mustafa Kemal admits his true ambition: the establishment of a republic. It is far too early to admit to such a thing in public.

  THE UPPER REACHES OF THE VOLGA AND KAMA RIVERS: Nadya is sent on a propaganda mission aboard a steamboat named Krasnaya Zvezda, Red Star. The boat is equipped with a cinema, a printing press and, of course, a well-stocked library. It is to travel to villages and cities recently abandoned by Admiral Kolchak’s Whites and ensure that they understand the Bolshevik view of things. Vladimir Ilyich gives Nadya strict instructions about what to say and then sees her off at the railway station.

  Nadya hears stories from Russian peasants about the horrors of White rule. Most of the professional kind have left with Kolchak’s forces. In the middle of her tour she meets an old school friend who stayed behind. Nadya gives thirty-four speeches, according to the ship’s newspaper. One agitator attached to the Red Army turns out to be a former priest, who calls the Bolsheviks ‘today’s apostles’. When someone asks him about baptism, he responds: ‘that would take a couple of hours to explain, but briefly it’s pure eyewash’. Nadya has a quiet laugh when one of the Red Army commanders claims that Soviet Russia is unconquerable on account of its ‘squarity and sizeability’.

  Vladimir Ilyich writes to her from the Kremlin, reporting on a pleasant Sunday spent down in Gorki–‘our country house’, he calls it now. He asks Nadya to telegraph more often and not work too hard: ‘Eat and sleep more, then you will be fully fit for work by winter’. A few days later, he has cause to write again. Nadya’s health has taken a turn for the worse: ‘you must stick strictly to the rules and obey the doctor’s orders absolutely’, he warns. His brother has been visiting in Gorki. The lime trees are in bloom.

  News from the Eastern Front is good. Kolchak’s Whites have been pursued beyond the Urals, Ekaterinburg has been taken. The news from the south is less good. ‘There is still no serious turn for the better’, he writes, ‘I hope there will be’.

  FIUME: A young Italian woman walks along a street in Fiume. Tucked into her blouse she wears a cockade in the green, white and red of the Italian flag, to demonstrate her attachment to the cause of reunification with the homeland across the water.

  A couple of bored French soldiers decide to have some fun. Harassing the young woman as she walks, they grab at the cockade on her blouse, and make off with it. (The soldiers later cla
im the lady was a prostitute, and that the cockade fell to the ground by accident.) Word goes around that Italian womanhood has been insulted. Do the French think they can simply do as they please?

  An angry crowd gathers in Fiume’s main public square. Some French soldiers are beaten up. A few others are chased away, and the chairs of a nearby café thrown at them. An American diplomat is pushed around a bit. The window of a hotel is broken when the crowd hears a French officer is dining in its restaurant. A club for the local Croatian population is sacked as well. Italian soldiers do little to intervene. Some stand around and laugh. Posters proclaiming ‘Italy or Death’ appear around the city.

  A few nights later there is more rioting. This time the windows of shops with Slovenian and Croatian owners are smashed, and two more French soldiers are injured. An Italian general claims that while he tried to calm the crowds, more direct action taken by his soldiers would have sparked worse violence. The very next evening, a French storehouse at the end of the sea defences comes under gunfire. Italian sailors are said to be involved, while civilians are reportedly armed with rifles. Again, the Italian army does not get involved. A French battleship is sent.

  Later in the summer it is agreed in Paris that Fiume will be permanently internationalised and Dalmatia given to the new Yugoslavian Kingdom (a merger of the Kingdom of Serbia with former Austro-Hungarian territories in the Balkans). In Fiume, tension continues to rise.