1927: 1st transatlantic phone call placed; League of Nations abolishes slavery; Charles Lindbergh completes first solo transatlantic flight; Stalin begins war on kulaks; Chinese civil war erupts between Nationalists and Communists
1928: Jinan Incident (China); 1st scheduled television broadcasts; Hoover elected U.S. president; Kellogg-Briand Pact; Hirohito enthroned as Japanese emperor; Italian forces complete Libyan campaign (begun 1922)
1929: Color television demonstrated; Pope Pius XI ends sixty years of popes’ self-imposed imprisonment in Vatican; Young Plan for reparations in Europe; Smoot-Hawley Tariff clears final congressional committees; Great Crash on Wall Street
For a conflict started by staggering misperception and bungling, fought in squalor, and responsible for the loss of a colossal number of lives, the end of World War I constituted a great beginning for so many who believed that the Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended the conflict, represented a fresh idealism, awash in good intentions and even better plans. For the first time, politicians—the professional planners—were in charge of organizing the new nation-states and setting their agendas. Surely they could govern better than the aristocrats or the monarchs who had led them into the carnage.
At the center of this optimism stood President Woodrow Wilson, whose record as a wartime administrator had been mixed at best and whose trail of Progressive programs would later prove disastrous. The pivotal role he was to play evolved out of European expectations that he would be a miracle worker, the willingness of the Allies to pragmatically horse-trade specific material gains for lip service to Wilson’s nebulous slogans, and Wilson’s own grand design. Unfortunately, the American president had no lack of idealism, and even though his actions in Europe in 1919 indeed remade the world, no one could foresee the ruinous consequences that lay down the line.
Peace in the Progressive Era
Much has been made of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which he first presented to Congress in January 1918, ten months before the war ended, and which he insisted should become the basis for ending the war. The policy as a whole was a culmination of recommendations from “The Inquiry,” a 1917 study group run by Colonel Edward House and Sidney Mezes, an American philosopher and delegate to Versailles. When Wilson first presented the Fourteen Points, they included “Open covenants of peace,” freedom of the seas, equality of trade, reductions in national armaments, and several specific elements related to evacuation of territories taken by Germany in the war. Wilson also insisted upon an independent Polish state and stated the need for what would become the League of Nations—a “general association of nations” to ensure political independence and territorial integrity. Generally, the Fourteen Points rested on a presumption of democratic government, openness, and benevolent empires that would pave the way for self-government in their colonies. Possibly the most controversial stipulation in the document was that claims on territories, specifically the Balkan states, were to be adjusted based on the interests of the populations. Some historians have criticized this requirement as promoting “national self-determination” (a phrase never used in the document itself), and credit the document with calling for the creation of independent countries such as Czechoslovakia thanks to the stipulation of providing “territorial integrity” to states and their borders.
These ideas were nothing new. In 1914, Lenin had called for “the right of self-determination,” and the Soviet constitution (in theory) permitted the secession of its republics. This precedent caused Wilson to expand the concept even further at Versailles by stating that “every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live.”1 The establishment of a new Polish state was already in the works; when Russia had left the war with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, the failure to specifically mention Poland in its terms had sparked nationalist riots and ended all Polish support for the Central Powers. Farther south, the Ottoman Empire sat, ready to be carved up, its constituent parts believing the independence of Arab tribes in the Middle East to be promised as part of British strategy that pitted them against the Turks during the war. The sultan, Mehmed V, had presided over the beginning of the partition, then his successor Mehmed VI hung on only until 1922. As a dynasty, the Ottoman Empire—the “Sick Man of Europe”—had outlasted many of the great European monarchies, including the Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns, and Romanovs—all dispatched in 1918—leaving only a handful of petty kings and emperors orbiting a pair of exhausted democracies. Belgium, the moral winner of the war due to its perceived victim status, had been pillaged and leveled; Italy, humiliated.
At least four of the items in the Fourteen Points referred to “independence of various national groups” or other national boundary “readjustments,” all of which found their way into the Treaty of Versailles in more than a dozen article subpoints related to territorial shifts. Meanwhile, the creation of Poland out of Prussia and Russia to serve as a buffer between Germany and Russia was supported by everyone—except, of course, Germany and Russia. It put an independent nation (albeit one with initially little strength and indefensible borders) in a position to threaten both if it suddenly became powerful. This was the “big Poland” concept, and it constituted simply another example of good intentions gone astray. Westerners such as Wilson, Britain’s foreign minister A. J. Balfour and her prime minister David Lloyd George, and Prime Minister of France Georges Clemenceau all assumed that a “big Poland” would in fact find favor with the Russians, and hoped they would see it as a further diminution of German power. Quite the contrary: Russia feared a revived Poland—her traditional enemy—every bit as much as a “big Germany.” Thus, Poland created a built-in target of expansion for the new Soviet Union, while Poland’s small wars against other nearby states of Ukraine, Lithuania, and Czechoslovakia ensured minimal support from those countries later when Poland’s own borders were violated.
Yet the whole notion of sovereignty based on “nationality” was troubling every bit as much for the victors as for the vanquished. Britain, after all, ran the largest, most heterogeneous amalgam in the world, though each ethnic group was, for the most part, confined to a specific geographic territory. This contrasted with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with its Serbs, Romanians, Magyars, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Germans, and, of course, Jews and Gypsies, all mixed together despite sharp differences in languages, beliefs, and customs. Now Wilson would split all these apart? Would the peacemakers ignore the fact that Alsace-Lorraine, now “restored” to the French, was predominantly German? It soon became clear that the Allies, anxious to unload custodianship of former Central Power territories, could be influenced by promises of friendship and the wheels that squeaked would be greased quickly and copiously. Thus, Italy received part of Tyrol and Dalmatia; Romania was handed Bukovina; Japan got Shantung. In the Middle East, Britain and France awarded land to different claimants so fast that England actually promised the same small strip of land, what would become Israel, to both the Arabs and the Jews!
These and other mistakes of the Versailles Conference might have been avoided had Wilson not ordered Colonel Edward House to Europe to meet with the Allied Supreme War Council on October 29, 1918, and had House not met secretly with Clemenceau and Lloyd George to modify the Fourteen Points that Germany had already agreed to as a basis for “negotiation.” Wilson had no intention of negotiating the Fourteen Points, only implementing them. To do so he needed the British and French, and House knew it, sending Wilson an interpretive “Commentary” in which he outlined the positions the Allies would, and would not, support. Britain opposed “freedom of the seas,” while France wanted reparations. Each sought different ways to ensure future German military impotence. In any case, the British and French saw the discussion as one of principles, not particulars, whereas Wilson saw the Fourteen Points as concrete and clearly defined. By their meeting in secret—without the Germans—the ensuing peace would be a dictate, not a negotiated settlement; and by allowing House to horse-trade alone, without any Republi
can insight or advice, Wilson guaranteed that the final document (or parts of it) would meet with strong opposition at home.
To make matters worse, Wilson viewed the European participants “a cynical and evil crew,” bound by idiosyncratic traditions, corruption, and irrelevant public opinion.2 They responded in kind. Lloyd George was aggravated by Wilson’s “little sermonettes.” Their impatience with Wilson’s Fourteen Points, focused as they were on Wilson’s own grandiose, unenforceable, and unattainable plans and ignorant of the clear, material (and attainable) objectives of the Europeans, and the famous riposte that God Himself only had ten, became well known. But the Europeans all, of course, played along as much as possible to attain their own well-defined goals of a demilitarized and de-fanged Germany, territorial acquisition, and the creation of buffer states around Germany regardless of how or whether those new nations reflected “national self-determination.” The Allies were trading air for substance, and Wilson enthusiastically participated in the exchanges. But the reality for those millions of Europeans caught on the Versailles chessboard was staggering. At a May 1919 meeting of the Conference, British diplomat Harold Nicolson walked into a study to find Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson bending over a giant map spread on the carpet:
They are cutting the Baghdad railway…. Clemenceau [with his blue-gloved hands] down upon the map…look[s] like a gorilla of yellow ivory…. It is appalling that these ignorant and irresponsible men should be cutting Asia Minor to bits as if they were dividing a cake…Isn’t it terrible, the happiness of millions being discarded in that way?3
Before leaving for Versailles, Wilson had privately planned to go over the heads of the European rulers: “I can reach the peoples of Europe,” he promised.4 Wilson’s Progressive concepts of democracy had infused him with a sense that intermediary institutions (caucuses, parties, legislatures, and even elections) were irrelevant if, Rousseau-like, the “leader” knew the “will of the people.” Hence, he believed he could appeal to the masses over the heads of those empowered by those institutional intermediaries. After all, he had “reached” them merely by arriving, and Wilson’s ego did not allow for the possibility that his ideas were not everyone’s. Always sure of himself, Wilson told Italian prime minister Vittorio Orlando that (after spending three days in Italy) he understood the Italian people better than Orlando did.5
In Wilson’s eyes, these European politicians were merely obsolete appendages of failed nationalism. The nation-state itself had to be rendered harmless and nonaggressive, and the transitional organization that would gradually supersede the selfish nationalistic tendencies was another Wilsonian proposal, the League of Nations. It was not only the hope of a new Europe, but a Europe led by America. As The New York Times intoned, “the eyes of Europe are turned toward America these anxious days,” putting full responsibility for the life of what would become the League of Nations on American shoulders.6 To Wilson, the League embodied Progressive principles at their best—and the diminution of American exceptionalism. By transferring power from sovereign nations to an international body that could override the concerns of individual states, Wilson and other Progressives thought they could eliminate one of the major causes of wars: patriotism and nationalism, with their petty fights over borders and ideologies. Moreover, the League would epitomize the Progressive views of Walter Lippmann and John Dewey, who believed that all problems could be solved through better communication. Simply providing a forum for nations to express their views, the Progressives believed, would eliminate many conflicts. Walter Lippmann argued that people could be persuaded to accept uncongenial policies by teaching them to recognize Progressive realities and their self-interests. They had to be taught what British and French power meant to the security of America’s vital interests.7 It was all about communications: communicating the “right” ideas and realities to the masses would enlighten them. Encouraged by praise from sources such as The New York Times, Wilson’s ego was stroked even more and he regressed into ideology and messianic altruism as he arrived in Europe.
Wilson chose to head the peace delegation personally, in spite of Colonel Edward House’s fear that it would damage the president’s reputation. Needless to say, Wilson never considered delegating such an important and high-profile task as providing the world with peace to a subordinate or a committee. Only one of the five peace commissioners was a Republican, Henry White, who passed along Henry Cabot Lodge’s nine-page manifesto making clear that “under no circumstances” should the League of Nations, that glittering jewel of Wilson’s Points, be a part of the treaty. The League constituted a fundamental reordering of national security from an alliance system (which had existed from the dawn of time) to “collective security,” in which all members would agree to police rogue states.
There had been a forerunner of the League with the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in 1889, which featured twenty-four countries focused on arbitrating international disputes. The IPU has survived to the present day but developed into a group promoting democracy (as understood by Europeans) and world governance, and since World War II has been proposed to function as the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly by the Socialist and Liberal internationals. But in 1919, Wilson’s new League, a central element of the Versailles treaty in the final point, was a different beast: “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.” In its final incarnation, the League counted forty-four members who made up the Assembly, which became the institution’s driving force. A court of international justice was also envisioned. But of course many of the details would be left to the delegates to craft.
These ideas were heavily influenced by the South African prime minister Jan Christiaan Smuts and his 1918 treatise, The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion, but became identified as Wilson’s own. When he arrived in Europe, Wilson ignored White’s cautions, as well as those of his secretary of state, Robert Lansing, who thought the League was not necessary to a practical peace settlement. But Wilson had a critical ally in the press, which had taken to Progressivism as the way to get ahead and cement their positions behind the levers of power—a trend that would deepen to the current day. Journalists flattered Wilson, elevating him to almost godlike status—such that French prime minister Georges Clemenceau nicknamed him “Jupiter.”
So to Europe Wilson went, arriving in January 1919 to a reception of two million people at the Champs-Élysées, where he was greeted by crowds weeping and carrying flowers. Politicians who had witnessed the coronations of kings stood awestruck at the reception. Captain Harry S. Truman, then in Paris, said, “I don’t think I ever saw such an ovation.” Wilson received similar welcomes as he stopped in England for preliminary meetings with the British, and later on a five-day trip to Italy, where in each case massive crowds unleashed their adulation. In Italy he was hailed as the “God of Peace,” convincing Wilson even more of his messianic mission.8 The praise continued when he delivered his opening remarks in Paris on January 18, a chilling and snowy day, warmed by Wilson’s insistence that this was “the supreme conference in the history of mankind.”9
Yet even as the American president basked in the glow of his admirers, his counterpart, Prime Minister David Lloyd George, was winning an overwhelming victory in British elections based on his promise to impose a harsh peace on Germany, while in France, Georges Clemenceau, speaking to his Chamber of Deputies, refused to commit himself to untested forms of collective security, instead insisting on traditional balance of power alliances. Thus, the three leaders had vastly different views as to what the postwar world should look like. These were fundamental differences, not mere details. Britain and France came to the table seeking material reductions in Germany’s military and tangible limitations to her geographic power—both of which were attainable—while Wilson approached the negotiations from a diplomatic Olympus, seeking eternal solutions to in
soluble human realities. Even Italy sought only territorial gains that could be physically measured and militarily protected. When it came to stripping Germany of her overseas possessions—something on which the British insisted—Wilson wanted the territories placed under the administration of the League of Nations, a position that horrified and angered the British, who saw the territories as just compensation for England’s wartime losses. France had already submitted a proposed conference organization just two weeks after the Armistice, but Wilson arrived with his own program, which is to say, no program other than the Fourteen Points.
It was a bad combination: a self-appointed messiah in Wilson, varying understandings about the objectives of the meeting on the part of the participants, and an absence of procedures, rules, or processes. And for all the energy the president had poured into the Fourteen Points, it became clear that thirteen of them would be sacrificed to achieve the League of Nations, as Wilson continually vetoed practical measures that might have ensured a more permanent peace. As Colonel House assessed the developments, “the situation could not be worse.”10 The French were more practically focused on stripping Germany of territory taken during the war and, above all, of their economic production capabilities. They took Silesia’s coal and, with Britain, announced an occupation of the Rhineland, with its Krupp ammunitions factories at Essen.
Britain had less interest in what went on with Germany’s borders and more with the status of her navy and colonies. The Royal Navy kept up its blockade of Germany, actually maintaining a wartime stance, isolating Germany and exacerbating German food shortages and hardships. Older French diplomats, such as Clemenceau, had seen their country invaded twice, and now warned “in six months, in a year, five years, ten years, when they like, as they like, the Boches will again invade us.”11 The ability of Germany to make war had to be permanently eliminated. Above all, both Britain and France insisted that Germany be assigned sole responsibility for starting the war, thus forestalling any genuine attempt at negotiations and instead arriving only at terms to be delivered to a prostrate foe. It was an unnecessary condition, rubbing salt in the wound, and was made all the more problematic by the fact that some Germans felt they had actually won. Friedrich Ebert, who was named German chancellor just days before the armistice, welcomed returning troops as “unvanquished from the field.”12
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