The Treaty of Versailles and Other Treaties
Overview
The 1919-20 Paris Peace Conference
With the conclusion of armistices that ended the fighting, the Allied Powers organized the peacemaking process that officially ended the war. Allied leaders carried out this process at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, negotiating peace treaties with each of the five major Central Powers. And each of these treaties influenced the course of subsequent events across Eurasia, leading to the Second World War and the Cold War.
Learning Objectives
Analyze the aims and negotiating roles of world leaders at the Paris Peace Conference and the consequences of the treaties that ended the war.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Congress of Vienna: a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich and held in Vienna from November 1814 to June 1815, though the delegates had arrived and were already negotiating by late September 1814 (The objective was to provide a long-term peace plan for Europe by settling critical issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. The goal was not simply to restore old boundaries but to resize the main powers so they could balance each other and remain at peace.)
Paris Peace Conference - 1919-20 meeting of delegates from the Allied nations that crafted the treaties which ended World War I
David Lloyd George: British Liberal politician and statesman, who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1908 – 1915) and was a key figure in the introduction of many reforms that laid the foundations of the modern welfare state. His most important role came as the highly energetic Prime Minister of the Wartime Coalition Government (1916 – 22), during and immediately after the First World War. He led the British delegation to the Paris peace conference. His priorities were security from Germany and being able to justify to his political coalition in the British Parliament and British voters the nation’s sacrifices in the war.
Fourteen Points: a statement of principles used for peace negotiations to end World War I, as outlined in a January 8, 1918 speech by President Woodrow Wilson to the United States Congress on war aims and peace terms
George Clemenceau: French prime minister during World War I, and leader of the French delegation to the Paris peace conference, who made French security his highest priority in the negotiation of peace with Germany. Accordingly, he pursued military restrictions on Germany, the demilitarization of the Rhineland in western Germany, and the restoration of Alsace and Lorraine to France.
League of Nations: an intergovernmental organization founded on January 10, 1920, as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War; the first international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals as stated in its Covenant included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.
Stab-in-the-back myth: The notion, widely believed in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918, that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by the civilians on the home front, especially the republicans who overthrew the monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918 – 19. Advocates denounced the German government leaders who signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918, as the “November Criminals.”
Treaty of Versailles: the most important of the peace treaties that ended World War I, which was signed on June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Vittorio Orlando: Italian prime minister who led the Italian delegation at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and sought Italy’s acquisition of various territories from the disintegrating Austrian empire (Germany was a secondary concern to him.)
Woodrow Wilson: an American politician and academic who served as president during World War I and led the U.S. delegation to the Paris peace conference. He sought a lasting peace, without explicit winners and losers.
Paris Peace Conference
The Paris Peace Conference, also known as Versailles Peace Conference, was the meeting of the Allied victors after the end of World War I to set peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris during 1919, opening on 18 January 1919. This date was symbolic as the anniversary of the proclamation of William I as German Emperor in 1871 in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, shortly before the end of the Siege of Paris. This date was also imbued with significance in Germany as the anniversary of the establishment of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701.
More than thirty nations, along with a number of peoples and non-governmental organizations sent voting and non-voting delegations. Each pursued its own agenda. The work of the conference was overwhelming. The attendees addressed dozens of widely varied issues, including the postwar disposition of prisoners of war, responsibility for the war, undersea cables, and international aviation; this was done in an effort to craft a lasting peace, while at the same time pursuing their own agendas. To handle this work, the participants set up fifty-two commissions, which held over sixteen hundred sessions to complete their work—much of it reports for the delegates to consider in their deliberations. The treaties crafted by the delegates were prodigious. The Treaty of Versailles, the Allied treaty with Germany, included fifteen chapters and 440 clauses.
Thirty-two countries and nationalities, along with a number of non-governmental groups, sent delegations to the conference. Significantly, neither the Central Powers, the incipient Soviet Union, nor what was left of the disappearing Tsarist Russian empire were invited to send delegations.
Leading the conference were the “Big Four”: President Woodrow Wilson of the United States, Prime Minister David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando of the Kingdom of Italy. They were known as the Big Four because their nations were the most powerful Allied nations in Europe. They met informally 145 times and made all the major decisions, which in turn other national delegations ratifie
The task of the delegates to craft peace treaties was complicated, even defined, by their conflicting agendas. Each of the Big Four, along with the leaders of the other countries invited to send delegates, had their own separate interests, concerns, and groups to which they were accountable. Consequently, coming to consensus on the terms of each treaty was difficult.
Each of the Big Four was concerned primarily with his nation’s national security and imperial interests, very much as their predecessors had been at previous European peace conferences, such as the 1814 – 15 Congress of Vienna. Just like these predecessors the Big Four were not as concerned about inequities they felt were not directly related to the war, including European subjugation of Africans and Asians and gender discrimination. For example, none of these four leaders was a champion of women’s suffrage, and Wilson was a racist who approved of the white supremacist regime in the U.S. In a number of respects, however, the agendas of the Big Four reflected the democratization of the West. Each considered the demands and expectations of his national constituencies, and each recognized the growing opposition to Western imperialism.
French Agenda
For France, the only nation of the Big Four invaded by the Germans, the first priority in the treaty with Germany was security from another German invasion. The French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau—leader of the French delegation at the conference—focused on permanently weakening Germany, militarily and economically. Having personally witnessed two German attacks on French soil in the last 40 years, he was adamant that Germany should not be permitted to attack France again. In particular, Clemenceau sought an American and British guarantee of French security in the event of another German attack.
Clemenceau also expressed skepticism and frustration with Wilson’s Fourteen Points: “Mr. Wilson bores me with his fourteen points,” complained Clemenceau. “Why, God Almighty has only ten!” Wilson won a few points by signing a mutual defense treaty with France, but back in Washington he did not present it to the Senate for ratification and it never took effect.
Another alternative French policy was to seek a resumption of harmonious relations with Germany. In May 1919 the diplomat René Massigli was sent on several secret missions to Berlin. During his visits, Massigli offered on behalf of his government to revise the territorial and economic clauses of the upcoming peace treaty. The Germans rejected the French offers because they considered the French overtures to be a trap to trick them into accepting the Versailles treaty “as is,” and because the German foreign minister, Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, thought that the United States was more likely to reduce the severity of the peace terms than France. However, it proved to be Lloyd George who pushed for more favorable terms for Germany.
British Agenda
At the conference the British delegation sought to protect its imperial holdings and justify the empire’s sacrifices in the Allied war effort. Maintenance of the British Empire’s unity, holdings, and interests was an overarching concern for the British delegates to the conference, with more specific goals of:
ensuring the security of France,
removing the threat of the German High Seas Fleet,
settling territorial contentions,
and supporting the League of Nations.
David Lloyd George commented that he did “not do badly” at the peace conference, “considering I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon.” This was a reference to the very idealistic views of Wilson on the one hand and the stark realism of Clemenceau, who was determined to see Germany punished, on the other.
Nationalist Agendas
A number of peoples across the world sought national independence from European imperial control. These peoples fall into two categories: 1) the descendants of British and European colonists in the settlement colonies of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, and 2) African and Asian peoples subject to European, Russian, and U.S. imperial control.
Related to and growing out of the British agenda, Australia, Canada, and India, and New Zealand pursued their own agendas. Indian nationalists sought independence. Convinced that Canada had become a nation on the battlefields of Europe, its Prime Minister, Sir Robert Borden, demanded that it have a separate seat at the conference. This was initially opposed not only by Britain but also by the United States, which saw a dominion delegation as an extra British vote. Borden responded by pointing out that since Canada had lost nearly 60,000 men, a far larger proportion of its men compared to the 50,000 American losses, it at least had the right to the representation of a “minor” power. The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, eventually relented, and convinced the reluctant Americans to accept the presence of delegations from Canada, India, Australia, Newfoundland, New Zealand, and South Africa. These nations also received their own seats in the League of Nations.
Italian Approach
In 1914 Italy remained neutral despite its alliances with Germany and Austria. In 1915 it joined the Allies, motivated by gaining the territories promised by the Allies in the secret Treaty of London. These territories included the Trentino, the Tyrol as far as Brenner, Trieste and Istria, most of the Dalmatian coast except Fiume, Valona and a protectorate over Albania, Antalya in Turkey, and possibly colonies in Africa or Asia.
In the meetings of the “Big Four, in which Orlando’s powers of diplomacy were inhibited by his lack of English, the others were only willing to offer Trentino to the Brenner, the Dalmatian port of Zara and some of the Dalmatian islands. All other territories were promised to other nations, most likely because the great powers were worried about Italy’s imperial ambitions. Even though Italy did get most of its demands, Orlando was refused Fiume, most of Dalmatia, and any colonial gain, so he left the conference in a rage.
There was a general disappointment in Italy, which the nationalist and fascist parties used to build the idea that Italy was betrayed by the Allies and refused what was due. This led to the general rise of Italian fascism.
Japanese Agenda
The Japanese delegation came to the peace conference with a shopping list of German Pacific territories that they sought, as well as the expectation of respect from the European imperial powers and the U.S. The Empire of Japan sent a large delegation headed by former Prime Minister, Marquess Saionji Kinmochi. It was originally one of the “big five” but relinquished that role because of its slight interest in European affairs. Instead, it focused on two demands: 1) as part of the respect Japanese leaders sought, the inclusion of a racial equality proposal in the Covenant of the League of Nations, and 2) approval of Japanese territorial claims with respect to former German colonies, namely Shantung (including Kiaochow) and the Pacific islands north of the Equator (the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, the Mariana Islands, and the Carolines). The Japanese delegation became unhappy after receiving only half of the rights of Germany, and they walked out of the conference.
Japanese imperialists and nationalists perceived this as another in a line of slights dating back to the Meiji Restoration. This resentment, building since the Meiji Restoration, contributed to the rise of ultranationalism and Japanese aggression in World War II. While Japan cannot be excused for its atrocities in the Second World War, the European imperial powers cannot be excused for their discrimination against Japan as an Asian imperial power.
U.S. Agenda
Not having the security concerns and imperial interests of France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, Wilson’s approach to peace was to avoid imposing a winners’ peace on the Central Powers. In addition, his influence at the conference was diminished by the late entry of the U.S. into the war in 1917. Even then, the Wilson Administration continued U.S. detachment from the Allied Powers by referring to the U.S. as an Associated Power, rather than an Allied Power.
On 8 January 1918 Wilson outlined his vision for peace, introducing his Fourteen Points, in a speech before Congress. Wilson’s diplomacy and his Fourteen Points influenced the circumstances under which armistices were drafted that ended the fighting of World War I.
Wilson was the first president to attend an international peace conference while president, and only the third president, after his two immediate predecessors, to leave the country during his presidency for diplomatic purposes. Wilson believed it was his duty and obligation to the people of the world to establish an international framework for avoiding another global conflict. Accordingly, fulfilment of that responsibility meant that he had to play a leading role at the peace conference. He continued and developed further Theodore Roosevelt’s initiative for U.S. interventionism in global affairs with a moral imperative. Every president since, except Donald Trump, either accepted or acquiesced to this initiative.
High hopes and expectations were placed on Wilson to deliver what he had promised for the post-war era. In doing so, Wilson ultimately began to lead the foreign policy of the United States toward interventionism, a move strongly resisted in some domestic circles. Wilson took many domestic progressive ideas and translated them into foreign policy (free trade, open agreements, democracy, and self-determination). One of his major aims was to found a League of Nations “for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”
Background of the U.S. Entry into World War I
The immediate cause of the United States’ entry into World War I in April 1917 was the German announcement of renewed unrestricted submarine warfare and the subsequent sinking of ships with Americans on board. But President Wilson’s war aims went beyond the defense of maritime interests. In his War Message to Congress, Wilson declared that the United States’ objective was “to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world.” In several speeches earlier in the year, Wilson sketched out his vision of an end to the war that would bring a “just and secure peace,” not merely “a new balance of power.”
The United States joined the Allied Powers in fighting the Central Powers on April 6, 1917. Its entry into the war had in part been due to Germany’s resumption of submarine warfare against US merchant ships trading with France and Britain. However, Wilson wanted to avoid the United States’ involvement in the long-standing European tensions between the great powers; if America was going to fight, he wanted to unlink the war from nationalistic disputes or ambitions. The need for moral aims was highlighted when after the fall of the Russian government, the Bolsheviks disclosed secret treaties made between the Allies.
The Fourteen Points
President Wilson subsequently initiated a secret series of studies named the Inquiry, primarily focused on Europe and carried out by a group in New York that included geographers, historians, and political scientists; the group was directed by Colonel Edward House. Their job was to study Allied and American policy in virtually every region of the globe and analyze economic, social, and political facts likely to come up in discussions during the peace conference. The group produced and collected nearly 2,000 separate reports and documents plus at least 1,200 maps. The studies culminated in a speech by Wilson to Congress on January 8, 1918, in which he articulated America’s long-term war objectives. The speech was the clearest expression of intention made by any of the belligerent nations and projected Wilson’s progressive domestic policies into the international arena, being a statementof principles used for peace negotiations following the end World War I.
The speech, known as the Fourteen Points, was developed from a set of diplomatic points by Wilson and territorial points drafted by the Inquiry’s general secretary, Walter Lippmann, and his colleagues, Isaiah Bowman, Sidney Mezes, and David Hunter Miller. Lippmann’s territorial points were a direct response to the secret treaties of the European Allies, which Lippman was shown by Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. Lippman’s task, according to House, was “to take the secret treaties, analyze the parts which were tolerable, and separate them from those which we regarded as intolerable, and then develop a position which conceded as much to the Allies as it could, but took away the poison…It was all keyed upon the secret treaties.”
The Fourteen Points was a statement ; they were outlined in a January 8, 1918, speech on war aims and peace terms given by President Woodrow Wilson to the United States Congress. Wilson’s speech also responded to Vladimir Lenin’s Decree on Peace of November 1917 immediately after the October Revolution, which proposed an immediate withdrawal of Russia from the war, called for a just and democratic peace that was not compromised by territorial annexations, and led to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918. The speech made by Wilson took many domestic progressive ideas and translated them into foreign policy (free trade, open agreements, democracy, and self-determination). The Fourteen Points speech was the only explicit statement of war aims by any of the nations fighting in World War I. Some belligerents gave general indications of their aims, but most kept their post-war goals private. Europeans generally welcomed Wilson’s points, but his main Allied colleagues (Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy) were skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism.
In the speech, Wilson directly addressed what he perceived as the causes for the world war by calling for the abolition of secret treaties, a reduction in armaments, an adjustment in colonial claims in the interests of both native peoples and colonists, and freedom of the seas. Wilson also made proposals that would ensure world peace in the future. For example, he proposed the removal of economic barriers between nations, the promise of self-determination for national minorities, and a world organization that would guarantee the “political independence and territorial integrity [of] great and small states alike”— a League of Nations.
Though Wilson’s idealism pervades the Fourteen Points, he also had more practical objectives in mind. He hoped to keep Russia in the war by convincing the Bolsheviks that they would receive a better peace from the Allies, to bolster Allied morale, and to undermine German war support. The address was well received in the United States and by Allied nations, as well as even by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin as a landmark of enlightenment in international relations. Wilson subsequently used the Fourteen Points as the basis for negotiating the Treaty of Versailles that ended the war. It has long been argued that Wilson’s Fourteen Points, in particular the principle of national self-determination, were primarily anti-Left measures designed to tame the revolutionary fever sweeping across Europe in the wake of the October Revolution and the end of the war by playing the nationalist card.
Once Wilson arrived at the conference, however, he found “rivalries, and conflicting claims previously submerged.” He mostly tried to sway the direction that the French (Georges Clemenceau) and British (Lloyd George) delegations were taking towards Germany and its allies in Europe, as well as the former Ottoman lands in the Middle East. Wilson’s attempts to gain acceptance of his Fourteen Points ultimately failed after France and Britain refused to adopt some specific points and its core principles. Wilson was further hindered by U.S. forces having only been fighting on the Western Front since the spring of 1918.
In Europe, several of his Fourteen Points conflicted with the desires of other powers. Wilson hoped to establish a more liberal and diplomatic world, as stated in the Fourteen Points, where democracy, sovereignty, liberty, and self-determination would be respected. The French and British governments, on the other hand, already controlled empires, wielded power over their subjects around the world, and still aspired to be dominant colonial powers. For example, Wilson did not encourage or believe that the responsibility for the war placed on Germany through Article 231 was fair or warranted. It would not be until 1921 that the United States finally signed separate peace treaties with Germany, Austria, and Hungary.
Fourteen Points vs. the Versailles Treaty
President Wilson became physically ill at the beginning of the Paris Peace Conference, allowing French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau to advance demands substantially different from Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Clemenceau viewed Germany as having unfairly attained an economic victory over France, due to the heavy damage their forces dealt to France’s industries even during retreat, as well as expressed dissatisfaction with France’s allies at the peace conference.
Notably, Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, which would become known as the War Guilt Clause; it was seen by the Germans as assigning full responsibility for the war and its damages on Germany. However, the same clause was included in all peace treaties and historian Sally Marks has noted that only German diplomats saw it as assigning responsibility for the war.
The myth that Germany had not lost World War I, which came to be known as the Stab-in-the-back-myth, began in the last year of the war. The text of the Fourteen Points had been widely distributed in Germany as propaganda prior to the end of the war and was thus well-known by the Germans. The differences between this document and the final Treaty of Versailles fueled anger among Germans. German outrage over reparations and the War Guilt Clause is viewed as a likely contributing factor to the rise of national socialism. At the end of World War I, foreign armies had only entered Germany’s prewar borders twice: the advance of Russian troops into the Eastern border of Prussia, and, following the Battle of Mulhouse, the settlement of the French army in the Thann valley. This lack of important Allied incursions contributed to the popularization of the Stab-in-the-back myth in Germany after the war.
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. It was signed on June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I signed separate treaties. Although the armistice signed on November 11, 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on October 21, 1919.
Learning Objectives
- Analyze the aims and negotiating roles of world leaders at the Paris Peace Conference and the consequences of the treaties that ended the war.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
League of Nations: an intergovernmental organization founded on January 10, 1920, as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War; the first international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals as stated in its Covenant included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.
Paris Peace Conference - 1919-20 meeting of delegates from the Allied nations that crafted the treaties which ended World War I
Treaty of Versailles: the most important of the peace treaties that ended World War I, which was signed on June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial required “Germany accept the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage” during the war (the other members of the Central Powers signed treaties containing similar articles). This article, Article 231, later became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty forced Germany to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers. In 1921 the total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion marks (then $31.4 billion, roughly equivalent to $442 billion USD in 2017). At the time economists, notably John Maynard Keynes, predicted that the treaty was too harsh—a “Carthaginian peace”—and said the reparations figure was excessive and counter-productive, views that have since been the subject of ongoing debate by historians and economists from several countries. On the other hand, prominent figures on the Allied side such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch criticized the treaty for treating Germany too leniently.
The result of these competing and sometimes conflicting goals among the victors was a compromise that left no one content: Germany was neither pacified nor conciliated, nor was it permanently weakened. The problems that arose from the treaty would lead to the Locarno Treaties, which improved relations between Germany and the other European Powers, and the renegotiation of the reparation system resulting in the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, and the indefinite postponement of reparations at the Lausanne Conference of 1932.
Other Treaties of the Paris Peace Conference
Along with the Treaty of Versailles, the Paris Peace Conference drafted four other treaties to be imposed on each of the other Central Powers: Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary(to be treated separately from Austria), and the Ottoman Empire(later Turkey). Each treaty was a punitive treaty which reflected the national interests of the concerned Allied Powers. Although the Treaty of Versailles was the most prominent, each of the other treaties had its own consequences.
Learning Objectives
Analyze the aims and negotiating roles of world leaders at the Paris Peace Conference and the consequences of the treaties that ended the war.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Treaty of Versailles: the most important of the peace treaties that ended World War I, which was signed on June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Paris Peace Conference - 1919-20 meeting of delegates from the Allied nations that crafted the treaties which ended World War I
All together Allied representatives prepared five major peace treaties at the Paris Peace Conference (with the subject countries in parentheses):
The Treaty of Versailles, June 28, 1919 (Germany);
The Treaty of Saint-Germain, September 10, 1919 (Austria);
The Treaty of Neuilly, November 27, 1919, (Bulgaria);
The Treaty of Trianon, June 4, 1920 (Hungary);
The Treaty of Sèvres, August 10, 1920; subsequently revised by the Treaty of Lausanne, July 24, 1923, (Ottoman Empire /Republic of Turkey).
Austria-Hungary was partitioned into several successor states, including Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, largely but not entirely along ethnic lines. Transylvania was shifted from Hungary to Greater Romania. The details were contained in the Treaty of Saint-Germain and the Treaty of Trianon. As a result of the Treaty of Trianon, 3.3 million Hungarians came under foreign rule. Although the Hungarians made up 54% of the population of the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary, only 32% of its territory was left to Hungary. Between 1920 and 1924, 354,000 Hungarians fled former Hungarian territories attached to Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.
The Russian Empire, which had withdrawn from the war in 1917 after the October Revolution, lost much of its western frontier as the newly independent nations of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland were carved from it. Romania took control of Bessarabia in April 1918. The Ottoman Empire disintegrated, with much of its Levant territory awarded to various Allied powers as protectorates, officially referred to as "mandates", including Palestine, chiefly to the British and the French empires. The Turkish core in Anatolia was reorganized as the Republic of Turkey. The Ottoman Empire was to be partitioned by the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920. This treaty was never ratified by the Sultan and was rejected by the Turkish National Movement, leading to the victorious Turkish War of Independence and the much less stringent 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.
As the conference’s decisions were enacted unilaterally and largely on the whims of the Big Four, for the duration of the Paris Peace Conference was effectively the center of a world government that deliberated over and implemented sweeping changes to the political geography of Europe. Most famously, the Treaty of Versailles itself weakened Germany’s military and placed full blame for the war and costly reparations on Germany’s shoulders.
The League of Nations proved controversial in the United States as critics said it subverted the powers of Congress to declare war. The U.S. Senate did not ratify any of the peace treaties and the U.S. never joined the League; instead, the Harding administration of 1921 – 1923 concluded new treaties with Germany, Austria, and Hungary.
Germany was not invited to attend the conference at Versailles. Representatives of White Russia (but not Communist Russia) were present. Numerous other nations sent delegations to appeal for various unsuccessful additions to the treaties; parties lobbied for causes ranging from independence for the countries of the South Caucasus to Japan’s demand for racial equality among the other Great Powers.
The League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded on January 10, 1920, as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace, specifically preventing another world war. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Other issues in this and related treaties included labor conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe. At its greatest extent, from September 28, 1934, to February 23, 1935, it had 58 members. However, by 1939 economic depression, radicalized nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation (particularly in Germany) contributed to its demise and paved the way for World War II.
Learning Objectives
Analyze the aims and negotiating roles of world leaders at the Paris Peace Conference and the consequences of the treaties that ended the war.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
League of Nations: an intergovernmental organization founded on January 10, 1920, as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War; the first international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals as stated in its Covenant included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.
Paris Peace Conference - 1919-20 meeting of delegates from the Allied nations that crafted the treaties which ended World War I
Woodrow Wilson: an American politician and academic who served as president during World War I and led the U.S. delegation to the Paris peace conference. He sought a lasting peace, without explicit winners and losers.
Fourteen Points: a statement of principles used for peace negotiations to end World War I, as outlined in a January 8, 1918 speech by President Woodrow Wilson to the United States Congress on war aims and peace terms
Treaty of Versailles: the most important of the peace treaties that ended World War I, which was signed on June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Establishment of the League of Nations
American President Woodrow Wilson instructed Edward M. House to draft a U.S. plan that reflected Wilson’s own idealistic views (first articulated in the Fourteen Points of January 1918), as well as the work of the Phillimore Committee. The outcome of House’s work and Wilson’s own first draft, proposed the termination of “unethical” state behavior, including forms of espionage and dishonesty. Methods of compulsion against uncooperative states would include severe measures, such as “blockading and closing the frontiers of that power to commerce or intercourse with any part of the world and to use any force that may be necessary…”
The two principal architects of the covenant of the League of Nations were Lord Robert Cecil (a lawyer and diplomat) and Jan Smuts (a Commonwealth statesman). Smuts’s proposals included the creation of a Council of the great powers as permanent members and a non-permanent selection of the minor states. He also proposed the creation of a mandate system for captured colonies of the Central Powers during the war. Cecil focused on the administrative side and proposed annual Council meetings and quadrennial meetings for the Assembly of all members. He also argued for a large and permanent secretariat to carry out the League’s administrative duties.
At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wilson, Cecil, and Smuts put forward their draft proposals. After lengthy negotiations between the delegates, the Hurst-Miller draft was finally produced as a basis for the Covenant. After more negotiation and compromise, the delegates finally approved the proposal to create the League of Nations on January 25, 1919. The final Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the League was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles. On June 28, 44 states signed the Covenant, including 31 states that took part in the war on the side of the Triple Entente or joined it during the conflict.
The League would consist of a General Assembly (representing all member states), an Executive Council (with membership limited to major powers), and a permanent secretariat. Member states were expected to “respect and preserve as against external aggression” the territorial integrity of other members and to disarm “to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.” All states were required to submit complaints for arbitration or judicial inquiry before going to war. The Executive Council would create a Permanent Court of International Justice to make judgments on the disputes.
The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, and provide an army when needed. However, the Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply. During the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, when the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting Red Cross medical tents, Benito Mussolini responded that “the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out."
Despite Wilson’s efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1919, the United States did not join. Opposition in the Senate, particularly from two Republican politicians—Henry Cabot Lodge and William Borah, especially in regard to Article X of the Covenant, ensured that the United States would not ratify the agreement. Their objections were based on the fact that by ratifying such a document, the United States would be bound by international contract to defend a League of Nations member if it was attacked. They believed that it was best not to become involved in international conflicts.
The League held its first council meeting in Paris on January 16, 1920, six days after the Versailles Treaty and the Covenant of the League of Nations came into force. On November 1, the headquarters of the League was moved from London to Geneva, where the first General Assembly was held on November 15.
The aftermath of the First World War left many issues to be settled, including the exact position of national boundaries and which country particular regions would join. Most of these questions were handled by the victorious Allied powers in bodies such as the Allied Supreme Council. The Allies tended to refer only particularly difficult matters to the League. This meant that during the early interwar period, the League played little part in resolving the turmoil resulting from the war. The questions the League considered in its early years included those designated by the Paris Peace treaties.
Successes and Failures of the League
As the League developed, its role expanded, and by the middle of the 1920s it had become the center of international activity. This change can be seen in the relationship between the League and non-members. The United States and Russia, for example, increasingly worked with the League. During the second half of the 1920s, France, Britain, and Germany were all using the League of Nations as the focus of their diplomatic activity, and each of their foreign secretaries attended League meetings at Geneva during this period. They also used the League’s machinery to improve relations and settle their differences.
After a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain, and others. The onset of the Second World War showed that the League had failed its primary purpose to prevent any future world war. The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations (UN) replaced it after the end of the Second World War in April 1946 and inherited a number of agencies and organizations founded by the League.
In addition to territorial disputes, the League also tried to intervene in other conflicts between and within nations. Among its successes were its fight against the international trade in opium and sexual slavery and its work to alleviate the plight of refugees, particularly in Turkey in the period up to 1926. One of its innovations in this latter area was the 1922 introduction of the Nansen passport, the first internationally recognized identity card for stateless refugees.
For all of its successes, the League failed to intervene in many conflicts leading up to World War II, including the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second Sino-Japanese War. Certainly, the onset of the Second World War demonstrated that the League had failed in its primary purpose: the prevention of another world war. There were a variety of reasons for this failure, many connected to general weaknesses within the organization, such as voting structure that made ratifying resolutions difficult and incomplete representation among world nations. Additionally, the power of the League was limited by the United States’s refusal to join.
New World Order: Britain, France, the United States
The end of World War I saw the defeat of the Ottomans and Germans, and the Russians reduced to a chaotic, communist state. In the early 1920s, many of the world’s major actors were in a state of crazed confusion, which effectively reduced their global influence. As such, the global community was spearheaded by a decidedly Western group of countries, primarily Great Britain, United States, and France. Although Britain still reeled from economic hardships, its status as an international lawmaker and arbiter still far surpassed that of the largely isolationist United States. France, likewise, reeled with the pain of economically, and physically rebuilding their country. Still, these “big three” nations: Britain, the United States, and France, dominated much of the New World Order following World War I.
Learning Objectives
- Evaluate the argument that the “New World Order” was really a “New Western Order” after World War I.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Matthias Erzberger: German minister of finance who signed the Treaty of Versailles on behalf of Germans
New World Order: global approach to establishing precedents, laws, ideas following World War I
Second Polish Republic: rebirth of an official country of Poland in 1918
The Peace Settlement and the Discontented
Germany
In October 1918, Matthias Erzberger—a German politician who had dramatically opposed the war—arrived in the quiet French forest of Compiègne to negotiate a peace settlement with the Allies. Aware that they had the Germans in a vise grip, the Allies would not give way on their peace terms. In the same forest in France, Erzberger sat in a boxcar and reluctantly signed the document which accused the Germans of starting the war and that forced them to pay massive war reparations to the Allied nations. A year later, these terms would be formalized under the Treaty of Versailles.
Erzberger received no accolades for his behavior. Although largely ignored in society, far-right paramilitary groups and organizations resented him for “betraying” the German nation. In 1921, Erzberger was assassinated by two members of the far-right organization Organisation Consul. It was a foreshadowing of future events with the rise of far-right German organizations, political assassinations, and entrenched belief that Germany had been betrayed from within. Twenty-two years after Erzberger signed the surrender of the Germans to the Allies, Adolf Hitler would force the French to sign their surrender to the German forces in the very same boxcar.
Italy
Germany was not the only country discontented with the Treaty of Versailles and its provisions. Critically, all three of the three main Axis countries in World War II were slighted by the 1919 Treaty. The Italians had played a small role in which they supported the Allies, but the Italian casualty-rate was above average. Italy expected compensation for their losses. Instead, the big three countries, Britain, the U.S., and France, dominated talks at Versailles and largely ignored Italy. Unlike the British and French, who acquired substantial territory after World War I, Italy gained very little territory, and was refused their coveted territory: Fiume. The slights at Versailles helped propel political chaos in Italy in 1919 – 1920, as well as prompted them to adapt fascist policies.
Japan
Japan was also disappointed by the Treaty of Versailles. As a non-European people, Japan sought racial equality in the League of Nations Commission. They considered it their due for their part in fighting for the Allies in World War I, albeit it on a minimal scale. Moreover, the Japanese considered themselves equal in every measure to the Western Europeans, Americans, and Australians. They had secured territory throughout the Pacific, modernized, and developed a strong navy. For these reasons, they sought equal terms in negotiating world affairs. Their demands were rejected unanimously by the British, Americans, Australians, and French. The Australians, whose government promoted a “White Australia” policy, vehemently opposed the idea that Japan be given equal status with them in the League of Nations. Japan, like Italy, had been slighted in the worst way by the Allies. Like Italy, Japan would carry the memories of the slight into the opening years of World War II.
Birth of the Second Polish Republic
In deciding the global order, the British, French, and Americans often ignored nationalist movements and cries for independence. They regularly slighted the Japanese and Arabs, as well as ignored the Africans and much of Latin America. In one case, though, they promoted the creation of a country: Poland. Under the Treaty of Versailles, the Allies agreed to oversee the recreation of a Polish state. In late 1918, the Second Polish Republic was born based on historical borders and Polish populations.
While it cannot be doubted that the restoration of Poland was a morally good maneuver, it had little to do with the welfare of the Poles, and the Allies did not understand the complex problems that would arise from the creation of the state. Indeed, the recreation of Poland provoked Russia, Germany, and Ukraine. Wars were tipped off between Poland and each of its eastern neighbors during the interwar years, unsettling the area politically and economically.
Moreover, most of the Allies saw new Polish state as a buffer. It was a Catholic nation that separated the Western Europeans from the “godless,” communists in Russia. It also was further insult to the vanquished enemies, Austria-Hungary, and Germany, which lost territory with the creation of the Second Polish Republic.
Long Term Impact
After World War I, the new world order was led by Western nations who concerned themselves primarily with protecting Western interests. They openly rejected partnership with non-Europeans and slighted former allies. While the ideas of peace and world rebuilding were promoted, the new world order largely turned a blind eye to problems outside of the West, with fateful consequences.
Attributions
Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Title Image - 27 May 1919 candid photo of the Council of Four. Attribution: Edward N. Jackson (US Army Signal Corps), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Provided by: Wikipedia. Location: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Big_four-1919-cropped.jpg. License: Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal.
Willmont, H.P. World War I. DK Publishing, New York: 2012. 282-305.
Boundless World History
"The Treaty of Versailles"
Adapted from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/the-treaty-of-versailles/
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