PARIS 1919 (33 page)

France, and Belgium, had argued from the start that claims for direct damage should receive priority in any distribution of reparations. Belgium had been picked clean. In the heavily industrialized north of France, the Germans had shipped out what they wanted for their own use and destroyed much of the rest. Even as German forces were retreating in 1918, they found time to blow up France's most important coal mines. As Clemenceau said bitterly: “The barbarians of whom history spoke took all that they found in the territories invaded by them, but destroyed nothing; they settled down to share the common existence. Now, however, the enemy had systematically destroyed everything that came in his way.” Judging by captured German documents, it looked as though the Germans intended to cripple French industry and leave a clear field for their own.
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France and Belgium had hoped to include war costs in the final tally of reparations. Here Belgium, for once, was on firm ground: Wilson had made it clear that when he talked of Belgian restoration he meant all the harm done by Germany's initial, and illegal, invasion in August 1914. The French case was weaker. Clemenceau, who did not want to antagonize the Americans when he needed their support on the other issues so crucial to France's security, chose not to push this. He realized, although he did not say so publicly, that there was a limit to how much Germany could pay. Klotz admitted to the Foreign Affairs Commission of the French Chamber of Deputies that war costs would have produced a figure that even novelists in their wildest dreams would not come up with.
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The French also realized that, since Britain had spent more on the war than France, including war costs would boost the British share of whatever the Germans finally paid. The French quietly changed tack, arguing that only direct damages—for their destroyed towns and villages, their flooded coal mines, their torn-up railway lines—should be included. That would give France about 70 percent of all German payments, Britain perhaps 20 percent and other claimants—Belgium, Italy, Serbia—whatever was left. After intense bargaining, the British insisted on 30 percent, with the French getting 50 percent and the remaining 20 percent shared out among the smaller powers. It took until 1920 to get a final agreement on 28 percent for Britain and 52 percent for France.
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The French, it should be noticed, made the greatest concession. They were to follow a similar pattern on the total figure to be paid by Germany. Clemenceau, who always thought in terms of the overall settlement, may have set a high figure early on partly to persuade the Americans to consider the French proposals for continued Allied economic cooperation. At the end of February, when it was clear that the Americans were not interested, Loucheur came down to £8 billion ($40 billion), just over a quarter of what France had been demanding. Cunliffe, representing Britain, refused to go any lower than £9.4 billion ($47 billion). The British suspected that the French were siding with the Americans on a lower figure and leaving them to appear the most demanding. The picture painted so vividly by Keynes and others of a vindictive France, intent on grinding Germany down, begins to dissolve.
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In the end, mainly because of British resistance, it proved impossible to agree on a figure for the treaty. At the end of March the Allied leaders, now meeting as the Council of Four, decided on the alternative of the special commission. The postponement, one of the American experts wrote in his diary, “will relieve Great Britain and France from their troubles of making public the small amount they are to get from reparations because both Prime Ministers believe their government will be overthrown if the facts are known.” He was right. By the time the commission set a final total of 132 billion gold marks (approximately £6.5 billion, or $34 billion) in 1921, emotions about Germany, especially in Britain, were cooling off.
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The German delegation that came to Versailles in May complained bitterly about the decision not to announce the final figures of the reparations until after the treaty had been signed. “No limit is fixed save the capacity of the German people for payment, determined not by their standard of life but solely by their capacity to meet the demands of their enemies by their labour. The German people would thus be condemned to perpetual slave labour.” The emotion, given the general dismay over the terms, is understandable; the interpretation, however, unduly pessimistic. The special commission on reparations had to take into account Germany's capacity to pay; it also had to consult the Germans themselves. Furthermore, the categories of damage for which reparations were to be paid were specifically limited; not enough, perhaps, since they included pensions, but they were certainly not open-ended.
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Starting the section in the treaty on reparations were two articles— Articles 231 and 232—that came to be the object of particular loathing in Germany and the cause of uneasy consciences among the Allies. Article 231 assigned responsibility to Germany and its allies for all the damage caused by the war. Article 232 then restricted what was an unlimited liability by saying that since Germany's resources were in fact limited, it should be asked to pay only for the specified damages. The first clause—the war guilt clause, as it later came to be known—had been put in after much debate and many revisions, primarily to satisfy the British and the French that Germany's legal liability was clearly established. The Americans helpfully put one of their clever young lawyers on to it. John Foster Dulles, the future secretary of state, thought he had both established the liability and successfully limited it and that, on the whole, the treaty was pretty fair. The European Allies were happy with his formulation. Lloyd George, always sensitive to political considerations, said, “The English public, like the French public, thinks the Germans must above all acknowledge their obligation to compensate us for all the consequences of their aggression. When this is done we will come to the question of Germany's capacity to pay; we all think she will be unable to pay more than this document requires of her.” If the Germans balked at paying a particular category of damages, Loucheur thought, the Allies could always threaten them with an unlimited claim. No one thought there would be any difficulty over the clauses themselves.
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16

Deadlock Over the German Terms

REPARATIONS HAD STILL not been settled when Wilson arrived back in Paris on March 14—and neither had the Rhineland. The president had a quick private meeting with Lloyd George, who suggested that some sort of military guarantee, plus of course his beloved Channel tunnel, might satisfy the French. The two decided to offer to come to France's aid if Germany attacked. In return, France would have to drop its plans for a separate Rhine state. Clemenceau could be brought round, Wilson thought: “When you have hooked him, you first draw in a little, then give liberty to the line, then draw him back, finally wear him out, break him down, and land him.”
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That afternoon Clemenceau joined the two men at the Crillon. He talked again of France's sufferings, its fears for the future, its need for Germany to stop at the Rhine. Lloyd George and Wilson produced their proposal. Clemenceau was delighted but asked for time to think it over. For two days Clemenceau and his closest advisers, including his foreign minister, Pichon, and Tardieu, mulled over the new proposal. He did not bother to consult his cabinet or Poincaré. Tardieu conceded that they would be criminal to turn it down, but there was still a problem: “A French Government satisfied with only this and nothing more would be equally guilty.” France, said the official reply on March 18, needed other guarantees: an Allied occupation of the Rhineland and the bridgeheads for at least five years; no German troops there and none within fifty miles of the east bank of the river. Wilson was greatly irritated. Talking to the French was like handling a rubber ball: “You tried to make an impression but as soon as you moved your finger the ball was as round as ever.” Even Balfour was moved from his customary calm. France, he told Lloyd George, would be better off working for a strong international system, “the very possibility of which many of them regard with ill-concealed derision.” Without that, “no manipulation of the Rhine frontier is going to make France anything more than a second-rate Power, trembling at the nod of its great neighbours on the East, and depending from day to day on the changes and chances of a shifting diplomacy and uncertain alliances.”
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The next month saw memoranda and notes hurtling back and forth as the French tried to surround the Anglo-American guarantee with additional provisions. Day after day Clemenceau and his colleagues buttonholed the British and the Americans with new proposals: to enlarge the demilitarized zone on the east bank, to set up a commission of inspection with sweeping powers, or to give France the right to occupy the Rhineland if Germany violated any of the other provisions of the peace treaty, from disarmament to reparations payments.
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And they renewed their demand for the Saar, where the southwestern edge of the Rhineland met Alsace-Lorraine. What had been a quiet farming country with beautiful river valleys had become a major coal mining and manufacturing area in the nineteenth century. In 1919, when coal supplied almost all of Europe's fuel needs, that made the region very valuable. Inconveniently for France, almost all of the Saar's 650,000 inhabitants were German. The French tried historical arguments: the town of Saarlouis had been built by Louis XIV, the region had briefly been owned by the French during the French Revolution and the borders of 1814 gave most of it to France. “You base your claim,” Wilson told Clemenceau, “on what took place a hundred and four years ago. We cannot readjust Europe on the basis of conditions that existed in such a remote period.” The French did better when they spoke of reparations. Wilson had talked in his Fourteen Points about restitution to France for the damage done by Germany, and everyone agreed that the Germans had deliberately destroyed France's coalfields. The British and the American experts, who had been working privately together since February, advised that France should control the Saar's coal. The French held out for outright annexation.
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By the end of March, Lloyd George was seriously concerned about the way the German terms were shaping up. The French were insisting on elaborate controls of the Rhineland and annexation of the Saar. In the east, Poland was getting territory that included not only some three million Germans but also the huge coalfields in Silesia. His own public opinion appeared to be moving in favor of a rapid, reasonably moderate, peace. His military and financial experts were warning him about the costs of having large forces scattered about the globe. He was worried about labor unrest at home and about revolution in Europe. On March 21 word came in that communists had seized power in Hungary. The next day Lloyd George and several of his closest advisers, including Kerr, Hankey and Henry Wilson, took a break from negotiations over the German treaty to spend the weekend at the Hôtel de France et d'Angleterre in the charming Paris suburb of Fontainebleau. The party visited the palace with its lovely park, but its real purpose was to take a fresh look at the whole treaty and to come up with something Britain, France and the United States could accept.

That afternoon, Lloyd George called his team into his private sitting room and assigned each a role, as an ally or an enemy. As far as we know, no one played the United States. Hankey, who took Britain, argued that Germany deserved punishment and should certainly lose its colonies. The Allies, however, must not be vindictive, or they would deliver the center of Europe to the dreadful peril of Bolshevism. For the sake of Europe and its own people, Germany must be rehabilitated. It must become part of the League of Nations. This was in Britain's interest, since it did not want to keep troops on the Continent permanently. Hankey also reminded his audience that yet again the British navy had saved the country; they must look out for any threats to their seapower.

Henry Wilson threw himself into his two roles with enthusiasm. First, he turned his military cap back to front to play a German officer. “I explained my present situation, and my wish to come to an agreement with England and France, but saw no hope, for I read into the crushing terms they were imposing on me a determination on their part to kill me outright. As I could not stand alone I would turn to Russia, and in course of time would help that distracted country to recover law and order, and then make an alliance with her.” Then he became a Frenchwoman, the significant factor, he said, in shaping French opinion. He painted a moving picture of “the losses of so many of their husbands, sons and men folk, the unbearable anxiety and long separations, the financial losses, and the desperate struggle and overwork to keep their homes going.” Of course they wanted revenge and restitution from Germany, and they wanted assurance that Germany could never hurt them again.
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Lloyd George listened carefully and then gave his own views. His main point was that the peace terms must not destroy Germany. As the discussions continued, Kerr was given the job of making sense out of all this. By Monday morning, he had typed out a final draft—the Fontainebleau Memorandum. Lloyd George arrived back in Paris full of energy. “He means business this week,” reported Frances Stevenson. “He will stand no more nonsense either from French or Americans. He is taking the long view about the Peace, & insists that it should be one that will not leave bitterness for years to come & probably lead to another war.”
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(She loyally overlooked his contribution to both the bitterness and the delay in drawing up the German terms.)

Lloyd George presented the memorandum to his colleagues on the Council of Four. It urged the peacemakers to make a moderate peace that would last. “You may strip Germany of her colonies, reduce her armaments to a mere police force and her navy to that of a fifth-rate power,” he wrote; “all the same in the end if she feels that she has been unjustly treated in the peace of 1919 she will find means of exacting retribution from her conquerors.” They must not leave Europe another poisoned legacy by placing millions of Germans or Hungarians or other minorities under alien rule. They must not stimulate the revolutionary forces burning their way through Europe. Above all, they must not drive Germany into a corner. “The greatest danger that I see in the present situation is that Germany may throw in her lot with Bolshevism and place her resources, her brains, her vast organising power at the disposal of the revolutionary fanatics whose dream it is to conquer the world for Bolshevism by force of arms.” Lloyd George painted an alternative future, where Britain, the United States, France and Italy would agree to limit their naval building and their armies, and where the League of Nations, the guardian “of international right and international liberty throughout the world,” would admit a new, democratic Germany, as soon as it was sufficiently stable.

How was this to be achieved? Germany should still lose territory, but not as much as some people wanted. Poland should still have its corridor to the sea, but as few Germans as possible should end up under Polish rule. The Rhineland, suitably demilitarized, should stay with Germany. Lloyd George was less categorical on the Saar; perhaps France could have the 1814 frontiers, or merely ownership of the coal mines. Germany must, of course, give up all its colonies. And, yes, it should pay reparations. Wilson approved on almost every count—after all, he could have written much of the Fontainebleau Memorandum himself. The French, however, were furious. “If you find the peace too harsh,” Clemenceau wrote to Lloyd George, “let us give Germany back her colonies and her fleet, and let us not impose upon the continental nations alone—France, Belgium, Bohemia and Poland—the territorial concessions required to appease the beaten aggressor.” It was, he added, “a sheer illusion” to think that Germany could be appeased by moderate terms.
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Illusion or not, the British were determined to disengage themselves from the Continent and its problems. A balance of power there had always served Britain well; intervention was needed only when a single nation threatened to dominate the whole. Germany had been that threat, but it would be foolish now to destroy it and leave France supreme. As passions cooled, the British remembered both their old rivalry with France and the potential for friendship between Germany and Britain. British industries needed markets; there were 70 million Germans. Britain wanted stability on the Continent, not the sort of chaos that could so clearly be seen farther east; a solid Germany at Europe's center could provide that.

In the short run, the Fontainebleau Memorandum accomplished little. The British and the French continued to squabble over their share of reparations. The French refused to produce an estimate of either their damages or what they wanted Germany to pay. “It was a crime,” Wilson exclaimed to Grayson, “to waste time when every hour meant so much to the settlement of world conditions along proper lines.” And yet he feared that, if he pushed his allies too hard, their governments might fall and the peace be delayed still further.
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Clemenceau now appeared to be hardening his position on Germany. Britain and the United States, he pointed out, were protected by the sea. “We must have an equivalent on land.” He demanded the Saar and held out for a military occupation of the Rhineland. “The Germans are a servile people who need force to support an argument,” he said. On March 31 he allowed Foch to present to the Council of Four an impassioned plea for a separate buffer state. “The peace,” said Foch, “can only be guaranteed by the possession of the left bank of the Rhine until further notice, that is to say, as long as Germany has not had a change of heart.” Lloyd George and Wilson listened politely but without paying close attention.
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Wilson felt the French were simply being obstructive. “I feel terribly disappointed,” he told Grayson. “After arguing with Clemenceau for two hours and pushing him along, he practically agreed to everything, and just as he was leaving he swung back to where we had begun.”
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Wilson was showing the strain, but so were they all. The Council of Four was meeting virtually nonstop, the weather was frightful and the bad news kept coming in: from Hungary, where the communists were firmly in control; from Russia, where the Bolsheviks appeared to be winning the civil war; from Danzig, where the German authorities were refusing to allow Polish troops to land.

On March 28 Clemenceau yet again raised France's claim to the Saar. Wilson said, unfairly, that the French had never mentioned it as one of their war aims and that, in any case, giving it to France was contrary to the Fourteen Points. Clemenceau accused the president of being pro-German and threatened to resign rather than sign the peace treaty. Wilson said this was a deliberate lie and that it was quite clear that Clemenceau wanted him to go back to the United States. Clemenceau, equally angry, marched out of the room. He had not expected, he told Mordacq, such immovable opposition to French demands.

Lloyd George and Orlando, who had watched with consternation, did their best to smooth things over in that afternoon's meeting. Lloyd George chuckled appreciatively when Wilson replied to his apology for being late by saying, “I would hate to have to use the term the
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Mr. Lloyd George.” When Tardieu tactlessly went on at length about the ancient links between the Saar and France, Orlando pointed out that Italy, under such reasoning, could claim the lands of the former Roman empire; it would be awkward, though, for his good friend Lloyd George. Everyone laughed heartily, except Clemenceau. Lloyd George suggested a compromise: an autonomous Saar, with the French owning the coal mines. It was agreed that the experts would look into it. Clemenceau made an apology of sorts and spoke of the chains of affection that bound France to the United States; later, to his circle of advisers, he spoke of Wilson's extraordinary intransigence. Wilson made a graceful reference to the greatness of France. In private he complained bitterly that the French were holding up the whole Peace Conference. Clemenceau, he said, was like an old dog: “He turns slowly around & around, following his tail, before he gets down to it.”
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