The Treaty of Versailles 1: The Paris Peace Conference begins.

The Big Four - L to R Lloyd George, Orlando,
Clemenceau and Wilson

World War One comprised four years of military devastation bookended by diplomatic incidents and periods of frenetic political and diplomatic activity. The shots fired in Sarajevo on 28^th June 1914 (see Post 6/11/2014) led to the July crisis which, after 37 days ended in failure and full scale war (Post 8/11/2014). The consequences were soon and obviously apparent. 
The military armistice of November 1918 (Post 11/11/2018) started a process of intense and even more complex diplomacy and politics. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 culminated (although did not end) with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors on 28^th June 1919 – five years to the day since the Sarajevo assassinations. The Treaty followed a longer period of negotiations and its outcomes played out over a much longer time than the 37 days of 1914.

Versailles has been bitterly criticised over the years, particularly by those watching solely through history’s retrospectoscope. The treaty, rather than any individual or country, is popularly held responsible for an even worse world war twenty years later. Of course the reality is different, and more nuanced.

John Buchan’s writings have influenced much of the detail in this blog, but he wrote in much less detail about the Paris Peace Conference that produced the treaty. Years later he did contribute to its re-appraisal, expressing the view that future generations would look more kindly on its outcomes. I’m not sure we have, but I feel we should. Margaret Macmillan’s magnificent sweep of the Conference and its context – Peacemakers* - sets out how wide and complex were the challenges they faced. The Peacemakers had to square a large number of circles at a time of major instability and international bankruptcy. The guns may have fallen silent on the Western Front on 11^th November, but in eastern Europe, Russia and the near east any number of revolutionary, religious or nationalist conflicts continued. Considering the toxic mess made of Brexit by today’s political negotiators – a peaceful and straightforward task according to its promoters – I would say they achieved a great deal in Paris in 1919. To hold the Treaty entirely culpable for WW2 absolves all those involved in the ensuing twenty years of any responsibility. It is akin to holding Edward Heath entirely responsible for the mess of Brexit. I don’t believe that even Nigel Farage has done that yet.

Returning to the Peace Conference, it ran for over one year from January 1919 and was unprecedented in its scope. The ‘balance of power’ had mostly preserved peace among the great powers for a century (the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 being the main exception). Most comparable had been the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15 when Europe was stabilised after the Napoleonic Wars. However, as Buchan summarised “…in 1814 the victors held most of Europe and had armies ready and willing to carry out their commands…. a little group of grandees met in dignified seclusion (to deliberate and produce) … the Treaty of Paris with 120 Articles signed by seventeen delegates.” In 1919 however, “the victorious armies were so weary that the further use of force was almost unthinkable… they (deliberated)… under the arc lamp of suspicious popular opinion” and eventually there were seventy signatories to the 441 Articles of the Treaty of Versailles".

The Paris Peace Conference faced a mountainous task.

Amidst mounting excitement and expectations, the major and minor players of the Conference (and the world’s media) gathered in Paris in the first days of 1919. Those compiling the agenda, and the sequencing of events, had to cover three broad areas: territorial adjustments; reparations and damage penalties, and arrangements for future world peace. At the core of the business was the signing of peace terms by Germany, but the ripples from that process affected most of the world. The most influential players decreased in number over the course of the conference. Initially a Supreme Council of ten members was drawn from the five allied victorious countries – France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and the USA – who fielded their Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers. By April, the Japanese were dropped from the Council, and the four leaders (Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Orlando and Wilson) became the big four, deciding all the main questions. By the end of April the Italians, incensed by their treatment, had walked out, leaving the triumvirate of Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Wilson to carry the historical can for their judgements.

The Supreme Council sat above a large assembly of committees, sub-groups and expert groups, distilling information, attempting to reconcile opposing views and creating compromise suggestions, but all routes led to the big four prime minsters. They met together on hundreds of occasions and, in different ways, none of them ever fully recovered from the strain of the process. They were different personalities, and spending so much time together led to numerous, often sharp, disagreements despite the like and respect they had for each other. Wilson arrived in Europe in December 1918, to tumultuous welcomes in places he visited, most notably in Paris itself. Except for one short period in February 1919 he was to stay in Europe for more than six months – an unprecedented absence for a US President, and it did him no favours back home. However, for the Paris conference, he began as its hero, occupying the high moral ground of his famous fourteen points (See Post 13/1/2018) with their principles of justice, self-determination of peoples and future world peace. His crown’s jewel was to be the Charter for the League of Nations, and he would compromise in other important areas to achieve it.

Woodrow Wilson's tumultuous reception in
Paris. He arrived as a hero, bearing the hopes
of millions but left under a cloud.

Whereas Lloyd George and Clemenceau  were more driven by the requirements of the 11^th November Armistice, and the need to nullify any future German military threat. Lloyd George was, perhaps, less convinced of this need (versus the broader ‘imperial’ opportunities) than Clemenceau. However, he had recently won a snap general election at home when he campaigned on a popular message of squeezing Germany ‘until the pips squeak’ and the execution of the Kaiser. Clemenceau had spent his whole political life obsessing about threat to France from Germany and the enduring injustice of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Rumour had it that he requested for his burial to be in the upright position, facing Germany. France had lost proportionately more than any other belligerent country, including a quarter of its male population aged 18-30. Small wonder French public opinion was against showing any magnanimity to Germany. Speaking ahead of the conference he said “Yes we have won the war and not without difficulty; and now we are going to have to win the peace and that will perhaps be even more difficult” (Foch would angrily, and famously, denounce him six months later for losing the peace).

The big four made all significant decisions but many other important figures from world history influenced them – John Maynard Keynes, Venizelos, TE Lawrence and Prince Feisal, Ataturk and Lenin to name but a few. Indeed, Lenin’s Bolshevik revolution and the resultant chaos in Russia and Eastern Europe comprise an ever-absent ‘elephant’ in the conference rooms throughout.

The Peace Conference did not end with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, although the three leaders returned home afterwards. Their foreign ministers stayed on in Paris, struggling with the details until the following January, and the process was not completed until the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

The next part will look at the requests, claims and counter-claims made by participant nations, and how the Supreme Council attempted to deal with them.

*full title “Peacemakers. Six months that changed the world. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and its attempt to end war