The Treaty of Versailles 3: The Middle East and Asia

The Occupation of Constantinople 1919

Constantinople stood as a strategic symbol of the gateway to the near east and Asia. For centuries it had represented the presence of controlling imperial power – whether Byzantine or Ottoman. In 1919 it was also a microcosm of the challenges facing the Peace Conference in dealing with the world beyond Europe. Leaderless since the surrender of the Ottomans to the British (see Post 8/10/2018), it was nominally under the administration of the British. It was an unstable cauldron, teeming with defeated soldiers of several nationalities, and with refugees and dispossessed itinerants. Britain was really only interested in free passage for its fleets, and was not keen to hold a mandate or protectorate. The Russians had wanted Constantinople since the times of Peter the Great as an outlet to the Mediterranean for their Black Sea fleet. They might even have pressed a spurious claim for control, based on wartime promises made by Britain and France, but for the regime change and Lenin’s preference for world revolution over world domination. Constantinople, like the remainder of the Middle East had to wait for the judgements of Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George, and their advisers. 

In the interim, the Ottoman naval minister Hussein Rauf (who had led the armistice negotiations with the British) persuaded the Sultan Mehmed to take a very compliant approach with the British peace demands. Other Turks became alarmed by this, seeing the danger of losing control of their homelands. Chief among them was the war hero, Mustafa Kemal, who would become known as Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey. In the short term he raised forces for an independent Turkey, and moved its putative capital away for Constantinople to the little known city of Ankara in the interior of Asia Minor. He would prove more than a match for the ambitions of Venizelos in that region (See previous post).

Today's Middle East emerged from the chaos of WW1

Middle East. 
Of the big three leaders at the Conference, Lloyd George had the greatest ambitions for control and influence in the region. Clemenceau was so focused on the Treaty for Germany that other parts of the world were of secondary importance to him (not all of his advisers agreed). Wilson was not enthusiastic to have America involved much beyond the principles of his fourteen points, and viewed imperial land grabbing with distaste.

In the 19^th century the British had been content to have a weak Ottoman empire in north Africa and the near east as a buffer between the other great powers and Britain’s possessions in Asia. But a crumbling Ottoman Empire was another matter. In the 1880s, the first signs of Egyptian nationalism prompted the British to invade, to protect their newly acquired asset, the Suez Canal. Cairo, at the heart of their ‘protectorate’ formed the base of the British army in the Middle East for WW1 (the Egyptian Expeditionary Force). As the war progressed the British gradually reversed their mishaps at Gallipoli and Kut, and steadily pushed the Ottomans out of Arabia and Mesopotamia. They made promises to the Arabs and to the Jews (See Post 30/8/2018) along the way but were considering control of the whole area from Suez to the ancient provinces of Baghdad and Basra. The first man to map this out was Sir Mark Sykes, a somewhat eccentric British aristocrat, diplomat and sometime MP. The French had their own ambitions and their diplomat Francois Picot was ordered to represent their interests. The ‘Sykes-Picot Agreement’ of 1916 formed the basis of the carve up between Britain and France, but there were numerous sub-plots involving the Arabs (led by Hashemite King Hussein); the Jews (led by Zionist Chaim Weizmann); the Italians and the Russians. By the time the partition of the Ottoman Empire came to be discussed at the Peace Conference some of the irreconcilable promises were exposed. Clemenceau’s focus on Europe worked in favour of Britain. He was content to concede Mosul to them, provided France kept Syria and Lebanon. Britain kept control of Jordan and Palestine, and now added to Province of Mosul to those of Baghdad and Basra, creating a new, oil rich nation, Iraq.

All this left only Persia (Iran) and Afghanistan between the middle east and India.  With civil war in Russia, the ‘great game’ of the 19^th Century between Russia and Britain for control of that region, had swung back to England – for now.

Tsingtao (now Qingdao), Shandong peninsula.
 German colony until 1914, then occupied by
the Japanese.

China. The ancient and closed eras of Chinese civilization, in the centuries since Marco Polo, had been disturbed by European interference (opium wars, Boxer rebellion, German occupation of Tsingtao) and more recently by aggressive Japanese expansion on to the Chinese mainland (in Korea, Manchuria and the Shandong peninsula, including Tsingtao). Japan was taking its place at the Conference as an ally, and was expecting favourable treatment of its further claims on China. However, China at that time was undergoing great change and inner turmoil (that would last for decades). In 1917, previously neutral China had declared war on Germany. This was clever tactical move to forestall further Japanese demands on their territory, set out in a 21 points memorandum. In an even more creative move, China proposed to send ‘labourers not soldiers’ to support the war effort at the front. This made a significant contribution in 1918, when 140,000 Chinese laboured behind the allied lines of the Western Front, freeing up soldiers for front line action. Finding a pragmatic compromise between opponents China and Japan, both of them wartime allies, put a great strain on the big three – Wilson almost had a breakdown. When the decisions came down broadly in favour of Japan, the reaction from China was extreme. Demonstrations in Tiananmen Square were followed by violence and descent into civil war. Neither were the Japanese fully mollified. Their bitterness over the way they had been treated no doubt contributed to the rise of anti-Western Japanese militarism during the 1920s.

India. Britain was by now facing increasing turbulence from nationalism in India. Gandhi had arrived from South Africa during the war and was transforming the Indian National Congress to a mass movement. India’s large muslim population was restless and their reaction to the dismantling of the Sultan’s empire was unpredictable – the Amritsar massacre of 1919 resulted from inter-religious tensions.

Lloyd George may have been winning arguments to enhance Britain’s influence in the world, but resistance in the Dominions and Colonies was increasing, and an exhausted and economically weakened Britain would struggle to retain its power. The Dominions, particularly the Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians, having contributed so much to the war effort were no longer willing to follow unquestioningly the decisions taken in London. They had shocked Lloyd George with their demands for strong representation at the Peace Conference, and the abrasive Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, enjoyed sparring with the Big Three, much to Wilson’s annoyance. He demanded New Guinea and a string of formerly German Pacific islands be voted to Australian control, and his NZ counterpart demanded the same of Samoa.

In today’s management speak, there were many wicked problems lurking in the agenda of the Paris Peace Conference. And yet the headline event and outcome would have to be the signing of the Treaty by Germany, with all the complexities and implications that it would hold. Small wonder that many of the big decisions had to be shelved for further work and later treaties – some successful, some disastrous. Settling with Germany was core business.     

The Treaty of Versailles 2: Addressing the chaos in Europe

A new Europe was emerging at the Peace Conference

It had been Wilson’s intention to stay in Paris only for a pre-Conference before the main event started in late January 1919. Thereafter  he planned to leave America’s plans in the hands of his deputy, and well known political fixer, ‘Colonel’ Edward House. However, as the enormity of the tasks became apparent – the pre-conference barely amounted to a starter for ten – Wilson resolved to stay right through until the signing of the treaty with Germany. Early on Wilson accepted House’s proposal to meet Lloyd George and Clemenceau’s concerns about his fourteen points by adding the question of penalties for Germany and removing the point about freedom of the seas. Otherwise the negotiations and horse-trading did not get into full swing until March, after Wilson’s return from a two weeks visit home to deal with Congress anxieties about the League of Nations.

The Supreme Council was hardly starting with a clean sheet. Four of the world’s six great empires – Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russian and the Ottomans – were in chaos. The other two, Great Britain and France, were determined to preserve and increase their own influence, despite being exhausted and deeply in debt. Borders and government were already being fought over in what would become Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic States, Greece and Turkey. All of them were vulnerable in one way or another to the civil war that was starting to play out in Russia. Wilson’s principle of self-determination was clearly going to be difficult to apply consistently to victors and vanquished. It was a reluctance to engage with these issues that contributed to the shrinking down of the Supreme Council from ten to three members.

The Japanese had been in an uncomfortable position from the outset. Proposed by Britain as members on the basis of wartime promises for naval support, they were accepted only grudgingly by the others. In the racially bigoted views of the time they were viewed as an inferior nation of ‘yellow peoples’, and their lead delegate was not a prime minister, but a diplomat – albeit an eminent one, Crown Prince Suonji. Awkward in meetings, the Japanese pressed hard for their own issues but showed little interest in the main agenda. One of their points was for inclusion of a racial equality clause in the League Charter. This would cause Wilson to make a number of concessions, and no little embarrassment. Nonetheless, by April the Japanese had been excluded from the Council. The loss of the Italian membership was a more serious matter (see Part 4) but was also born out of intransigence and self interest.

All across the land mass of Europe and Asia hot spots of instability were resulting from the rise of nationalism amongst crumbling empires; nascent revolutions and religious divisions among impoverished people. The large dominions of the British Empire were flexing their newly found political muscle. In the USA a concerned Congress scrutinised Wilson’s activities skeptically. South America, held unofficially in the sway of the USA’s Monroe doctrine (see Post 9/03/2017) was perhaps the only continent to escape interference. Africa was treated dismissively, as always, and Germany’s previous colonies there were soon and easily divided up between Britain, France and Italy. Africa was allowed no dreams of nationalism, only imperialism.

A brief review of nation state issues across Europe:

The Balkans. The powder keg that detonated WW1 was always going to be a challenge for Wilson’s self-determination principle. Muslim versus Christian religion complications (the latter divided between catholic, protestant and orthodox) added to the ongoing ethnic tensions. A patchwork of aspiring nations would comprise a land of south slavs – Jugo Slavia - initially the Kingdom of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. This much was a fait accomplit, but borders, influence and resources were another. Serbia, as the strongest to emerge from the pre-war Balkan Wars, assumed leadership and insisted on Belgrade as the capital. To the west, Austria was eviscerated, but Italy had designs on large sections of the Slovenian and Croatian Adriatic coasts, particularly the ports of Trieste and Fiume. Bosnia Herzogovina, Montenegro and Kosovo comprised an unhappy and suspicious group of fellow slav states to the south. Further south from them Albania, under pressure from all sides, was struggling to survive as an independent nation. Despite all of these issues, the biggest headache for the conference would come from setting Yugoslavia’s northern border with the newly independent Hungary.

Czechoslovakia. Another de facto new slav state was awaiting clarification on its future. Previous posts described the campaigns of Masaryk and Benes and the heroics of the Czech Legion (see Posts 11/7/2017 and 31/5/2018). As the conference began Benes and Masaryk were ensconced in Paris, confidently awaiting ratification of their proposals. But, again, there were questions to be resolved about borders and the treatment of ethnic groups within them. A sizeable German minority lived in a region later to be notorious as the Sudetenland (cue Munich 1938) but also there were disputed borders with the new states of Poland and Hungary.

Bela Kun - Communist
Revolutionary who seized
power in Hungary in 1919

Hungary. As a defeated nation, Hungary was in a weaker position, but tried to paint itself as a new liberal democracy, freed from the shackles of Austria’s Habsburgs. Its difficulty lay in its several substantial ethnic minority groups – Slovaks, Rumanians and Slavs – that had been badly treated in the past by the ruling Magyars, and all these new neighbours wanted their slice of Hungarian territory. The main disputes were over Transylvania (a large mountain region viewed as its own by Rumania) and the Banat. The latter was an area on the lower Danube coveted by 'Yugoslavia', and important for trade and communications. A further small area of land in Carinthia was the cause of violent struggles between Czechoslovaks and Hungarians. Matters became a whole lot more alarming for the conference in late March, when an unknown communist, Bela Kun, seized power with a coup in Budapest, bringing Bolshevism to the heart of Europe. The Supreme Council dispatched representatives to Budapest to argue for interim neutral zones, and possibly to discover whether Kun might be a conduit to negotiating with Lenin. Italy proposed that the jugoslavs should advance into the Banat (hoping this would help compensate their own demands for Trieste and Fiume) and the French military commander in the region authorised it. The Rumanians began their moves into Transylvania, and the ‘peace’ conference found itself struggling to prevent an all out war. Stability of a sort did not return until some months after the Treaty in June.

Ignacy Paderewski.
First Polish PM after
Versailles

Poland. An independent Poland was included as the thirteenth of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, but once again borders and the rights of ethnic minority groups created tensions and complexity. As with Hungary, definitive borders would not be agreed until long after the Treaty on 29^th June, and poor Poland would hold on to them for only twenty years. The conference’s expert panel on Poland held “more meetings than any other at the conference*”. The borders of a new Poland were not in any way defined, although Wilson’s Point 13 had required it to have access to the sea – a difficult promise to keep. This laid the path for the ‘Danzig Corridor' (cue Hitler 1939). Macmillan describes the regions as “hundreds of miles from Paris… a protean world of shifting allegiances, civil wars, refugees and bandit groups”. Clemenceau was in favour of a strong Poland (to replace Russia as an ally to Germany’s east). Two strong Polish characters vied with each other for control of the negotiations process. In Paris, the Polish national committee was headed by Roman Dmovski, an ambitious moderniser who wanted to take as much land for Poland as possible. In Warsaw a government was being organised by Josef Pilsudski, military leader of a new but effective Polish Legion. A remarkable man, Pilsudski was a romantic nationalist, willing to settle for less territory if it delivered a pre-partition 18^th century Poland. Dmovski and Pilsudski detested each other, and the Allies could not see a way to a compromise. Then an inspired move brought the world’s most famous Pole to the table to bang heads together. Ignace Paderewski was the greatest pianist of the era, and had lived (along with four million other Poles) as an immigrant in the USA for some years. He was a distant and powerful supporter of Polish independence (some felt it was his private performances at the White house that nudged Wilson towards his point 13). Paderewski travelled from New York to Poznan and Warsaw at the end of 1918. He received rapturous welcomes and generally revived the passion for Polish nationalism, manifested as the "Greater Poland Uprising". He travelled on to Paris to join Dmovski. In a series of events beyond the scope of this blog, Poland emerged with the mixed backing of the Allies and remnants of the German army from the old eastern front. They were contracted as mercenaries – the Freikorps – to keep the Red Army Bolsheviks at bay to the east. It was the Red threat that convinced the Allies to send more funds and supplies to Poland, even though they had no control over events.

Baltic States. On a line running due north from Lemberg (Lviv today) in Ukraine almost to St. Petersburg, all territory to the west – the Polish salient and Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia had been lost by Russia in the Brest- Litovsk treaty (See Post 22/1/2018). The three Baltic states were caught between newly awakened nationalism and the uncertainties of the Russian civil war. As with Poland, neither the Red nor the White Russian factions wanted to see their independence. The most northerly state, Finland, was a different case. Lenin had approved Finland’s independence early in 1918 but fighting continued, involving British, Finnish German and Russian troops, as the uncertainties over the control of Archangel continued (See Post 31/5/2018).

Greece. At the other end of Europe Greece, a late and ambivalent entrant to WW1, was becoming the most influential country in its region. This was entirely down to the character and persuasiveness of Eleftherios Venizelos, now Prime Minister again during his long running feud with the Germanophile King Constantine (See Post 18/8/2017). Venizelos proved to be one of the most impressive, charismatic statesmen at the conference. He won over the Big Three – Lloyd George in particular was entranced by his rhetoric – to his case for a greater Greece based on its glorious history and some dubious statistics about the size of Greek minorities in surrounding countries **. He wanted territory from Albania, Thrace, Macedonia and Bulgaria, and return of all of the Greek islands. But his main ambitions were to the east – Turkey and Asia Minor. Lloyd George’s unstinting support for the Venizelos vision would have tragic consequences that played out over the next four years.

* Margaret Macmillan. Paris 1919 (2003) p207

** The absence of any reliable population demographics proved to be a useful tactic used by all the supplicant nations to some degree.

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