Plausibility check: A "good" treaty of Versailles

[Typo]

Was it actually possible to have a treaty of Versailles with a POD after Nov,11,1918 that prevents WWII, satisfy the victors, and at least be somewhat acceptable to the defeated?

When I say plausible I meant within the political context of the time: I.E France is gonna get Alsace-Lorraine back, Anchluss 1919 isn't going to happen because no one is going to allow the enlargement of Germany in 1919, etc etc.

First of all I think just letting Italy have Dalaman Coast is a good start.

 

[ZachScape]

VERY plausible. Ending the war earlier for one? Regime change, premature breakup of Austria Hungary, no Russian Revolution or withdrawal... the list goes on.
A factor could even be the wrong guy getting shot.
Italy wouldn't get the entire coast, in any scenario. They were supposed to get a small chunk though which is pretty fair. I don't have the map off hand though. Should be easy to look up.

 

[Typo]

EditOD after armstice

 

[AmericanCaesar]

The sad answer to this is that there is no good treaty at the end of OTs WWI because everyone had sacrificed too much and the Central Powers had not suffered a classical Napoleonic type of defeat (capital beseiged, homeland invaded, etc). Lets go through player by player.

France: They lost a generation of brave French men and wanted to regain their dominance in European affairs that France had arguably held for 700 years (until the rise of the German Empire in 1870). They are going to go for blood.

Italy: Although they threw their lot with the Allied powers, their lackluster performance did not agreed with their grandiose demands even for territory from prostrate A-H. So unless they do better, they are unlikely to get Dalmatia just for betting on the winning team.

A-H: Only collapsed due to the weakness of its central institutions combined with opportunism on the part of the minorities in the empire at the end of the war when it was certain the Central powers where defeated. If there are no 14 points and Franco-American plans for the ethnic division of A-H afoot, perhaps there can be a fair version of peace at least for Austria.

Germany: The Germans do not think they have lost. so how can there be a fair treaty? It the French weren't out for blood, it might be possible, with a more Anglo treaty, but otherwise the seeds of WWII will be planted in 1919.

Britain: If it had been up to the UK, perhaps a fair treaty could have been worked out, I figure to the British tendency to pragmatic continental diplomacy (except when dealing with Napoleon for some reason). All German colonies would go to the Allies, reparations (less than OTL), East Prussia to Poland, A-L to France, and S-H to Denmark but no occupations beyond than, and (main focus) set limits on the German navy (especially U-boots).

So, in short, it is impossible to get a fair Versailles if the British are not somehow sitting at the head of the table.

 

[ZachScape]

Oh... well then, Congress for some strange reason don't hate Wilson and accept any decision he makes in Europe. With the congressional backing and other strange twists of fate, Wilson can negotiate a more reasonable treaty in regards to Germany. The only things I can think about getting stripped or tuned down from the treaty are war-reparations, responsibility/blame.

With less war reparations, Germany may be politically stronger internally, in which the Wiemar government may persist.

Germany is still going to going to have right wing ultra-nationalists and a strong Nazi party or alternative, but may be able to maintain.

 

[Eurofed]

Italy wouldn't get the entire coast, in any scenario. They were supposed to get a small chunk though which is pretty fair. I don't have the map off hand though. Should be easy to look up.

If you want this butterfly to have significant long-term effects on Italy (e.g. snuffing out fascism), Italy needs to get more or less its whole claim, i.e. the AH historical region of Dalmatia, even if Yugoslavia would still get a worthy sea access in the Kvarner Gulf, and Italy is almost surely going to leave Fiume alone if it can get Dalmatia.

I.E France is gonna get Alsace-Lorraine back,

Yup, that can't be really avoided with an Entente victory at all. However, losing A-L was not really what PO Germany and destabilized it towards revanchism. It was losing Austria, Danzig-Corridor, and the Sudetenland, in that rough order.

Anchluss 1919 isn't going to happen because no one is going to allow the enlargement of Germany in 1919, etc etc.

Not in 1919, no. However it was feasible to give Germany and Austria the permission to make the Anschluss by plebiscite in 10-20 years if they consistently complied with the treaties in the meantime. Pretty much the solution that was used for the Saar. That would have made the treaty look rather less harsh in German eyes and given them a substantial motivation to play fair with the peace settlement.

As a general note, making any kind of Versailles treaty that is really any nicer to Germany, Italy, or Hungary requires a PoD that screws the standing of France and/or enhances the one of Britain and Italy at the peace table. Also scrapping Wilson's 14 points and their insane boosting of Slav/Romanian nationalism would help.

 

[Markus]

How about actually negotiating? Like the Germans did it with the French in 1871? Explanation: IOTL the victors had drafted the ToV before the arrival of the german delegation and told said delegation: “Sign here or get invaded! All protests have to be submitted in writing as we are not willing to talk to you in person.” Brilliant, add insult to injury. No wonder this backfired catastrophically.

Better start with a blank piece of paper and actually talk to the Germans face to face. No idea how the new ToV would look like but no way its as bad as the actual one.

 

[Grimm Reaper]

Once Germany destroyed the French coal mines there was no avoiding the loss of the Saar Basin for at least as long as it takes France to repair the French mines flooded.

 

[Mulder]

reparations (less than OTL), East Prussia to Poland, A-L to France, and S-H to Denmark but no occupations beyond than, and (main focus) set limits on the German navy (especially U-boots).

Even harsher territorial losses would just increase German revanchism tenfold, not dampen it. East Prussia in Polish hands would mean certain war, as soon as possible, for Germany, and Denmark did not want any more of Schleswig-Holstein than it got in OTL. Even when in OTL France told the Danish government to ignore the results of the plebiscite in Central Schleswig and annex it anyways, Denmark refused to do so.

 

[Mikestone8]

The sad answer to this is that there is no good treaty at the end of OTs WWI because everyone had sacrificed too much and the Central Powers had not suffered a classical Napoleonic type of defeat (capital beseiged, homeland invaded, etc).

[snip]

Britain: If it had been up to the UK, perhaps a fair treaty could have been worked out, I figure to the British tendency to pragmatic continental diplomacy (except when dealing with Napoleon for some reason). All German colonies would go to the Allies, reparations (less than OTL), East Prussia to Poland, A-L to France, and S-H to Denmark but no occupations beyond than, and (main focus) set limits on the German navy (especially U-boots).

So, in short, it is impossible to get a fair Versailles if the British are not somehow sitting at the head of the table.

Nor even if we are, I'm afraid.

Trouble is that public opinion in Britain (as in most Allied countries) wanted two incompatible things. Firstly, a severe treaty with the Wicked Hun punished as he deserved, and at the same time one which would require no effort to enforce - so that same public could all go home and cultivate their gardens, without any further distractions from across the Channel (or the Rhine, or the Atlantic, or wherever).

Unfortunately these aims just couldn't be reconciled. Any peace soft enough to reconcile the Germans (if indeed that was ever possible) would be unacceptable to the voters back home, whilst anything acceptable to the latter would leave the Germans smarting, and require the victor countries to stand watch for decades against attempts to undo it - an obligation which those same voters would never endure.

As a result, and to my mind almost inevitably, we ended up with the worst of both worlds - a severe peace which was soon going unenforced. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Incidentally, I don't quite understand your remarks about Napoleon, which to me seem a bit contradictory. First off, you apparently regret the failure to impose a "classical, Napoleonic style of defeat" on the CPs, so apparently regard this as the best outcome to a major war. Yet a few lines later you seem to have a problem with the British policies which aimed at inflicting just such a defeat upon Napoleon himself. I don't follow the reasoning.

Or do you mean that we were over-generous to Napoleon? After all, if either the Prussians or the French Royalists had clapped hands on him before we did, he'd have had far more to complain of - but probably been no longer in a condition to do so. <g>

 

[Cook]

(except when dealing with Napoleon for some reason).

Twenty years of war will do that to you.

 

[I Blame Communism]

After the Armistice? That's hard. Everything that was a real flashpoint in Europe, it seems to me, arose from rival interests that were quite simply impossible to reconcile. It was impossible to avoid these terms coming under attack once the defeated parties returned to existence as normal powers. The issues where there was no fundamental contradiction in expectations (eg, Schleswig-Holstein, thanks to the conspicuous reasonableness of the Danes; Alsace, which everyone had known was inevitable since 1914) weren't hotspots.

Personally, I don't believe that the OTL treaty made another war, or German facism, inevitable and I think it was just about the best that could have been arrived at given the circumstances. Handwaving just how they're implemented, here are terms which I think are semi-plausible after the Armistice (most of them would not have happened, but they don't actual entail sacrificing any Entente strategic interests) and could reduce German grievance:

- A less in-your-face approach to war guilt. E.H.Carr said something very pithy about that, if I could just find it. Perhaps acknowledging that the victorious powers are innocent, which allows Austria-Hungary and Russia to be left as elephants in the corner. This view is hardly accurate (I consider everybody "guilty" to varying dgerees, and the whole blame-game a rather petty exercise given the circumstances of 1914), of course, but the idea is to make Germany feel less persecuted.

- A more manageable programme of reparations. I'll admit an embarrasing ignorance of the economic side to the whole issue, but my gut feeling is that that could have been done better.

- A formal plebiscite for Alsace. It's not like France wouldn't win.

- No silly-buggers about the Memelgebiet.

- Less flagrant abuse of the Hungarians. I am put in a somewhat tortured position by being a Slavophile who likes both Romanians and Magyars, but there were some things that Hungary really should have kept: Satu Mare, Arad, Oradea, and most of the first Vienna award, for instance.

I don't see what good Italian Dalmatia does anyone. I've always been slightly dubious of whether a democracy with such major structural problems as Italy can be saved by a few more Croats to oppress, and if we want to avoid war, well; fascist Italy by itself is a sane power and not going to start a European land war, whereas giving the Italians big chunks of rebellious Yugoslavs is sure to create a hotspot. If Italy blunders into a war with the Yugoslavs (who will have even more motivation to awkwardly unite), Germany and Austria will start to look longingly at what they've lost, and France and Britain are unlikely to run to put that fire out.

Leaving the authorised PoD, I think Russia still in the game (while it implies plentiful problems for Russia) is a pretty good starting point, because it removes some of the fundamental contradictions in the German-Polish border. Russia will want Great Poland, but has no particular desire for sea-access or a desperate need to buff up its industrial potential. And it's obviously a state that you can't attack, wage trade-war against, etcetera so easily as Poland; nor does it have any motivation to chase away valuable German human capital (although I think there'd be some migration from the Poznan region anyway).

Preserving the Hapsburg monarchy for the time being also addresses several problems: Anschluss, which was neither acceptable nor in the long time avoidable, can be returned to the back-burner; there's no Sudetenland problem (yet, anyway); Croatia and Serbia aren't obliged to insert a square peg into a round hole, balance Slovenia on top, and attempt to make a functioning state of it. Not terribly good news for Transylvanians and especially Slovaks, but the Hungarian-Slovak and Hungarian-Romanian conflicts are frankly impossible to solve fairly by that point.

So, let's say neutral Ottomans (good primary PoD for an early Entente victory, and makes a more stable and ordered post-war world in itself). The Entente wins early on, Austria is preserved as a state but loses a variety of peripheral territories (Galicia, Serbian lands). I'm not sure whether Italian and Romanian involvement makes the situation more or less stable and sustainable.

Now, Russia is on the path for an unfortunate accident, but I can't exactly see it being worse than OTL.

 

[mailinutile2]

If you want this butterfly to have significant long-term effects on Italy (e.g. snuffing out fascism), Italy needs to get more or less its whole claim, i.e. the AH historical region of Dalmatia, even if Yugoslavia would still get a worthy sea access in the Kvarner Gulf, and Italy is almost surely going to leave Fiume alone if it can get Dalmatia.

The italian government would probably trade Fiume for Dalmatia and/or a protectorate on Albania, but most people there wanted the annection: the '19-'21 crysis (D'Annunzio and so forth) is quite explicit on the matter.

I know it seems ridiculus, but it was by italian battelcruisers shelling the city, that it could forced to return to yugoslavia, and even that lasted a couple of years.
It was basically a powder keg.

On the other hand Yugoslavia needed Fiume, since having an access to sea does not suffice: you need also a decent port. That was the primary reason for giving Fiume to it, since Trieste was obviously going to Italy.
And since Wison was the stronger supporter of this solution (and the french seconded him, since they were trying their presence in the area and become the "godfather" of the new yugoslavia nation), I see some difficult here.

 

[Geordie]

- Less flagrant abuse of the Hungarians.

Would preventing the rise of Bela Kun be enough to guarantee better treatment, or would more need to be done?

 

[Emera78]

Was it actually possible to have a treaty of Versailles with a POD after Nov,11,1918 that prevents WWII, satisfy the victors, and at least be somewhat acceptable to the defeated?

The Germans are going to whine no mater how small territory will be that they will have to return to Poland.

 

[Arachnid]

As AmericanCeasar said any treaty nice enough to the CP's to prevent resentment is going to get the British or French government which signed it lynched.
That said there area a few ways to reduce the chance of round 2.

1. Treat Austria like the Saarland, i.e. No Anchluss in 1919 but the understanding that 15 years down the line there will be a vote.
2. Same procedure for the Sudentland, i.e. part of Czechoslovakia but guaranteed plebiscite in 15 years.
These two measures are going to eventually return most of the Germans to the Reich, motivating the government to play nice and wait.
3. Plebiscite for Alsace, the French are going to win and it makes it look better.
4. Separate Croatia and Serbia with Italy getting a bit more, including the majority Italian areas on the coast. Yugoslavia was an abomination better to stillbirth it.
5. Let Hungary keep some more of the majority Hungarian lands (1st Vienna award). There's still going to be revanchism but Romania and Czechoslovakia are shot of people who don't want to be part of the country and the Hungarians have a less plausible basis for their revanchism.

Up until now the two key player (UK and France) have got little to complain about and the losers have less to moan about and no one really cares about Romania, Czechia and Serbia.

6. Reparations, simply put Germany couldn't afford them, better 50% of something than 100% of nothing and another war. Without Reparations you aren't going to see the 1923 Hyperinflation, without that Weimar has a much better chance. This is the problem as persuading France to reduce the bill is a very hard sell.

While the Germans are still going to be smarting over the War Guilt (good for appeasing the UK and French public) and loss of the West Prussia they're aren't (post 1934) many Germans outside the Reich and with a smaller reparations bill Weimar should survive. While not a recipe for peace and love its got a better chance than OTL.

 

[Mulder]

A plebiscite in Alsace could be a double-edged sword. Even though France will win it, the most realistic outcome would be something like 70 - 80 % for France and the rest for Germany. This in turn would incite German nationalists to think that, if Germany weren't in such a bad situation, that they could have won a "fair" plebisicite during peacetime. I mean, Polish nationalists (such as this boards infamous Hurgan), still think that Poland could have won the Mazuria plebiscite, in which Germany got over 90%, if not for the Polish-Soviet war.

 

[Hörnla]

My feeling is that we cannot do much about the Treaty with such a late POD. And earlier PODs would change quite a lot.

First of all - Versailles basically concerns Germany. So I will not let myself get distracted by Fiume or Transsylvania.

I agree with IBC on some basic points. Here are my two cents.

-the war guilt clause was a desaster. It brought NOTHING. It is not as if the French or British public was wondering about their guilt and could sleep calmly in their beds once they had it in writing. In Germany it was a big issue, certainly bigger than some of the territorial losses.
-the reparations were not well thought out. They were over the top and unlike the French reparations after 1871, they encompassed no incentives. So how about: 20% paid: acceptance in League of Nations. 35, 45, 55% paid: Allied troops leave occupation zones I, II and III. 66% paid: Saarland plebiscite. 75% paid, remilitarisation of the Rhineland allowed. 90% paid: plebiscite concerning Anschluss allwoed. 100% paid: renewed negotiations concerning arms limitations and colonial mandates. Just an idea. I could think of more steps.
-the limits on the Reichswehr were counter-productive. It created an elitist, aloof of the Republic and very professional cadre which was less bourgeois than the army of 1914. Proved to be the excellent shell for the Wehrmacht of WW2.
Rather give the Germans compulsory draft for 3-months.
-the Corridor is as silly as inevitable. I cannot see a realistic way to get around it. East Prussia would not be a suitable substitute for West Prussia where the Polish element is of more importance.
-The CSR aspired to be "the Switzerland of the East". Well, then let it be so. Force them to be truly federal with a system of Kantons. (5 Czech, 1 Hungarian, 4 Slowakian, 3 German Kantons + the Kanton of Prague-City)
-the Upper Silesian affair could have been handled a bit more clearly, i.e. giving sincere indications how which results would finally be treated.


P.S.
Btw, I am not so sure that France would win a plebiscite in Alsace-Lorraine. It would be a closer call than many would expect.

 

[I Blame Communism]

4. Separate Croatia and Serbia with Italy getting a bit more, including the majority Italian areas on the coast.

Italy got the towns which had plausible Italian majorities (Trieste, Fiume, Zara) and the Italian coast of Istria. She also got a major chunk of Croatian and Slovene upcountry. Note that Dalmatia was, according to the recent Austrio-Hungarian census, about 98% Yugoslav. Note also that the Croatian national authorities who inherited the remains of the Austro-Hungarian state in the region were so eager to unit with Serbia before thinking it through largely because this seemed the only way to prevent the Italians shovelling more onto their plate.

Yugoslavia was an abomination better to stillbirth it.

I like how the solution to a problem brought about in large part by Italian irredentism, imperialism, and intransigence is to enlarge Italy. Where did this forum gets its staunchly pro-Italian, anti-Slav attitude?

"Stillbirthing" Yugoslavia raises the tricky problem of drawing a Croato-Serb border (and shafting the Muslims), although I think it's probably better to "pull the plaster off in one", as it were. But it requires less Italian ambition: no Italian war involvement, or a surviving A-H as the patron of the Croats (and Austria-Hungary did manage to prevent people from slaughtering one-another just in general).

Up until now the two key player (UK and France) have got little to complain about and the losers have less to moan about and no one really cares about Romania, Czechia and Serbia.

As a matter of fact, I do.

Seriously, this forum, with its generally pro-CP attitude, seems not to have got it into our brains that many of the claims made by small Entente states were actually valid.

"Serbia?" Interesting view. Serbian nationalists were unenthusiastic about the Yugoslav idea. The king himself favoured Greater Serbia. The reasons it came about are complex (they include the designs of America and France, the distorting effect of the lengthy exile government, and so on) but they basically boil down to the provisional Austro-Slav authorities running under the Serbian umbrella to avoid Italian claims.

In other words, full implementation of the London treaty really shafts the Croats.

 

[Bill Cameron]

Gents,

Every time someone squeals about how "harsh" the Treaty of Versailles was to Germany and how it was a little more than a "dictat" by the victorious Entente, I remember the Treaty of Brest Litovsk and laugh laugh laugh...

Follow that link and take a good hard look at the kind of "peace" Wilhelmine Germany made when they had the whip hand.

You want a "good" treaty of Versailles? Harsh, lenient, or middling, it doesn't matter what you dictate or negotiate with Germany, unless you put Entente boots on the ground in Germany and enforce the treaty for the period in question Germany will still grouse about how it's somehow "unfair".

The real problem with Versailles was that Germany forgot she actually lost the war and the other powers didn't bother reminding her of that fact.


Bill