The Treaty to End all Wars: The Treaty of Paris, 1919
The Big Four: (left to right) images of the British, American, Russian and French delegations to the Paris Peace Conference.
Following the Armistice of Cochem, the various Entente leaders met in Paris in September 1918 to attempt to thrash out the future of the world. There was no pretence of negotiations with the Central Powers: none of Germany, Austria, Hungary or the Ottomans was even invited. Their job was to sort out their own internal politics and then come to sign the treaties when the time was right. This was useful as a way of demonstrating the totality of the Entente’s victory in its various theatres but caused the unintended problem of bringing the splits within the Entente to the fore. At the heart of this was the uncomfortable truth that the Entente was not an alliance of friendly nations but rather a confederation of countries who, for one reason or another, had considered it to be in their interests to go to war against Germany and her allies at some point between 1913 and 1918.
The conference started off on a bad footing when the American delegation raised an official complaint about the size of the British delegation. The British delegation certainly was large – approximately five times larger than the American one – because it incorporated representatives from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. But at the time it was not clear what this intervention was supposed to achieve, beyond allowing Roosevelt to remind everyone that he (and America) intended to be big players at the conference. It certainly did that but it also left a bad taste in the mouth, especially amongst the British.
The first order of business, and the least contentious, was the divvying up of the German Empire in Africa. France was awarded Togoland and the greater part of Kamerun (with a western strip being awarded to Britain). German East Africa was awarded to Britain and Ruanda-Urundi went to Belgium as a kind of roundabout apology for having been invaded and occupied for five years. German South West Africa was awarded to America, their second African colony after Liberia. Almost immediately, things got more contentious, initially over the future of German New Guinea and German Samoa. All of the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom wanted to have them as part of their plans to control the Pacific. Eventually, the United States was awarded German Samoa while Japan got all of the other islands north of the equator and Britain got the territories south of the equator.
Things then moved on to the issue of dismembering the three European empires. France’s aim here was straightforwardly one of revenge for the nearly 7,000,000 casualties killed and wounded they had suffered during the war (the equivalent of around 1 in 3 men in metropolitan France) and Georges Clemenceau, the French Premier, was eager to disestablish the German Empire and dismember the Rhineland into a series of French-dominated republics. The Bolsheviks clear aim was that the people of eastern and central Europe should be offered self-determination (unless they were within Russian territory, of course). Roosevelt too entertained wild plans for American protectorates in Europe. The British position was a more cynical one: desperate to keep Germany a viable counterweight against a vengeful France and a communist (and therefore unreliable) Russia.
In addition to the secession of Bavaria, Germany lost Alsace-Lorraine to France, who also received the Saar region as a 15-year protectorate. Additionally, northern Schleswig was transferred to Danish sovereignty and Moresnet to Belgian. Negotiations over the east were more complicated. Volunteer Polish legions had been raised during the war and fought on the side of the Entente, leading many to argue that the time had come to restore a Polish homeland. However, much of historical Poland was within Russia and it was clear that there was no question of Russia giving that up. Instead, they came up with a compromise. The German provinces of Posen, Silesia and West Prussia were combined with the Austrian provinces of Silesia and Galicia & Lodomeria and the Hungarian districts of Pressburg, Kaschau and Ruthenia to create the awkwardly named Polish-Slovakian Commonwealth.
The Habsburgs were to recognize Austria and Hungary as separate nations under the same monarch, something that Franz Ferdinand had done anyway via the Budapest Declaration of 16 July 1918. In addition to the territories already awarded to Poland, Austria lost South Tyrol and Trentino to Italy; Istria, Dalmatia and Bosnia to Serbia; and Bukovina to Romania. Hungary lost Transylvania south of the Mures river and east of the Somes to Romania; and Banat to Serbia.
In the Balkans, Northern Epirus was carved out of Albania and awarded to Greece while the rest was renamed Arbanon and gifted to Italy as a protectorate. It was a surprisingly dismissive end for the country that had, after all, caused the whole war. Greece was also rewarded with Smyrna and the surrounding territory; Bulgaria was awarded the European side of the Marmara region; and the Hejazi Kingdom was granted international recognition as the sovereign of the Arabian Peninsula and the former Ottoman territories in the Middle East south of Asia Minor; Armenia was also carved out of the Ottoman vilayets of Van, Erzurum, Mamuretulaziz, Bitlis, Dlyarbekir, Sivas and Trebizond. It was agreed that Kurdish representatives would have a referendum on their independence when agreement could be reached on their borders at a future date. Constantinople (as it was now officially called) was declared an independent international city.
It was over the question of reparations that the British found their delegation under the most pressure. Russia and France were keen to extract as much money in reparations as they could from the defeated powers, not just out of vengeance but also to allow them to pay back their substantial loans to the UK. The Americans, in a better financial position than their allies, sided more closely with the British, arguing that the Central Powers should pay some reparations but they should be kept to a minimum (perhaps only to cover the partial cost of the war). However, this emerging Anglo-American united front was shattered in January, when President Roosevelt fell ill from the Spanish influenza sweeping the world. Following Roosevelt’s death on 29 January, the conference was delayed for a month and, when it began again, new President Hiram Johnson had decided on a very different approach.
Johnson’s attitude was that the United States should not have gotten involved in the war in the first place and that, given that they had, his sole duty was to extract the maximum possible monetary payment from the Central Powers and then return home with as few international commitments as possible. Thus, South West Africa and Samoa were handed to Britain and he took a far more aggressive attitude towards Central Powers reparations. Over two months of hard negotiations, the eventual price of reparations was set at: £7,000,000,000 to be paid by Germany; £100,000,000 to be paid by each of Austria and Hungary and £40,000,000 to be paid by the Ottomans. These were enormous sums, especially considering that each of the four defeated combatants were already struggling under their own depleted treasuries and loans owed to foreign (primarily British) creditors in any event. John Maynard Keynes, a member of the British delegation, forcefully argued that these levels of reparations would be un-repayable and would only lead to resentment in those countries. Privately, many agreed but were not in a position to argue.
The final big outcome was the establishment of the League of Nations, based in Constantinople. The charter was drawn up by a predominantly-British commission headed by Jan Smuts, Arthur Balfour and Lord Bryce. Although initially conceived as the first step towards a unified global government, it soon became clear that Russia and France would not tolerate the presence of the Central Powers, at least initially. Eventually it was agreed that it would comprise a regular meeting forum for the various members of the Entente but even that wish came to an end in March 1919, when President Johnson made it clear that the United States had no intention of being involved. When its structures were agreed in May 1919, it was little more than a talking shop for members of the Entente. Nevertheless, it was the first worldwide intergovernmental organization with the principal mission of maintaining world peace through collective security, disarmament and arbitration, and many people were excited about its possibilities.
When the final Treaty of Paris was signed with the Central Powers on 10 April 1919, it was the culmination of a peace process of truly vast scope. But, at the same time, it was one where few could say they came out totally satisfied: Germany, Hungary and what was left of the Ottomans all nursed continued grievances over their territorial dismemberment; Austria looked nervously over its shoulder at an emboldened Serbia and communist Russia; Poland had no natural borders and faced, once more, being caught in between the vice of Germany and Russia; Russia felt angry at not having got its way; France still felt that its gains had not avenged the deaths of all of its citizens; Italy felt that the odd bits of territory they got was scant reward for 18,000 dead; the list went on and on. But it was, however, a peace, at least for now.