Chapter Thirteen: Peace In The End
"We have a tremendous cause for celebration! To peace, unity, and glory for the people of our Empire!"
-Kaiser Wilhelm II, in a toast at the
Friedenstanz
"I must never set foot in Reims again, nor in Amiens, nor in Alsace-Lorraine. I go further, do not mention those names to me, let me pretend they do not exist! For I have failed in my most basic duty as a leader; to protect my people. If the men of those lands spit at my portrait every day, I do not blame them; it is too good for me."
-A diary entry of Joseph Caillaux, 28 October 1916
"I have confidence that our two states can work together and go forth. We don't want you to be our mortal foe and I am sure you feel the same about us. Let us be reasonable and we can have peace for fifty years, or a hundred."
-Alleged quote from Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, appearing in volume two of Sir Edward Grey's memoirs
Homeland Slipping.
"One hundred years ago today, the Russians capitulated and signed the articles of their defeat.
It was our nation's greatest hour, and we have fought ferociously to defend what it meant- the heroes of this city know that all too well. May our children's children's children reflect in a hundred years that we defended the Treaty of Dresden well!"
- Kaiser Gustav I, in a speech in Konigsberg, 11 November 2016
By October 1916, Germany appeared to be on top of the world. Its armies stretched from Amiens to Estonia, and Europe was subjugated, allied, or frightened into neutrality. Given the chaos France was in (1), a further advance in the West would overwhelm the few loyal French troops left in the trenches. The September Revolution had placed a weak Tsar at the top of an unstable Russia, and much of eastern Europe lay under the German heel. German U-boats remained on the prowl in the Atlantic, ready to restart their campaign against British shipping at any moment, while David Lloyd George’s government in London was sitting on the head of a pin. Thus, historians tend to overlook one essential fact of the Great War.
The German Empire was nearly as eager for peace as the Entente.
The reasons for this are many, but the war had not been easy for the Kaiser’s regime. Close to 1.3 million of its young men were never coming home, while it had spent an exorbitant (2) amount of money on the conflict. Although things had improved somewhat since the lifting of the British blockade in the summer, the economy was still very much on a war footing, with low standards of living the norm- and Germany was the lucky one. Austria-Hungary was looking increasingly shaky as Emperor Franz Joseph edged closer to death, while Ottoman Turkey’s economy was crumbling. Germany’s smaller allies- Romania, Bulgaria, Italy- were having a hard time of it as well. Plus, Falkenhayn was pragmatic enough to realise that there was only so much he could get out of the war. Marching down the
Champs-Élysées or into the Ukraine would be glorious, but it wouldn’t improve Germany’s strategic situation at all. Germany could never truly defeat Britain, and the more of France and Russia they occupied, the greater their postwar commitments would be.
Falkenhayn shared a working lunch with Kaiser Wilhelm four days after the Stockholm Armistice and informed his sovereign that Germany had extracted all it could from the war. Naturally, the Kaiser was no more pleased to hear this than Falkenhayn was to tell him, but he came round after a little whining. Since there were active ceasefires in both East and West, what difference would formal peace make? Kaiser Wilhelm reluctantly agreed and telephoned Arthur Zimmermann. The Foreign Minister had sat on the shelf for much of the war, and was eager to get back to his craft. He came up with rather a clever idea: namely, that the Central Powers would be better off if they negotiated as one. Of course, Germany would dominate its partners, but a facade of unity might well intimidate the defeated parties… plus, it would give Zimmermann more prestige, as he’d be the senior diplomat in the room. Throughout the night of 2 October, the German Foreign Minister was on the phone to the capitals of his allies, working out the details. When he drifted off at close to four AM, he had a plan for the negotiations. The Kaiser signed off on them the next day, and Zimmermann spent 3 October planning for the peace conference to end the war.
In Paris, Joseph Calliaux received the invitation- if that word, with the implication that it may freely be turned down, may be used here- grimly. His country’s hour of execution had come at last, and he had no choice but to be in at the death. Caillaux announced the next day that he would go to Germany to seek a formal peace, to a wave of stunned silence. Had it really come to that, the people asked themselves? The next few days crawled past on hands and knees, with angry letters flooding his mansion. Most people, however, were apathetic. They had known France had lost the war for six months, but it had never seemed real until now. In the great cities, far from the rumble of guns, life had gone on more or less as before. The mutinies at the front and the fate of the BEF might almost have happened in a foreign country, for all they affected the people. France had been suffering for two years and the changes had been bearable. Now, though, the Germans were about to sink their teeth into
la belle Nation in a way they’d never done before. When Calliaux looked out the window, the faces he saw were those of betrayed men who lived in fear of what the next weeks would bring. Bitter looks were the least of Caillaux’s worries- if one of those men wanted to take revenge, well, it wasn’t as though there weren’t plenty of loose guns floating around France. Thus, getting to Germany was almost a relief. He and his foreign minister Justin de Selves (3) boarded a special armoured train on the ninth, with a small army of bodyguards and secretaries. As they passed through the countryside, these polished Parisian gentlemen got a look at what war had done to their country. Women, children, and old men toiled the fields, while towns and cities seemed half empty. People seemed like nothing more than skin and bones, with heavy bags under their eyes. And that was just the beginning. Once the Prime Minister’s train approached the frontline, it seemed to be transported to another planet. Craters filled with rainwater and dead bodies pockmarked the landscape, while not a tree was left in sight. Humiliatingly, when Caillaux’s train rolled to a halt at Abbeville, the party was loaded into an armoured car for protection against disgruntled French troops. Thus protected, Caillaux crossed the lines.
Several weeks after the Armistice, Falkenhayn had appointed Karl von Bulow as military governor of occupied France. He had issued orders some days previously that a French armoured car bearing a white flag would be coming through, and under no circumstances was anyone to harm it. Thus, Caillaux was unharmed as he set foot in occupied land. Bulow, who spoke no French, escorted Caillaux’s party through the trenches. Caillaux wrote in his memoirs that walking through the French lines was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Few of the men had guns, but they could easily have lynched him had it not been for the German escort. Their eyes were full of pain, betrayal, and disbelief. How could their leader be walking with German troops to sign a peace treaty, a peace treaty which would invalidate all their sufferings? None of them so much as said a word to Caillaux, let alone tried to harm him; their contemptuous silence was far worse. The French PM would’ve been hard-pressed to damage his image more. Passing through the German trenches was almost a relief- crassness and gloating were easier to handle than such disappointment. The German victory had left them in a holiday mood. Prussian discipline ensured that nothing got out of hand, but Caillaux caught a few comments that would’ve sent a soldier to a minesweeping unit had an officer been the target; Von Bulow seemed curiously deaf to those. Once they reached the rear trenches, the Germans blindfolded Caillaux’s party on the spurious grounds of security- after all, there was still technically a war on as no peace treaty was in effect. The French had their blindfolds removed once they passed the trenches, and a group of horses waited to take them to Doullens, where a train would take them to Dresden. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough horses for everyone… so the French had to walk while the guards rode. Caillaux was near fainting when he staggered into Doullens at seven PM. Unfortunately, von Bulow said, the next train to Germany wouldn’t be leaving until tomorrow morning, but not to worry, he would find a place for the French delegation to stay. Thus, Caillaux passed the night of 9-10 October in a dingy bed-and-breakfast without heat. A squad of German troops woke everyone up at four AM, marching them to the station. Von Bulow shook Caillaux’s hand and presented him with third-class tickets to Dresden aboard an old locomotive. The train seemed to stop at every pokey town on the route. As he passed through his occupied homeland, Joseph Caillaux saw the same long faces of beaten, broken men on the platforms. Just as painful was knowing the German flags flying over French and Belgian towns would remain forever. Most of the passengers getting on were demobbed German soldiers in a rowdy mood who laughed themselves silly at the sight of these Frenchmen crawling in to surrender. It didn’t help that they were drunk most of the time. While Caillaux wasn’t physically harmed, his lack of a private berth meant that he had no privacy, and by the end of the journey his suit had several beer-stains. Once the train reached Germany proper, word began to spread of who was coming through, and curious civilians came to gloat on the platform, in some cases rapping on Caillaux’s window as if he were a zoo animal behind glass! All told, the train took
four days to reach Dresden, where von Bethmann-Hollweg had decided to hold the peace conference. When they stepped off the platform on 14 October to be greeted by their German minder, the French wanted nothing more than clean clothes, decent food, and a good night’s sleep.
While the French were enjoying Imperial German hospitality, the Royal Navy destroyer HMS
Abdiel steamed across the North Sea. The German Foreign Ministry had reached out to the British once more via the neutral Norwegians, inviting them to the Dresden Conference. Naturally, David Lloyd George- who’d replaced Asquith following the ceasefire- jumped at the chance. Britain was not in as precarious a state as France, but conditions on the home island were still poor. The lifting of the U-boat menace meant that Argentine beef and grain were getting through, so starvation wasn’t an issue, and the spates of left-wing violence France was seeing hadn’t crossed the Channel. However, disorder was still on the rise all across the UK. Ireland was under martial law following an aborted uprising in the spring and looked to rise again at any moment, while Britain’s cities were deteriorating. With the signing of the armistice, war orders had dried up, resulting in mass layoffs. Now, there were plenty of men in reserved occupations freshly out of a job, roaming around the UK’s biggest cities- the biggest surprise about the crime rate was that it wasn’t higher. Worse, the
Dynamo evacuees were getting restless. The remnants of the BEF had spent the past months in camps in the southeast, being forced to do field training and makework. Now that the war was over, many of those men were pondering what the hell they were doing in the Army- after all, they had lives of their own to get back to. Desertion rates went up as some of these men tried to sneak home, and there were many instances of such men getting into fights with civilians and shoplifting. This wasn’t anywhere near as bad as in France- where mutinous gangs of soldiers roamed the countryside like bandits- but it wasn’t exactly domestic tranquility, either. The UK was also drowning in debt: it had burned through all of its collateral in the US and elsewhere, and desperately needed to reduce expenditure to start paying the Americans back. Thus, Lloyd George was all too willing to go to Dresden and pay the price. However, he didn’t want to leave London himself, fearing that to do so would alienate the public when his government was already on shaky footing. Thus, Foreign Secretary Edward Grey (a holdover from Asquith’s government) was the one on board HMS
Abdiel.
Grey set foot on German soil on the afternoon of the eleventh, and unlike Caillaux, was given a room in a fine hotel and a first-class berth on the express to Dresden. When he and his entourage arrived at the city two days later, the mayor greeted them at the platform and took them to the
Taschenbergpalais, an eighteenth-century mansion which had served as a guesthouse in the past. While the French negotiators were being insulted on hard train seats, the British diplomats were enjoying a German. The reason for this better treatment became clear on the morning of the fourteenth, a few hours before Caillaux and his entourage stepped off the train. Grey was getting dressed when received a note from Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, requesting his presence at a meeting at the Dresden city hall. When Grey arrived, he found only the German chancellor and an interpreter present. Records of this meeting are sparse- both Grey and Bethmann-Hollweg glossed over it in their memoirs, and their accounts differed wildly, while the secretary kept mum. Nevertheless, the gist was clear. Bethmann-Hollweg clarified that the Germans would “respect key British interests” in the forthcoming negotiations. He spoke of Australian annexation of Kaiser Wilhelmsland and South African annexation of Namibia. More importantly, the Chancellor informed Grey that the Belgians would receive diplomatic representation at the conference and that Germany would not pursue reparations from the UK. In exchange for these concessions, Bethmann-Hollweg said he expected Grey not to make a fuss over German plans for the Continent. France would be left intact, but he made no other promises. The pleasantly surprised Foreign Secretary expressed his gratitude but queried why he was being informed of this in a secretive preliminary meeting. Bethmann-Hollweg smiled unpleasantly and said that there were differences in his government. The Kaiser and Falkenhayn might take it amiss if Germany was too conciliatory, and he would be very grateful if Grey refrained from mentioning this meeting.
With Europe in the palm of his hand, why did the German Chancellor back down in front of the British?
The answer is that Bethmann-Hollweg was a realist. After becoming chancellor in 1909, he had attempted to halt the Anglo-German battleship race; Admiral Tirpitz had overruled him, and the Kaiser had shut the project down. He had coordinated a joint response with Grey during the Balkan Wars four years previously and had advocated partitioning the Portuguese empire between London and Berlin. All this to say, Bethmann-Hollweg knew that Germany could never crush Britain the way it had France, and he saw no point in needlessly antagonising London. The reason for the secrecy of the meeting was that Bethmann-Hollweg knew the Kaiser differed strongly with him, and he wanted to cover his tracks.
Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, the man behind the compromise with Britain at Dresden.
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The Taschenbergpalais
, where the Treaty of Dresden was signed. Today, it is a museum dedicated to the end of the Great War.
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Grey returned to his room at the same time Caillaux’s train pulled in, and everyone prepared for the intense negotiations of the following day. First, however, the Germans had organised a grand celebration in the
Taschenbergpalais’ ballroom- they were calling it the
Friedenstanz, the Peace Ball. The Entente diplomats attended, but largely stayed at their tables, Caillaux and de Salves knocking back scotch. King Albert of the Belgians and his interpreter joined them to commiserate, the king nursing a gin and tonic. The only one to skip the event was Grey, who went out for a long walk, trying to plan a strategy for the next day. But for the Central Powers, this was a night of celebration, vindication for all they’d been through since the summer of 1914. The victors forgot all differences tonight, with Hungarians and Romanians amicably chatting, toasts made “to the unity of our two great peoples, the Austrians and Hungarians!”, and to “peace and progress!” Erich von Falkenhayn even consented to have a photograph taken with Hindenburg and Ludendorff, all three men in dress uniform, clutching champagne in crystal glasses. The Dresden Philharmonic played patriotic tunes and sprightly waltzes, and the Kaiser twirled around with his wife. Kaiser Wilhelm was all smiles, always having a glass of champagne in his left hand (4) and holding a beautiful woman’s hand with his right. The festivities lasted well into the small hours, when everyone trickled up to their rooms in their twos and threes.
There was work to do tomorrow.
As 15 October dawned, nearly everyone was exhausted and hung over; few had got to bed before three while copious amounts of alcohol had been consumed the night before. Out of a desire to sleep in and enjoy lunch, the Kaiser ordered negotiations not to begin until one PM. The Germans had turned the lobby of the Taschenbergpalais into a vast conference hall, with desks all along the perimeter and a massive map of Europe and another of Africa pinned to tables in the centre. The Kaiser, Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg, Foreign Minister Arthur von Zimmermann, and Erich von Falkenhayn represented the Germans; the latter had talked Kaiser Wilhelm into excluding Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Austria-Hungary had sent Foreign Minister Leopold von Berchtold and Count Ottokar Czernin. However, the Hungarian nobility had had something to say about this, as both men came from the Austrian half of the empire. This was a partnership of equals, they insisted, and they absolutely had to have Hungarian interests voiced at the conference. Thus, Baron Gyula Bornemisza (5) went to make up the third member of the Austro-Hungarian delegation. Respective foreign ministers- Sidney Sonnino for the Italians (6), Vasil Radoslavov for the Bulgarians, the Romanian Emanoil Porumbaru, and the hulking Ottoman Turk Halil Mentese represented the other Central Powers. This naturally gave the Germans the loudest voice, and few proposals were made without the green light from the Kaiser. King Albert was the sole Belgian representative, while the French had Caillaux and Justin de Selves. As with all such events, multitudes of foreign correspondents, secretaries, and interpreters stood at the back. Photographs of the historic event show the three defeated men slouching in their chairs, glum looks on their faces like bored schoolboys, national lapels in their suit jackets.
At one PM sharp, the Kaiser loudly declared that “the Conference is now in session!” He then launched into a monologue about French “strategic aggression” and how Germany would make France pay for its crimes. One American reporter noted that the German monarch kept squinting and cringing, which would seem to show that last night had left him hung over. Perhaps it was this hangover that contributed to the viciousness with which he operated that day, as he announced that the first subject of the conference would be Belgium.
The Germans had surprised King Albert by inviting him; he had assumed that the Germans planned to wipe Belgium off the map, and why would they need his presence for that except to torment him? Wearily, he stood up and greeted the delegation. Germany, the king charged, had violated two international agreements with its occupation of Belgium: the 1839 pact recognising his nation’s independence and neutrality, and the provisions of the Hague Convention relating to the rights of neutrals in war. King Albert knew he was probably wasting his breath, but with the eyes of history upon him, he felt the need to put his country’s version of events on record before the colossus to the east wiped it off the map. All the while, Edward Grey must’ve been suppressing a smile considering what Bethmann-Hollweg had told him the previous day. Arthur Zimmermann replied with a demand for the Belgian Congo; no one contested this. Grey felt King Albert’s eyes boring into him, pleading with him to say something, but he kept still. If only he could play his cards right in the next few moments… Zimmermann then demanded that the Belgian frontiers be “adjusted westward to balance German strategic needs with the identification of the people of Belgium and adjacent regions.” By the account of one American journalist, King Albert’s face lit up at these words, while Caillaux frowned and shook his head. Zimmermann strode to the map of Europe and sketched out his proposed frontiers- the western border was moved to include the French departments of Nord and Pas de Calais, while the eastern border was the Meuse River. Edward Grey stated that Britain would agree to such Belgian borders; Caillaux kept mum. Against all odds, King Albert left the Dresden Conference with a country, albeit one shackled to Germany. By this point, it was five PM, and Kaiser Wilhelm had a dinner cruise booked on the Elbe. The Central Powers representatives enjoyed themselves that night while the Entente stayed up planning for the next day.
When the conference resumed the next day, the layout had changed. The German diplomats had decided they disliked having everyone in the same conference hall, and that dealing with the British and French individually would be more effective. Henceforth, the halls of the
Taschenbergpalais and the Dresden city hall (both were used for accommodations and offices) were full of life, as diplomats scurried back and forth to put their heads together. This led to a certain amount of confusion, but the overall effect was to further the gap between the British and French positions and keep them in the dark about where the other stood.
When it came to Britain, there was a certain amount of ambivalence about how hard to push against them. Obviously, they hadn’t been defeated as badly as France, and they had the Channel to shield them, which limited Germany’s leverage. However, despite the prewar naval arms race and odd bellicose statement by Kaiser Wilhelm, there was a certain amount of respect for Britain prevailing in top circles that many hoped could be brought back to life now that the war was done. Although his empire had beaten the British, the Kaiser wanted to be their ally, not their mortal foe; thus, compromise was the order of the day. As a concession, Germany hung the Irish independence cause out to dry by keeping mum; Irish nationalists furiously queried why this had been done. Once the Emerald Isle achieved independence, many would harbour bitterness towards Berlin because of it. As per Bethmann-Hollweg’s promises to Grey, the Germans offered to cede Kaiser Wilhelmsland and Namibia- this raised a few eyebrows, but with Mittelafrika about to fall into their laps, everyone was willing to let go of a few scraps. Kaiser Wilhelmsland would subsequently be annexed into Australian Papua, while Namibia came under South African administration. Bethmann-Hollweg’s other promise- that Germany would not seek British reparations- was also followed through. It was also agreed to have all captured British troops- including Earl Haig himself- back in the UK by the start of 1917.
A bigger issue was the balance between the Royal Navy and High Seas Fleet. Victory at Coronel and in the Baltic aside, the German Navy had not performed well during the war, and the British blockade had sapped her economy. Fuelled by these memories and Kaiser Wilhelm’s fondness for the navy, no one was willing to walk away without guarantees that such a thing could never happen again. However, for Grey as for all Britons, the Royal Navy was an unbeaten source of pride, and it couldn’t be given up- after all, what if in the next war, the Kaiser tried to invade Britain? Deadlock ensued, and it looked for a horrible moment that the conference would fall apart. As a first step, Grey promised to exempt Germany from the Two-Power Standard, and dropped hints that the policy would be scrapped in the coming years. Cognisant that dreadnought battleships had not been the war-winning titans everyone had assumed, he telephoned Lloyd George and the Admiralty. A short while later, he had a concession which sounded excellent on paper but was in fact meaningless: Britain would be willing to scrap the 16:10 battleship ratio, and instead go with a 12:12 ratio, thus giving Germany at least nominal equality. Thrilled, the Kaiser intervened and proposed a naval conference to establish a “new order on the waves”. While Grey had no authority to say yes to such a thing, the peace conference was back on track and a naval modus vivendi was taking shape between Berlin and London.
The only British losses came in the colonial sphere. In the wake of their victory at Kut al-Amara back in February, the Ottoman Turks had rushed reinforcements to Mesopotamia and had advanced all the way to Bahrain by the time a ceasefire came into effect. (7) Seeing as how the British were in no position to retake the territory, they reluctantly signed it off to the Ottomans. The island of Cyprus was also the subject of negotiation. Ethnic violence between Greeks and Turks had been ongoing for several months, with the British administration struggling to keep a lid on its Turkish population (who were, naturally, being bankrolled by Constantinople). The negotiators worked out whereby the British agreed to hold a plebiscite in 1917 to determine the island’s future. As for the Arab Revolt, Grey washed his hands of the whole affair; Hejaz came back under Turkish rule. The Ottomans had not performed brilliantly in the war and knew that they were lucky to be getting away with what they had. Similarly, once the armistice had neutralised the French fleet, the Regia Marina had left port, and had encircled Malta since early June. Now, the Italians wanted the island. Britain resented having to give it up, but was soothed when the Italians offered to purchase it- to the cash-strapped British, ten million livres was worth losing some power-projection capacity in the Mediterranean. Gerany had also rashly promised Italy the whole of Somalia and a portion of British East Africa at the Second Vienna Congress; now, they had to make good. That was one reason why Bethmann-Hollweg had privately signed away Kaiser-Wilhelmsland and Namibia; he’d hoped the UK would see them as compensation for Kenya and Uganda. However, the Foreign Secretary put his foot down. Considering British troops occupied Italian East Africa, the Italian delegation was in no position to push for more; Grey was being generous handing back what he’d taken. After threatening to walk out if he didn’t get his way, Sidney Sonnino was taken aside by Zimmermann. Germany couldn’t work miracles, he said, and the Italians could kiss Germany’s friendship goodbye if they fell out of line now. Reluctantly, Sonnino agreed, but a feeling of being cheated by the Germans would sour relations between Rome and Berlin for years to come. However, Grey signed away British Somaliland for the paltry sum of a million pounds, and agreed to cede some disputed territory on the Egyptian-Libyan border. Ironically, the Germans didn’t annex a single scrap of British territory anywhere on the globe.
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The French, meanwhile, got it square in the face.
Zimmermann started off by demanding that the Franco-German border be “systematically re-evaluated and codified”; code for the Germans keeping the territory they’d occupied. This stemmed not from a desire to bring imperialism to Europe, as a century of French revisionist historians have claimed, but from specific strategic goals. The area under occupation contained approximately forty percent of France’s coal and sixty percent of its iron and steel; denying these resources to France would hamper the growth of French industry postwar. Additionally, the Germans remembered all too well the pain inflicted on them by the British blockade. When the next war came- for everyone anticipated that there would be one- possession of these resources would be a boon to the German economy, not to mention the obvious benefits which would come from stationing German troops a hundred kilometres from Paris. Caillaux loathed having to do it, but with German troops occupying the territory in question, there was little he could do. Thus, tens of thousands of square miles of France, much of which had been French since the Hundred Years War, passed under German military rule. Practically, not much changed, as Karl von Bulow’s military government continued to rule the vast territory from Reims. The Germans made vague promises about holding plebiscites in the area under direct martial law, but they planned to dangle this promise over France’s head as leverage for decades. The border between German Lorraine (now reunited) and von Bulow’s military district would later be set at the Meuse River, and this constitutes the western border of the German Empire even today. As for Belfort, the small chunk of land was annexed into German Alsace. At a stroke of a pen, Kaiser Wilhelm had added millions of unwilling subjects to his empire. These Frenchmen, however, were left stateless- the signing of the treaty invalidated their French citizenship and German citizenship was not forthcoming. It was promised, however, that anyone born inside this zone would have the right to apply for German citizenship. This was not done out of magnanimity, but a hope that the next generation would see themselves as Germans first and French second. There would be much bitterness amongst German troops expecting to be sent home, who were forced to remain on garrison duty in France well into the 1920s; unfortunately, such men took their frustrations out on the locals. Meanwhile, the Italians gained Nice, Savoy, and Corsica, as had been promised at Vienna. Running parallel with Berlin’s territorial claims against France was its demand for reparations. The goal was less to cover Germany’s expenditure on the war and more to de-fang France- if they were putting money in the Kaiser’s pocket, they couldn’t invest in the military. Germany’s leading economists had delivered a paper to Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg ahead of time, and he simply read out the prepared figure: some 65 billion francs, to be paid in specie. (8) That, however, was just the beginning. As stipulated in the 23 May armistice, France was made to pay for the German and Italian occupations in the West, retroactively dated to 2 August 1914. An initial bill of several billion francs was presented, and up to a fifth of France’s GDP was sucked up by this demand over the next several decades. France was also, humiliatingly, forced to admit to waging a policy of “strategic aggression” and to admit war guilt.
German extractions from France were no less odious on the colonial front. Ubangi-Chari and Chad, the two French colonies to the north of the Congo, became part of
Mittelafrika. French Gabon, lying between the Congo and Kamerun, met the same fate. Although it was a long way away, the Germans also insisted on a 99-year lease on the city of Dakar in West Africa- this would enable them to monitor French activities in their remaining colony. The treaty also forced France to terminate her protectorate over Morocco, although this resulted not in independence, but in German assumption of the protectorate. The Italians also gained French Djibouti and Tunisia, plus the solving of a Libyan-Algerian border dispute in Italy’s favour. As he signed the treaty, Caillaux is said to have pondered out loud what history would make of this, to which the Kaiser replied that “history will remember your people as suited only for cheesemaking!” The Treaty of Dresden was signed at 2:30 PM on 20 October 1916, bringing an end to the Great War.
Dresden marked France’s retreat from Great Power status. It had suffered two defeats and lost almost a fourth of its territory since 1870. Half its colonial empire and the better part of its natural resources were gone. The crippling German reparations all but guaranteed the collapse of the franc, while the left-wing violence the country had been experiencing was bound to escalate. Losing so much of the country’s natural resources would be a death-knell to French industry. Much of the population lay under foreign rule, a massive failing- and, to be cynical, a massive tax loss- on the government’s part. But worst of all, the French spirit was a casualty of the war. Frenchmen had fought the Germans three times in a century, and each time they had been crushed. Being French, it seemed, was no longer something to be proud of, and the people would take their frustrations out on their leaders in the days to come. Like Aristide Briand in the wake of Verdun, Caillaux knew that his government’s days were numbered. As he headed back to his capital through neutral Switzerland he must’ve wondered how on earth France would ever crawl back from this.
Britain was in a better state. The Royal Navy, though battered, lived on. Brittania would continue to rule the waves for the foreseeable future. Even with the new German empire in Africa, the British Empire and her dominions was still the largest in the world. Unlike France, the new status quo impinged no vital British interests, nor did it defile British honour. As 1916 rolled towards 1917, there was no reason Britain couldn’t recover from this defeat and live in peace with Germany. The nightmare Britain was about to walk into and the collapse of the British Empire both had their roots in the Treaty of Dresden, but the country’s leaders could’ve averted them.
Now, it was time to turn to Russia. Tsar Michael’s regime had been in power for but a month, and already he was feeling the strain. Every segment of Russian society- reactionary nobles who wanted him to emulate Nicholas, peasants advocating for their interests, the generals, and his bourgeois, semi-liberal base- was pulling on him in a different direction. Nationalist revolts were ablaze- literally- all over the country. Ever since the September Revolution, Muslim Azeris and Chechens had been fighting the Imperial Army, hoping for Ottoman backing and eventual independence. Most of Finland was in the hands of insurgents, while rebel groups roamed western Ukraine, hoping the Austro-Hungarians would advance to liberate them. The Tsar wanted nothing more than to call his constitutional convention and get to work building a stable regime, and concluding a peace with honour seemed like the best way to do that, even if it meant jettisoning some peripheral territory. Thus, he expressed a wish to meet with the Central Powers at a place of their choosing. A delighted Kaiser Wilhelm ordered that the peace treaty be signed in Konigsberg. Thus, as soon as the ink was dry on the Treaty of Dresden, the diplomats caught a special train to the ancient Prussian city. Prince Georgi Lvov- the Tsar’s bourgeois right-hand man- and Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov were duly dispatched there, shamefaced.
The proceedings at Konigsberg began on 1 November, and as with France, there was little in the way of real negotiation. As painful as it was for the two Russians, they knew that this was the best way to ensure the survival of their regime, and thus accepted the demands imposed by Germany with good grace. Russia was forced to accept the frontline as of 14 September as the new international border, and to recognise any government established by the Central Powers in this territory. All signatories also confirmed Finnish independence. There had been some debate over this amongst the Central Powers (few Italians or Turks cared much about Finland), but Germany’s desire for an additional friendly state in the Baltic is understandable enough. Plus, an independent Finland would place Petrograd uncomfortably close to a foreign border… As with Ireland, by not mentioning the Ukrainian rebels, Germany hung them out to dry, and like in Ireland, much bitterness would be felt towards Berlin once Ukraine did gian independence. This dismayed Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, who coveted the Ukraine’s vast array of natural resources for Germany. However, others questioned the wisdom of extending German responsibility beyond the Dnieper. The Army had to be downsized; a sizeable chunk of the young conscripts had to get home and back to what they were doing before the war, else there would be economic implications. Placing Ukraine in the German orbit would raise the number of Germans tied down in the east to almost a million; the economic and social consequences of that- to say nothing of the financial cost- would outweigh the gains from another satellite. Thus, Ukraine was let go. In the Caucasus, the Ottomans were in a weak negotiating position- they had failed to dislodge Russian armies from their territory, and the Russians had unearthed evidence of the Armenian Genocide. Thus, all the Ottomans could secure was a revision to the 1914 border. Constantinople was in no position to support the South Caucasus rebels, who were left to be crushed by the Russian Army. Russia also consented to Romanian annexation of Bessarabia and the dismemberment of Serbia. Thus, the Treaty of Konigsberg was signed on 11 November 1916, ending the last front of the Great War. Germany now had its place in the sun, and a bright new day was dawning...
Comments?
(1) I’ll discuss it more fully in the relevant update, but France has some *fun* (at least from my perspective as a writer!
) times ahead…
(2) Can’t find a specific number- please PM me or comment if you can.
(3) A Caillaux loyalist sacked in 1912, one of the first people the new government installed.
(4) Specifically his left hand, never his right.
(5) IOTL, the Foreign Minister of the short-lived “counterrevolutionary” Hungarian government of 1919.
(6) ITTL, Sonnino will have a better reputation than OTL, thanks to Vienna and Dresden.
(7) I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but a lot of those men died at Gallipoli IOTL, and the British Army is in a rougher state overall. Theatres like Mesopotamia are of minimal importance.
