Narrates the course of the Paris Peace Conference following World War I to assess its consequences as measured against contemporary expectations as well in hindsight. Clemenceau (‘bury me standing, facing Germany’), Lloyd George, and Wilson as well as Balfour and Curzon are key figures. The study reviews the proceedings regarding European, Asian, and Middle Eastern regions by country, focusing heavily on the redrawing of borders. Self-determination, mixed nationalism newly awakened by the collapse of the Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman empires, proved explosive; however, the course of twenty years, not simply the treaty, led to 1939.
World War I
15. Taylor, Struggle for Mastery in Europe (5 Sep 2019)
Narrates the foreign policies of Europe’s leading nations from mid-century civil strife through the conclusion of World War I. After 1848, balance-of-power calculation trumped the ideological standoff between conservatives (i.e., monarchists) and revolutionary nationalists. After World War I, Germany’s bid for continental mastery had not only obviated balance-of-power arrangements but also scuttled the system in favor of the 20th-century contest between communism and liberal democracy (Soviet Union vs. United States).
Balance of power was effected by design grounded in realism, not in treaties. Britain saw France as the keystone; Russia wished to push the two German powers into leading the defense of conservativism; Austria wanted Russian support; Prussia clung to traditional allies in Britain and Russia. Palmerstone thought BOP strengthened Germany by giving it a ‘free hand’; Bismarck agreed it was a means of security.
In 1848, the alternative to supporting the besieged Habsburg monarchy was the emergence of Hungary and unified Germany. Russia decided here interests lay in helping to restore Austria. During the Crimean War, Austria and Prussia avoided taking sides because the former was conflicted and the latter uninterested. The real stakes were Italian nationhood and the resolution of Germany. The war proved indecisive in these respects but created options for Napoleon III and then Bismarck. The Treaty of Paris, unlike the Congress of Paris following Waterloo, gave the deceptive impression of peace. (Coincidentally, it was the most successful invasion of Russian since 1800, reducing Russian prestige to the lowest point since 1721.)
Italy was more important to Europe prior to Germany’s industrial revolution; she could not make herself a nation. Austria could retain Italy only by conceding German leadership to Prussia; the basic principle of Habsburg diplomacy was to concede only after defeat; trying to retain both lost her both. Napoleon, meanwhile, bumbled into a policy of asserting ‘natural frontiers’ in aggrandizing Savoy. Italian unification finished Crimean destruction of post-Waterloo order; French ambitions of European hegemony were lost during 1863-66.
In dismembering Poland, Russia was no longer seeking Austro-Prussian unity. Prussia could subjugate the Poles, the Austrians could not. Her truly vital interests were outside the continent. (As an aside: most battles confirm the direction of events; Plevna in 1877-78 confirmed Turkish rule of the Bosporus Straights and Constantinople, giving the Ottoman Empire another 40 years; to this day, Russia remains confined to the Black Sea.)
Diplomacy is an engine of peace for those would have it. Bismarck’s convoluted doings played on European interests. The League of Three Emperors was anti-British, the Triple Alliance was contradictory. He favored Russia, disliked Austrians, and preferred France to Italy but above all sought prudential balance. Metternich’s system had been conservative, Bismarck’s was a ‘tyranny’ of German control, albeit pacific. Proper international order needs common principle, moral views, and treaties – Taylor favors Metternich.
Bismarck saw colonies in terms of European domination; England and Russia wanted to be left out of Europe to pursue empire. The Reinsurance Treacy (1882-83) ensured Germany would face a two-front war unless she abandoned Austria; Russian wanted Germany neutrality in a Habsburg conflict. Cancellation led to the Franco-German alliance, an arrangement unlike the German concord in that an autocratic and a revolutionary power came together. The chancellor’s successors lost the plot of continental domination by diplomacy and so were led toward war. It needn’t have been.
Europe would unite against Britain only when it had a clear champion: the age of African imperialism was merely postponement. During the 1890s the British were indeed isolated, Albion’s traditional Austrian links having faltered in 1894. Amid growing German predominance, the Franco-Russian tie-up unintentionally pushed Britain into Sudan (to protect Egypt vs French interests); the Boer War and the Anglo-Japanese pact underlined her solitude. Tirpitz’s naval buildup, instead of prompting Britain to buy Germany’s friendship, persuaded her to avoid conflict with France or Russia, and to adopt the ‘more than everyone else’ naval standard. Simultaneously, Weltpolitik combined with continental ambitions limited Germany’s options. The Dogger Bank affair’s denouement ended the expected (since Crimea) outcome of Anglo-Russian war.
British conservatives favored Germany, Liberals the Franco-Russian entente. Grey like most of his party repudiated BOP, but thought a scorned France would unite with Germany or Russia: Gallic independence became paramount, BOP came back to the fore, imperial interests which had predominated since 1860 were set aside. Once she had conciliated the other Great Powers to protect her empire, now she conceded imperial interests to defend the balance. Driven by trading and naval rivalry, in spite of tradition, Britain set herself against Germany.
Germany could not directly challenge Britain so long as there were two other independent powers. Abandoning the naval program might have won British neutrality, in which case she would have won the continental battle. The Moroccan crises were the point of no return. (To prove the point, the 1912-14 Balkan Wars, regarding the fate of Turkey in Europe and Asia, reduced Anglo-Russian goodwill, thereby reducing German tensions). These indirectly raised the question of French intentions should a Russo-German conflict break out: Poincare determined it would mean war no matter who started the affair, abandoning France’s a formerly defensive posture. German interests in the Baghdad railway and elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire brought here into direct conflict with Russia for the first time, for the latter needed ‘neutral’ control of the Straights for shipping. Germany required Austria to gain control of the Near East, and so was captive to her weaker partner. Romanian interests, excited by the Balkan Wars, sought to free 2 million ethnic compatriots from Hungary, which was core to the Habsburgs.
Alliances didn’t cause WWI, Taylor says; every country had reasons to hesitate or doubt surety of gains. Even Germany’s primary motivation – whether naval power, Near Eastern interests, continental supremacy – cannot be certainly identified. But the Schlieffen Plan’s adoption, which required a quick-strike win in France to avoid prolonged two-front fighting, since necessitated commitment to action. Germany did not engineer August 1914 but welcomed the occasion, the Balkan Wars having false taught of a quick win.
During the great War, every small-state alliance was a hindrance. For example, but for Italy the Allies might otherwise have severed Austria from Germany. Civilians tried to negotiate, the generals to win outright. Eventually the former were pushed aside for Ludendorff, Clemenceau, Lloyd George. The war ended BOP as a system, the treaty sought to permanently cripple Germany’s Great Power capacity, Russia having fallen to revolution. In 1918 Europe ceased to be the world’s center, though the next struggle was not clarified until 1945, in a new ideological rivalry.
2. Keegan, The First World War (8 Jan 2015)
Narrates the warfare of 1914-18, focusing on the strategic failures of each side in the initial going and then in accommodating trench warfare and incipient mechanization. Technically excellent, Keegan’s major extension is to dramatize the senseless waste of millions of enlisted men. Though touching on diplomatic events and social currents, Keegan offers no significant insight in the broader realm of political history. The author fails his self-appointed task of describing why the world’s most advanced region succumbed to self destruction.
14. Kagan, On the Origins of War (14 Aug 2019)
To identify elements that commonly cause global conflicts, studies the Peloponnesian and Punic wars, World Wars 1 and 2, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Despite the modern taste for social-science explanations such as irrational behavior or systemic competition (e.g., Kennedy’s belief miscalculation launched the Great War), Thucydides’ precept holds: wars commence from honor, fear, or interest. The historian of war ought to hold out hopes of statesmanship surmounting avoidable conflict: some wars are just and must be resolved, but many can be put off, sometimes through concession but more often by deterrence. There is a typology of treaties (e.g., victor’s peace, punishment without destruction, and mutual agreement that continuing costs surmount the gains) which are the starting point for defense of peace.
Peloponnesian War: The Spartans’ honor required defending its coalition and discouraging defections to Athens. Archidamus failed to stem his fractious allies, who were more like NATO than the common analogy of the Soviet bloc. Pericles sought to demonstrate Athens was a sated power, and through defensive strategy to show traditional Spartan warfare could not prevail, but lacked a credible offensive deterrent (such as encouraging slave rebellion).
World War 1: Germany undid Bismarck’s attempt to demonstrate its satisfaction through the belligerence of Kaiser Wilhelm and his cabinet. The pursuit of naval power and colonies was a point of honor (not interest) which threatened Britain’s traditional objectives to control the seas and the Low countries and well as to preserve a continental balance of power.
2d Punic War: Rome struck a poor peace, its Senate failing to ratify the first treaty and seeking a larger indemnity, both of which served to inflame Carthage. Additionally, Rome carelessly conceded vital interests, such as the security of Saguntum or defending the Ebro border.
World War 2: Versailles was not unduly harsh, but the Germans didn’t believe they’d lost, and the UK didn’t see itself as responsible for enforcement. Its economic power flagging, Britain was persuaded by traumatized, rationalist intellectuals to trust in the League of Nations. Well before Hitler’s rise, the Germans had shaken off occupation of the Rhineland, renegotiated reparations, and begun rearming (in cooperation with Soviet Russia). Subsequently, Chamberlain replaced moral disarmament with military unpreparedness as a reason for appeasement. France too, cowering behind the Maginot Line, lacked the will to defend Eastern Europe.
Cuban Missile Crisis: Geoffrey Blainey observes wars start when rivals can’t agree the allotment of power. Both sides agreed the US was stronger but Khrushchev perceived Kennedy wouldn’t act on it. The Bay of Pigs, disastrous Vienna summit, and erection of the Berlin Wall as well as Soviet premier’s skill at strategic deception and bluster shook the American president. In belatedly exposing the Soviet missile gap, Kennedy pushed his rival into a corner without intending to keep him there. Similarly, the warning against deployment was too late for prevention, too precise to explain away their discovery. Khrushchev underestimated the pressure on Kennedy to act, just as Chamberlain had been forced by opinion to confront Hitler. (The US cabinet saw Cuba as a domestic matter not a military problem, ruing that a less precise warning would have allowed the administration to eventually explain the missiles were no threat.) Kennedy contemplated trading missiles in Turkey for Cuba very early and volunteered the terms. Khrushchev accepted the concession, taking advantage of a weak player.
16. MacMillan, Paris 1919 (10 Sep 2019)
World War II was caused not by the shortcomings of World War I’s Versailles peace treaties, but inconsistent enforcement by Western democracies and Hitler’s desire to conquer the Soviet Union. The agreement with Germany was less punitive than the Franco-German treaty of 1870, but sufficient to irritate Germany.
All of the victors thought Germany started the war. Because they were quickly demobilizing and also threatened by Soviet-inspired unrest in Eastern Europe and Berlin, where the Bolsheviks were old-fashioned Russian imperialists in socialist rhetoric, the peacemakers had to rush to terms but also to attend to deferred domestic issues. Allied goals were inchoate, the French keen for revenge and the US and UK wary of one another; the Americans under Wilson favored self-determination while the British were concerned to husband their empire and navy. Wilson, who saw himself as tribune of the people, left unresolved the way to adjudge competing nationalist claims for self-determination; he brought no Republicans to Rome and so couldn’t persuade the Senate to ratify the League of Nations. (The League was innovative, MacMillan says, and predictably trusting of experts while lacking a constituency.) Clemenceau won more than expected, preserving a postwar UK alliance, getting (in 1920) 52 percent of Germany’s eventual payment of $4.5 billion, and a 15-year occupation of the demilitarized Rhineland (having proposed a joint customs union). David Lloyd George decided only that he should decide, albeit reparations were handled adroitly.
In southern Europe, Yugoslav sentiment was strongest among Croats inside Austria-Hungary, who wished to avoid Germanization or Magyarization. The Serbians were minded for independence. Wilson glibly overlooked Balkan history.
In central Europe, deals were cut to superimpose self-determination on traditional geographies and peoples. In Poland and Czechoslovakia, new resentments were created. The Allies went easier on Austria than Hungary, which lost two thirds of its territory and population (leaving 3.5 million Magyars outside the rump country), paid heavy reparations, and lost access to its core markets. Since the UK and US didn’t want to break up Germany, they prevented a peaceful Anschluss with Catholic Bavaria to counterbalance a Protestant Prussia. Half of world Jewry was living in the Russian pale, modern Belarus, Ukraine, and eastern Poland although 2.75 million emigrated to the United States before 1914.
Versailles’ Sykes-Picot was old-fashioned imperialism. Wilson blocked a racial equality clause favored by Japan, which was hoping for an Asian Monroe doctrine. Venizelos is labeled the greatest Greek statesman since Pericles, but comes off second best versus Ataturk. Turkey had little to lose in resisting Paris because most of the country had been given away. Delays worked in its favor, because Allied forces were weakening. The failure of the Megali idea is treated as the launching point for narrating the author’s view of Versailles’ failures.
Article 231, the famous war guilt clause, also appears in treaties with Austria and Hungary, in order to justify reparations. However, Germany’s fate is compared to a Roman triumph. Yet Germany paid less than French reparations after 1870, and the author asserts its strategic position improved after the war because Poland buffered its eastern border with Russia, while its southern border featured small states instead of the Habsburg empire.
MacMillian, because of her construction, struggles to reconcile the master narrative with the country- or geographically specific chapters and analyses. Many of her early observations labor to relate the events of 1919 to the 21st century, going beyond obvious precedents to Whiggish views.