Fourteen Points
The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles for peace that was to be used for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. The principles were outlined in a January 8, 1918 speech on war aims and peace terms to the United States Congress by President Woodrow Wilson. However, his main Allied colleagues (Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy) were skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism.[1]
The United States had joined the Triple Entente in fighting the Central Powers on April 6, 1917. Its entry into the war had in part been due to Germany's resumption of submarine warfare against merchant ships trading with France and Britain and also the interception of the Zimmermann Telegram. However, Wilson wanted to avoid the United States' involvement in the long-standing European tensions between the great powers; if America was going to fight, he wanted to try to separate that participation in the war from nationalistic disputes or ambitions. The need for moral aims was made more important when, after the fall of the Russian government, the Bolsheviks disclosed secret treaties made between the Allies. Wilson's speech also responded to Vladimir Lenin's Decree on Peace of November 1917, immediately after the October Revolution in 1917.[2]
The speech made by Wilson took many domestic progressive ideas and translated them into foreign policy (free trade, open agreements, democracy and self-determination). Three days earlier United Kingdom Prime Minister Lloyd George had made a speech setting out the UK's war aims which bore some similarity to Wilson's speech but which proposed reparations be paid by the Central Powers and which was more vague in its promises to the non-Turkish subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The Fourteen Points in the speech were based on the research of the Inquiry, a team of about 150 advisers led by foreign-policy adviser Edward M. House, into the topics likely to arise in the anticipated peace conference.
Speech[edit]
The speech, known as the Fourteen Points, was developed from a set of diplomatic points by Wilson[25] and territorial points drafted by the Inquiry's general secretary, Walter Lippmann, and his colleagues, Isaiah Bowman, Sidney Mezes, and David Hunter Miller.[26] Lippmann's draft territorial points were a direct response to the secret treaties of the European Allies, which Lippmann had been shown by Secretary of War Newton D. Baker.[26] Lippmann's task, according to House, was "to take the secret treaties, analyze the parts which were tolerable, and separate them from those which were regarded as intolerable, and then develop a position which conceded as much to the Allies as it could, but took away the poison.... It was all keyed upon the secret treaties."[26]
In the speech, Wilson directly addressed what he perceived as the causes for the world war by calling for the abolition of secret treaties, a reduction in armaments, an adjustment in colonial claims in the interests of both native peoples and colonists, and freedom of the seas.[11] Wilson also made proposals that would ensure world peace in the future. For example, he proposed the removal of economic barriers between nations, the promise of self-determination for national minorities,[11] and a world organization that would guarantee the "political independence and territorial integrity [of] great and small states alike" – a League of Nations.[3]
Though Wilson's idealism pervaded the Fourteen Points, he also had more practical objectives in mind. He hoped to keep Russia in the war by convincing the Bolsheviks that they would receive a better peace from the Allies, to bolster Allied morale, and to undermine German war support. The address was well received in the United States and Allied nations and even by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, as a landmark of enlightenment in international relations. Wilson subsequently used the Fourteen Points as the basis for negotiating the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war.[3]
Treaty of Versailles[edit]
In Germany, the 14 Points became a symbol of the promised basis of the peace after the war, and throughout the interwar period it was common in Germany to attack the Treaty of Versailles as an illegitimate treaty with the argument being made the Treaty of Versailles was contrary to the 14 Points.[41]
Notably, Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, which would become known as the War Guilt Clause, was seen by the Germans as assigning full responsibility for the war and its damages on Germany; however, the same clause was included in all peace treaties and historian Sally Marks has noted that only German diplomats saw it as assigning responsibility for the war. The Allies would initially assess 269 billion marks in reparations. In 1921, this figure was established at 192 billion marks. However, only a fraction of the total had to be paid. The figure was designed to look imposing and show the public that Germany was being punished, but it also recognized what Germany could not realistically pay. Germany's ability and willingness to pay that sum continues to be a topic of debate among historians.[42][43]
The German-born American historian Gerhard Weinberg noted that the entire question of the "justice" of the Treaty of Versailles as a source of European discord is irrelevant.[44] Weinberg noted that the vast majority of Germans in the interwar period believed that their country had actually won World War One with the Reich only being defeated by the alleged "stab-in-the-back" that was the November Revolution of 1918.[45] Weinberg wrote that there was nothing the Allies could have done to reconcile those Germans who believed in the Dolchstoßlegende that Germany had actually won the war in 1918 with the reality of their defeat.[46] Weinberg wrote that given the way that the majority of Germans believed in the Dolchstoßlegende that it was inevitable that Germany would have made some sort of challenge to the international order created by the Treaty of Versailles, and the question of the "injustice" of the Treaty of Versailles was irrelevant as a challenge would have been made even if the Treaty of Versailles had been more favorable to Germany.[46] The Dolchstoßlegende claimed that Germany had decisively defeated the combined forces of France, the British empire and the United States in 1918 and it was only at the moment of victory that Germany had been "stabbed-in-the-back" by the November revolution. Weinberg noted that pervasiveness of the Dolchstoßlegende was such that it explained the flippant way that Hitler declared war on the United States in 1941 with the full support of the Wehrmacht elite because it was genuinely believed by all of the German elites that Imperial Germany had crushed the United States in 1918, and that Nazi Germany would do the same.[47] Weinberg noted that for German elites, not just Hitler, it was the alleged "stab-in-the-back" of 1918 that explained the German defeat, and it was taken for granted that the German military was invincible and could never be defeated provided the alleged "internal" enemies such as the Jews were dispatched first.[47]
Weinberg wrote the "harshness" of the Treaty of Versailles has been vastly exaggerated as he noted that Germany lost far more land to Poland under the Oder-Neisse line imposed in 1945 than the Reich had lost to Poland under the Treaty of Versailles, and yet the Oder-Neisse line did not cause another war.[48] In 1991, Germany signed a treaty with Poland under which the Oder-Neisse line was accepted as the permanent German-Polish frontier, even through the territorial losses imposed by the Oder-Neisse line were far greater than those imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Weinberg also noted that the Allied leaders at the Paris peace conference of 1919 imposed the Minorities treaty on Poland intended to protect the rights of Poland's Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) minority whereas in 1945 all of the Germans living in the lands assigned to Poland were quite brutally expelled from their homes forever, leading him to ask rhetorically if the Treaty of Versailles was really the monstrous "unjust" peace treaty that the Germans claimed it to be.[49]
Implementation[edit]
The Reunion of Alsace-Lorraine[edit]
Under the terms of the armistice of 11 November 1918, the French occupied Alsace–Lorraine.[50] The French wasted no time in promptly proclaiming the reunion of Alsace-Lorraine with France.[50] Many of the Alsatians had been unhappy under German rule, and the French troops who marched into Alsace-Lorraine in November 1918 were greeted as liberators with large crowds coming out to cheer the French soldiers while waving about tricolores.[51] At the Paris peace conference, both Wilson and Lloyd George supported Clemenceau's demand for the reunion of Alsace-Lorraine with France.[52] Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France. Under the terms of the Treaty of Locarno in 1925, Germany accepted as permanent the Franco-German border established by the Treaty of Versailles and renounced its claim upon Alsace-Lorraine.[53]
The Rhineland dispute[edit]
At the Paris peace conference in 1919, Clemenceau wanted to see the Rhineland severed from Germany.[54] The Rhineland with its steep hills and the broad Rhine river formed a natural defensive barrier and Clemenceau insisted that France needed the Rhineland to have sécurité after the war.[54] Ideally, Clemenceau wanted to see the Rhineland annexed to France, but was willing to accept having the Rhineland became a French puppet state under a permanent French military occupation.[54] Marshal Ferdinand Foch, France's most respected and honored general, argued that the French needed control of the Rhineland in order to stand a chance of victory in another war with Germany, which Foch believed to be inevitable as the Allies had defeated, but not destroyed Germany as a great power.[54] In Foch's viewpoint, France's need for sécurité took precedence over the rights of the Rhinelanders for self-determination. As the Rhineland was overwhelmingly German in population and its people did not wish to be severed from Germany, both Wilson and Lloyd George were completely opposed to Clemenceau's plans for the Rhineland, which they claimed would create "an Alsace-Lorraine in reverse" with the Rhinelanders being placed unhappily under French rule.[55] Wilson in particular was strongly for the Rhineland remaining part of Germany and he threatened several times to have the American delegation walk out of the peace conference if Clemenceau persisted with his plans for the Rhineland.[55]
Under strong Anglo-American pressure, the French were forced to accept that the Rhineland would remain part of the Reich.[55] As a consolation prize, Clemenceau was offered a military alliance with the British empire and the United States, under which Anglo-American forces would come to France's aid in the event of German aggression.[55] However, the British acceptance of the alliance was made conditional upon the American acceptance of the alliance, and the United States Senate voted against the alliance with France, thus rendering the proposed Anglo-American-French alliance null and void.[55] Clemenceau and the other French leaders always felt that France had been "cheated" as the French made major concessions to the Anglo-American viewpoint in return for alliances that proved to be an illusion.[55] Under the Treaty of Versailles, the Rhineland remained part of Germany, but was made into a permanent demilitarized zone and the French were allowed to occupy the Rhineland until 1935, through in fact the French occupation ended early in June 1930.[52]
The Danzig dispute[edit]
One of the thorniest issues at the Paris peace conference was the status of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland). Point 13 called for a reborn Polish state that would have "free and secure access to the sea". Danzig was a deep water port located where the Vistula river flows into the Baltic sea, making it the principal port where goods both came in and out of Poland. Roman Dmowski the chief the Polish delegation, argued that allowing Danzig to remain with Germany would give the Reich economic control of Poland and that for Poland to be truly independent required that Danzig go to Poland.[56] At the peace conference, Wilson explained that what he meant by Poland having "free and secure access to the sea" in point 13 was that Danzig should go to Poland.[57] Clemenceau likewise supported the Polish claim to Danzig, but Lloyd George was stoutly opposed as he argued that it would be unjust to force a city whose population was 90% German unwillingly into Poland.[57] An impasse emerged at the Paris peace conference with Clemenceau and Wilson supporting the Polish claim to Danzig while Lloyd-George maintained that the city should remain within Germany.[57] James Headlam-Morley of the British delegation came up with the compromise of making Danzig into a Free City that would belong to neither Poland nor Germany.[58] The Treaty of Versailles imposed the compromise solution of severing Danzig from Germany to become the Free City of Danzig, a city-state in which Poland had certain special rights.[59]
The Polish Corridor and Upper Silesia[edit]
German public opinion did not accept the loss of Danzig along with the loss of the so-called Polish Corridor and Upper Silesia to Poland, and for the entirety of the interwar period, it was common for Germans to speak of the "open wound in the East".[60] The eastern borders the Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany, especially the Polish Corridor, were universally viewed in Germany as "unjust" and a "national humiliation".[61] The way that different peoples in Eastern Europe were mixed together in a patch-work of different pockets made it very difficult for the Allies to divide up the German-Polish border in a manner consistent with the principles of the 14 points as inevitably some people ended up being struck on the "wrong" side of the frontier.[61] Before 1914, Germany had 1 million Poles living within its borders; after 1918 Poland had 1 million Germans living within its borders.[61]
Before 1914, Eastern Europe had dominated by the three great empires, namely the Austrian, Russian and German empires with the first two being supra-national states where the focal point in the state ideologies was loyalty to the ruling families, namely the House of Habsburg and the House of Romanov.[62] The German-speaking element formed the dominant group in the Austrian empire while the way that the Russian empire defined loyalty to the House of Romanov as the main criterion had allowed the Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) under Russian rule to flourish.[62] In Imperial Russia, a disproportionate number of the civil servants, policemen, diplomats and military officers were Baltic German noblemen to such an extent that in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries that many Russians complained that it was the Baltic German aristocracy who ruled them rather than vice versa.
Before 1914, there had been little concern in Germany over the status of the German populations of Eastern Europe as ethnic Germans were the dominant element in the Austrian empire and to a large extent in the Russian empire as well.[62] In the interwar period, ethnic Germans were no longer the dominant element in Eastern Europe, and their status became a matter of considerable concern in Germany as it was often noted there were about between 10 and 12 million volkdeutsche living in Eastern Europe where other peoples were now the dominant elements.[62] The German historian Detlev Peukert argued that the way that different peoples were mixed together in Eastern Europe into a patchwork with no straight lines between them made the principle of national self-determination very difficult to apply in Eastern Europe.[62]
Peukert used Upper Silesia, an ethically mixed region inhabited by Germans and Poles that was a center of coal mining and heavy industry as an example of how "...these problems could not be fundamentally resolved if national self-determination were to be the sole criterion to be applied".[62] Initially, at the Paris peace conference, it was planned to have Poland annex all of Upper Silesia, but it decided instead to hold a referendum to decide the issue with Upper Silesia to be partitioned with the areas voting for Germany to stay within the Reich while the areas voting for Poland to be severed from Germany.[62] When the referendum was held in March 1921, 68% of the people of the people of Upper Silesia voted to stay in Germany while 32% voted to go to Poland, but the attempt by the Allied commissioners to draw up a frontier that was mutually acceptable to both sides proved impossible.[62]
Despite their best efforts of the Allied commissioners inevitably some Poles and Germans ended being on the "wrong" side of the frontier as there were no straight lines between the Polish and German inhabited areas in Upper Silesia.[62] This was especially the case because in many of the contested districts of Upper Silesia, the people in the urban areas tended to vote for staying in Germany while the rural areas voted for going to Poland.[63] On 3 May 1921, fierce fighting broke out between German and Polish para-military groups who were both determined to seize as much of Upper Silesia as possible for their respective nations.[62] Ultimately, in June 1921 the Allies imposed a frontier in Upper Silesia that left both the Poles and Germans complaining was "unjust" to their respective nations.[64]
In 1925, Germany signed the Treaty of Locarno under which the Reich accepted its western borders as laid down by the Treaty of Versailles, meaning that Germany renounced any claim to Alsace-Lorraine and the Eupen-Malmedy district of Belgium.[65] Likewise under the Locarno treaties, Germany voluntarily accepted the permeant demilitarized status of the Rhineland as imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. In a memo sent out to all German embassies around the world on 28 October 1925 written by the State Secretary, Carl von Schubert, it was announced that German public opinion could accept the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to France, hence the Treaty of Locarno, but could never accept the loss of any of the former German lands to Poland.[65] As such, the memo stated that there would never be an "Eastern Locarno" under which the Reich would accept the current German-Polish frontier.[65]
However, the memo went on to downplay the acceptance of the loss of Alsace-Lorraine under the Treaty of Locarno as it was argued that 14 Points had made the principle of national self-determination a key point of "modern diplomacy" and that the German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann believed agitation to "go home to the Reich" in Alsace-Lorraine would ultimately force the French to return the region to Germany.[65] The memo stated that the entire purpose of the Treaty of Locarno was to clear the way for Germany to take back by force if necessary all of the lands lost to Poland as it was stated that the only reason why Stresemann wanted better relations with France was to persuade the French to renounce the alliance they had signed with Poland in 1921, and in this way create a situation where Germany could invade Poland without fear of causing a war with France.[66]
Ukraine[edit]
At the time, Ukrainian delegations failed to receive any support from France and UK. Although some agreements were reached, neither of the states provided any actual support as in general their agenda was to restore Poland and unified anti-Bolshevik Russia.[67] Thus, Ukrainian representatives Arnold Margolin and Teofil Okunevsky had high hopes for American mission, but in the end found it even more categorical than the French and British ones: