Reaction to the treaty
On May 7 the German delegation was finally summoned to receive the draft treaty. Additional important clauses called for the abolition of the German high seas fleet, the general staff, and conscription; partition of Germany’s African colonies; cession of the Eupen-et-Malmédy district to Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine to France, most of Upper Silesia and West Prussia to Poland, including a corridor to the Baltic that cut Germany in two; plebiscites to determine whether Allenstein and Marienwerder should go to Poland and Schleswig to Denmark; a League of Nations administration for the free city of Danzig (to provide Poland a coastal port); prohibition of Anschluss (union) between Germany and Austria; and abrogation of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Finally, Article 231 enjoined Germany to accept full responsibility for the war caused “by the aggression of Germany and her allies.”
The draft treaty caused acute consternation in Germany (though it left Germany intact and was mild compared to Germany’s terms to Russia at Brest-Litovsk), and the German delegation argued without success for substantial revisions. The Germans could not reject the treaty, however, without inviting a continuation of the Allied blockade, revolutionary outbreaks, an Allied military advance, or French intrigues against German unity. (On June 1, Foch’s generals in the occupation implicated themselves in an abortive separatist putsch aimed at creating a “Rhineland Republic” and thereby magnified German—and British—suspicions.) Hence, the German delegation—frock-coated professionals bearing little resemblance to the spike-helmeted militarists the Allies meant to punish—affixed their signatures to the treaty in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles on the fifth anniversary of the Sarajevo assassination (June 28, 1919). The Weimar coalition of Democrats, Social Democrats, and the Catholic Centre party ratified the treaty on July 9. German nationalists, however, denounced acceptance of the treaty as treason and immediately began propounding the myth that the German army had been “stabbed in the back” by Socialists and defeatists, the “November criminals” who signed the Armistice, and the liberal parties who signed the Versailles Diktat. The war-guilt clause was particularly damaging, since any historical evidence suggesting that Germany did not bear sole guilt for the war would tend to undermine the treaty’s legitimacy.
Allied delegates and populations were scarcely happier with the treaty than the Germans. British diplomat Harold Nicolson echoed the views of disillusioned Wilsonians when he left the signing ceremony in disgust, “and thence to bed, sick of life.” Economist John Maynard Keynes quit the peace conference in protest and returned to Britain to write a scathing critique of Wilson and the treaty, whose economic clauses, he said, stymied European recovery. Nor were the French satisfied. Marshal Foch despaired of containing the power of a united Germany and prophesied: “This is not peace, but a truce for 20 years.” Poincaré predicted willful German default and Allied disputes over execution. Clemenceau had to exploit all his prestige to win parliamentary ratification, and still he lost the presidential election that followed.
As for Wilson, the treaty he had personally helped to fashion, and the global obligations it imposed on the United States, proved unpopular with various factions in American politics, including nationalists, isolationists, “Monroe Doctrine” regionalists, xenophobes, and tariff protectionists. The immediate postwar years also gave rise to the “red scare,” the first legislation limiting immigration to the United States on an ethnic basis, and the belief that Wilson had been duped by the clever Europeans so that the war redounded only to the benefit of Anglo-French imperialism. But it is not true that the United States retreated at once into isolationism. The debate over Versailles was essentially a debate over the terms on which the United States would continue to play a role in world affairs. Most important was fear that Article 10 of the League Covenant might embroil the United States in foreign quarrels and even violate the Constitution. The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, eventually proposed ratification of the Treaty of Versailles subject to 14 reservations, but Wilson insisted on an all-or-nothing strategy and embarked on a hectic national tour to mobilize public support. In October 1919 he suffered a debilitating stroke, and on November 19 the Senate voted down the treaty. Further compromise led to a final vote on March 19, 1920, but Wilson instructed his own loyalists to reject any reservations. The 49–35 vote fell short of the necessary two-thirds majority. By failing to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, the United States also rejected the League of Nations (which its own president had forced on the Europeans), the security guarantee by which Clemenceau had been persuaded to give up the Rhineland, and U.S. commitment to the economic and political reconstruction of Europe. All this gave those who clung to the belief that the French cause had been betrayed the opportunity to deal even more harshly with Germany.
The West and the Russian Civil War
Bolshevik diplomacy
France’s deep fears about a future German threat sprang in large part from the elimination of Russia as a factor in the European balance. Indeed, the Russian question was at least as important as the German one and absorbed as much time and worry at the peace conference. After Brest-Litovsk, Anglo-French policy turned sharply anti-Bolshevik, and Clemenceau and Foch worked to build a cordon sanitaire in eastern Europe against German and Bolshevik expansion alike. The Lenin regime also repudiated the tsarist debts to Britain and France (the latter being more delicate since most of it dated from before the war and was owed to private bondholders). But Wilson still believed in the innate desire of the Russian people for democracy and searched desperately for ways to end the civil war and liberalize the Reds, the Whites, or both. As early as July 1918 he wrote Colonel Edward House: “I have been sweating blood over what is right and feasible to do in Russia. It goes to pieces like quicksilver under my touch.”
After Brest-Litovsk the Bolsheviks came quickly to a two-track policy toward the West. Their rhetoric still condemned Allied and German imperialists in vitriolic terms, but their deeds aimed at securing their own survival at all costs. These included attempts to open negotiations with Allied governments, to exploit differences among them, to persuade them to withdraw support for the Whites, and to encourage the opposition to intervention in Russia that already existed among French and British workers and soldiers. On the other hand, the Red Terror launched by the Bolsheviks in 1918, including the murder of the royal family, convinced many in the West that this new breed was beyond the pale. U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing called Bolshevism “the most hideous and monstrous thing that the human mind has ever conceived.” When, in August 1918, the Cheka (secret police) arrested 200 British and French residents of Moscow, invaded their consulates, and murdered the British naval attaché, opinion spread in Paris and London that the Bolsheviks were thugs and bandits, if not German agents. In the autumn the Allies imposed a blockade on the Moscow regime and broke the last contacts (diplomatic missions and the Red Cross) that still existed.
The Bolsheviks’ paramount need was a breathing spell in which to consolidate their power, mobilize the economy in the lands under their control, and subdue the White armies. By the end of 1918 these forces included the Cossacks of General Anton Denikin in the south, supported by the French from Odessa; the Ukrainian separatists; General Nikolay Yudenich’s army of the Baltic; a puppet government in the north supported by the Anglo-French from Arkhangelsk; and the government of Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak at Omsk in Siberia. American and Japanese troops occupied Vladivostok on the Pacific. The Bolsheviks had also invaded Estonia only to be met by local troops, a British naval squadron, Yudenich’s Russian nationalists, and even General Rüdiger von der Goltz’s German veterans seeking to maintain German authority on the Baltic. Against these disparate and uncoordinated forces the Bolsheviks deployed the Red Army under the command of Leon Trotsky. In the opening stages of the Revolution they experimented with a “people’s army” in which ranks were abolished and officers were elected by the troops. This quickly gave way to traditional military practice and even recruitment of ex-tsarist officers and technicians. By the turn of 1919 the Red Army numbered in the millions.
Lenin instructed the new commissar for foreign affairs, Georgy Chicherin, to try to separate the United States from the Allies. In October and November 1918 he addressed long notes to Wilson protesting Allied intervention and proposing a cease-fire in return for Allied evacuation. Then in December, Maksim Litvinov appealed to Wilson in terms drawn from the Fourteen Points, ending with the plea auditur et altera pars (“let the other side be heard”). Some historians have judged these demarches as a genuine opportunity for early reconciliation between the Bolsheviks and the West. Others consider them the equivalent of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations with the Germans, a “peace offensive” designed to serve the internal security of the regime. The Western powers, however, were confused about how to influence events in Russia. In January 1919, Lloyd George showed Wilson an intelligence report indicating that the Allied interventions, if not increased massively, would only strengthen the appeal of the Bolsheviks. He favored negotiation; Clemenceau favored a stronger intervention.
Given the Bolsheviks’ single-minded dedication to power and ideology (which was, after all, their sole source of legitimacy), it is difficult to imagine how Allied–Soviet friendship, or a compromise settlement among the Russian factions, could have emerged. Nevertheless, the snarled diplomacy of the two sides during the peace conference widened the gap between them. Lenin had postponed his summons to European Socialists to form the Third (or Communist) International (Comintern) until January lest it spoil his efforts to open negotiations with the West. He finally issued the call on January 25, 1919, just as the Paris Peace Conference finally decided to make an initiative. It appeared, therefore, as if Lenin was intent on remaining an international outlaw seeking to destroy the very governments with which he claimed to want normal relations. The Comintern was founded on March 2, and at its second congress (July 1920) Lenin insisted that member parties accede to 21 conditions imposing rigorous Communist discipline and subordinating local parties to the will of Moscow. It divided European Socialists, most of whom rejected the Communists’ violent tactics, Lenin’s dictatorship, or both. From its inception, therefore, the Comintern was an arm of Soviet foreign policy more than a vehicle of Socialist internationalism.
