X.

Aftermath of World War I

In the aftermath of World War I, the political order of Europe came crashing to the ground. The German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires ceased to exist, and the Ottoman Empire soon followed them into oblivion. New nations emerged, borders were radically shifted, and ethnic conflicts erupted. Victors and vanquished alike faced an enormous recovery challenge after four years of financial loss, economic deprivation, and material destruction. Amid this chaotic situation, the leaders of the victorious coalition assembled in Paris to forge a new international system that would replace the old order. The decisions they made would determine the future of Europe, and much of the rest of the world, for decades to come.

A.

Treaty of Versailles

Delegates from all of the Allied countries met in Paris, France, in January 1919 to draft the peace treaties. But it soon became evident that real decision-making authority rested in the hands of the leaders of the four states whose economic and military might had defeated the Central Powers: Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Britain, Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Premier Georges Clemenceau of France, and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States. The Japanese delegation was on the same level as the four European powers, but it participated in the conference debates only when matters pertaining to East Asia were discussed.

Britain's principal goal at the peace conference was to remove the threat of German naval power and to end Germany's overseas empire. Once Lloyd George had achieved these two objectives, he pursued a moderate territorial settlement out of concern that a harsh peace would prompt a defeated Germany to try to destroy the new international order. Orlando wanted the territory that the Allies had promised Italy when it entered the war as well as additional territory on the Adriatic Coast inhabited by Italians. Clemenceau had two principal goals: to establish a set of ironclad guarantees against a future German military threat to France and to require Germany to pay to repair the extensive damage that it had caused to northeastern France during the war. The United States had no financial or territorial claims against Germany, but Wilson fought for what he regarded as a peace of justice. He wanted a new international organization known as the League of Nations to be created to help prevent future armed conflicts.

The Treaty of Versailles that the representatives of the new German Republic were compelled to sign on June 28, 1919, was a compromise. On the one hand, Germany was deprived of portions of its prewar territory, such as Alsace and Lorraine, the city of Danzig (Gdańsk), and the Polish corridor. Also Germany was unilaterally disarmed and forced to accept an Allied military occupation of the Rhineland and to give up its colonial empire. Germany was forced to accept responsibility for the outbreak of the war and was required to pay the cost of repairing the wartime damage, known as reparations. On the other hand, Germany emerged from the peace conference as a potentially powerful country because its industrial areas were left intact and it did not lose any vital territory.

The U.S. Senate refused to approve the treaty in part because of internal U.S. politics, and the United States concluded a separate peace treaty with Germany in 1921. Without U.S. support, the economically weakened, war-weary countries of France and Britain were left with the difficult task of enforcing the provisions of the Versailles peace.

B.

Legacy of the War

When Marshal Foch of France learned of the Versailles Treaty's contents, he reportedly complained, “This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years.” As it turned out, he was uncannily accurate in his prediction of when humanity would be plunged into a second world war. World War II was a conflict that would surpass its predecessor in the number of deaths and injuries, the extent of physical destruction, and the geographical area affected. The terrible experiences of World War II have tended to overshadow the memory of the war that broke out in the summer of 1914. But World War I unquestionably represented a major turning point in history, and its consequences are still felt throughout the world.

The major fighting in World War I was confined to a relatively limited area: northeastern France, western Russia, the Balkan Peninsula, the Alpine frontier between Austria-Hungary and Italy, and the deserts of what would later be called the Middle East. But millions of people far from the battlefields felt the effects of the war, people who lived not only at the home front in Europe but also in towns and villages throughout the world. Men from as far away as Australia and India died on the fields of northern France and the beaches of Gallipoli. Africans from Senegal and Morocco fought in the trenches on the western front while Bedouin tribesmen from the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula rode camels against the Ottomans.

The death of over 10 million men in combat left a gaping chasm in the social and economic life of the postwar world. Many of those who survived the war returned home with physical disabilities that prevented them from rejoining the work force. Others suffered the lasting effects of what in those days was called shell shock and what is today labeled post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychological affliction that prevents a successful adaptation to civilian life. Many of the dead left widows and orphans who had to cope with severe economic hardship and emotional loss.

The war had a profound effect on the relations between men and women in the major belligerent states. As the men rushed to the battlefield, women moved into many traditionally male occupations in industry. They then began to achieve a degree of independence and self-reliance that had been unavailable before the war. Many of the countries involved in the war (including Britain, the United States, and Germany) granted women the right to vote for the first time shortly after the war ended.

The war also profoundly disrupted the revered cultural tradition of the Western world. Optimism about human nature and about the glorious future of civilization was discredited as soldiers from what had been hailed as the most highly civilized societies on earth slaughtered each other without mercy. Artists began to produce works that mocked the self-confident assertions of humanism and portrayed the sordid realities of modern life. Social scientists and psychologists probed the sources of human aggression in an effort to explain the orgy of violence that had ended. Philosophers bemoaned the decadence of civilization and the decline of the west.

The economic consequences of the war were felt throughout the world. All of the countries involved had to borrow heavily to pay for the costs of the war, either from their own citizens or from foreign lenders. Such deficit-financing generated inflation, which impoverished many citizens living on fixed incomes. Some governments, such as the Soviet regime in Russia, repudiated their foreign debts, wiping out the savings of frugal investors in many countries. The war also wrought political changes that had serious economic consequences. For example, the new states in Eastern Europe that were formed out of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire found it nearly impossible to achieve economic viability. When the empire was divided into separate countries, the new countries were cut off from their prewar markets and sources of food and raw materials.

The postwar international order that was forged at the Paris Peace Conference proved to be unstable and short-lived. What Woodrow Wilson called “the war to end all wars” led to, within a generation, a second, even more destructive conflict. The early evaluations of the Versailles settlement were largely critical. People blamed the leaders of the victorious European powers for having betrayed President Wilson's principle of national self-determination by forcing Germany to cede territories with large German populations. They also criticized the imposition of crushing reparations on Germany. Some believed that the reparations would destroy Germany economically and guarantee the country’s resentment.

More recent scholarship has challenged this evaluation of the Versailles settlement as a harsh, vindictive, peace settlement. Germany's territorial losses were much less harsh than those imposed on its allies Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. In addition, some scholars have argued that Germany could have paid the reparations, if the country’s standard of living had been reduced. The reparation settlement failed not simply because Germany was not able to pay but because many German people did not accept that Germany was more responsible for the war than any other country. In addition, the wartime coalition of Britain, France, and the United States, which might have been powerful enough to enforce the treaty, dissolved shortly after the war as each country concentrated on its own domestic issues.

When Nazi leader Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, he was able to destroy much of the Versailles treaty by exploiting two pervasive sentiments of the 1930s. The first was the lingering suspicion, particularly widespread in Britain, that Germany had been treated unfairly at the peace conference and that its demands for territorial changes should be considered. The second was the universal belief that any political compromise with Nazi Germany was preferable to another European war. The diplomacy of appeasement, which enabled Hitler to remilitarize Germany and take over territory during the 1930s, was therefore a direct outgrowth of the memories that millions of survivors retained of the traumatic experience of the World War I. They were intent on not repeating the experience at all costs.