The Elusive Quest

America's Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919-1933

Melvyn P. Leffler

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781469610153
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Leffler argues that American officials did not disregard European developments after World War I but, rather, they sought to settle the war debt and reparations controversies, to stabilize European currencies, and to revive European markets. Leffler bridges the gap between revisionist and traditionalist studies by integrating the diverse aspects of foreign policy and elucidates many new aspects of the foreign policymaking process in the postwar period. Originally published in 1979. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

[1]

From Versailles to Washington, 1919–1921

The Great War decimated the population of Europe. It devastated enormous tracts of land, disrupted the economic life of nations, and accentuated social unrest. It magnified nationalist fervor, intensified ideological differences, and bequeathed a legacy of hate. During peace negotiations the leaders of the Allied and Associated powers sought to lay the basis of a stable and secure world while combating the forces and destroying the roots of bolshevism. Accordingly, they assumed the tasks of establishing new nations, redrawing national boundaries, imposing sanctions, distributing relief, and creating a new international organization. Their labors, arduous as they were, demanded compromise and conciliation. No leader was entirely satisfied with the terms of the peace negotiated at Paris. Yet, European economic turmoil and social strife impelled action; a formal peace seemed an indispensable prerequisite of the stability of Europe, the security of France, and the well-being of the United States.

Wilsonian Peacemaking and French Security

At the Paris Peace Conference, President Woodrow Wilson was beleaguered by conflicting impulses and contradictory pressures. On the one hand he sympathized with the French quest for security and appreciated their “sense of danger.”¹ He understood the particular dilemmas faced by French statesmen as they endeavored to protect their homeland against the demographic and industrial superiority of Germany. Addressing the French Senate on 20 January 1919, the American president declared that France stood “at the frontier of freedom” and would “never again” have to face “a lonely peril” or have to “ask the question who would come to her assistance.” Frenchmen had to be assured, Wilson insisted, “that the same thing will happen always that happened this time, that there shall never be any doubt or waiting or surmise, but that whenever France or any other free people is threatened the whole world will be ready to vindicate its liberty.”²

Yet, though he sympathized with the French quest for security, Wilson did not wish to provide for such security through a return to traditional balance-of-power politics. The balance of power in his view was part of the old order, inherently unstable, and the source of competitive armaments and international rivalries.³ The president did not want the United States to become part of such a system. Accordingly, he frowned upon the traditional alliance system, emphasized America’s historical aloofness from European politics, and renounced any intention to play the role of broker or balancer in Europe’s wanton game of power politics.⁴ Nor did Wilson wish to enhance French security through the dismemberment of Germany or the emasculation of her economic and industrial potential. Such attempts, he maintained, were certain to be countereffective and dangerous to French interests over the long run.⁵ A harsh peace he could accept; but an unjust peace, Wilson warned, would drive Germany into the hands of the Bolsheviks or engender an atmosphere of lasting enmity and permanent revenge. The president wanted Germany to pay for her mistakes, but he also wanted to reintegrate Germany into a postwar liberal capitalist order that would be both prosperous and stable. Wilson assumed that, once a participant in such an order, Germany would be peaceful and cooperative, French security would no longer be jeopardized, and American economic interests would be enhanced.⁶

There was considerable tension between Wilson’s sympathy for France and his desire to reintegrate Germany into a prosperous world order, between his concern for French security and his antipathy toward balance of power politics, and between his desire to preserve Allied unity and his aversion to alliances. He believed, however, that these apparent inconsistencies and contradictions could be reconciled through the creation of the League of Nations. Wilson considered the League to be the keystone of all his work because it provided a mechanism for maintaining French amity while coopting Germany into a new order, for guaranteeing French security while sublimating alliance systems, and for preserving Allied unity while minimizing American embroilments in European politics.⁷

Wilson believed that the League could accomplish such diverse objectives without obligating the United States to dangerous strategic commitments. This was the result, he insisted, of his careful framing of the covenant to safeguard America’s independence in military matters.⁸ Although he championed Article 10 of the covenant, which obligated League members to protect the territorial integrity of one another against external aggression, Wilson refused to allow specific sanctions to be tied to this article and considered it a strictly moral obligation.⁹ Within the League Commission, he labored to preserve the veto, safeguard the Monroe Doctrine, and oppose binding arbitration.¹⁰ Furthermore, he objected to proposals calling for the creation of an international army and a military planning staff.¹¹ These actions reflected Wilson’s efforts to balance his desire for French security with his reluctance to compromise independent American decision making in military matters.

French Premier Georges Clemenceau did not share Wilson’s enthusiasm for the new international organization. The French premier was preoccupied with guaranteeing future French security. Clemenceau believed in the efficacy of traditional balance-of-power methods to accomplish this goal and distrusted new and untried experiments.¹² Although Wilson and Colonel Edward M. House, one of the American peace commissioners, tried to convince him that the League, in general, and Article 10, in particular, were aimed at providing security for France, Clemenceau remained dubious. He realized that although Wilson ostensibly committed the United States to safeguarding the peace of Europe, the president’s multifaceted conception of the League did not fully guarantee the security of France nor insure the prompt and complete collaboration of the United States in deterring aggression.¹³ Similarly, Clemenceau recognized that Wilson’s antipathy toward commissions to enforce the armaments provisions of the peace treaty and his readiness to invite a reformed Germany into the new organization conflicted with the French premier’s desire to perpetuate the wartime coalition as an instrument for enhancing French security against Germany in the postwar era.¹⁴

Clemenceau eventually acquiesced to French participation in a new international organization, but he would not entrust the safeguarding of French security to it, especially as long as there were no provisions for an international army and a military planning staff.¹⁵ When Wilson returned to Paris in mid-March after a brief trip to the United States, he was confronted with a concerted effort by the French delegates to achieve more concrete guarantees of French security. The French wanted to establish a separate Rhineland state, occupy the Rhine bridgeheads for thirty years, demilitarize both the left and right banks of the Rhine, and limit German land and naval armaments. In a long memorandum on these issues André Tardieu, one of the French plenipotentiaries at the peace conference, explained that the League did not afford France a “zone of safety” comparable to the physical guarantees enjoyed by Great Britain and the United States. Nor did it insure France against another invasion since there would be an interval of time before League members, especially the United States, could provide tangible aid to defeat Germany. Thus, the only way France could achieve certainty against another German attack was by establishing an independent Rhenish republic.¹⁶

Wilson understood French worries that in an emergency the League might not function quickly enough to prevent another invasion of France.¹⁷ But, like British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, the president feared that dismemberment of Germany and occupation of her territory would embitter her citizens, plant the seeds of another conflict, and violate the self-determination principles of the Fourteen Points. Consequently, he supported Lloyd George’s suggestion that Great Britain and the United States offer strategic guarantees to France in return for the latter’s abandonment of her aims in the Rhineland. Such an arrangement, the president hoped, would insure French security without permanently alienating Germany, foreclosing the eventual reintegration of that nation into a new order. His offer of an American security guarantee in mid-March represented his own effort to conciliate the French and expedite the proceedings at Paris at a time when the rumblings of revolution throughout central Europe were growing more ominous and the demands in America for a more rapid demobilization from the Continent were growing more strident.¹⁸

Clemenceau discussed the offer of an Anglo-American security guarantee with his closest advisers, Tardieu, Louis Loucheur, and Stephen Pichon. They were eager to extract long-term strategic commitments from their allies, but were unwilling to relinquish unilateral physical guarantees. Too many imponderables raised doubts about the efficacy of foreign political guarantees. How permanent would they be? How effectively would they operate? The French, therefore, modified their demands for physical guarantees but did not abandon them altogether. Clemenceau withdrew his plea for a separate Rhenish republic in return for the Anglo-American guarantee pacts, but he still insisted on the demilitarization of the right and left banks of the Rhine. Moreover, he wanted a permanent commission established to insure Germany’s compliance with the demilitarization and disarmament clauses of the Versailles treaty. Clemenceau demanded that any violation of these provisions be interpreted as an act of aggression that would entitle France to reoccupy parts of the Rhineland and activate the Anglo-American guarantees. In addition, the French still insisted on Allied occupation of the Rhine bridgeheads for thirty years. Accordingly, France launched a campaign to increase the amount and extend the duration of Germany’s reparation payments and claimed that the prolonged occupation was necessary to enforce these treaty provisions. Finally, the French premier asked the British and Americans to recognize the enlarged French frontier of 1814 and allow France to occupy the Saar coal basin.¹⁹

As the issues of the occupation and demilitarization of the Rhineland, the payment of reparations, the administration of the Saar, and the granting of strategic guarantees became increasingly interrelated, the peace conference reached an impasse. Wilson and Clemenceau became infuriated with one another. The French premier charged that Wilson was pro-German and stormed out of a meeting of the Council of Four. The American president, exasperated and ill, contemplated leaving the conference.²⁰ The French press unleashed a bitter attack against Wilson for disregarding France’s strategic anxieties and for discounting French claims on the Rhine.²¹ Meanwhile, European conditions worsened. On 4 April, Secretary of State Robert Lansing noted that central Europe was “aflame” with anarchy. The red armies were advancing westward. “Hungary,” he wrote, “is in the clutches of revolutionists; Berlin, Vienna and Munich are turning toward the Bolsheviks.”²²

Domestic and international political, economic, and social factors demanded that Wilson and Clemenceau resolve their differences. Under Colonel House’s prodding Wilson retreated on the reparations issue and agreed to leave both the amount of the indemnity and the number of annuities unspecified. He consented to the demilitarization of the Rhineland but succeeded at confining the demilitarized area to fifty kilometers on the right bank. He accepted French economic control of the Saar and the political alienation of that region from Germany for fifteen years. Wilson insisted, however, that the administration of the Saar be turned over to the League of Nations, and he resisted French attempts to regain part of...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• 1. From Versailles to Washington, 1919–1921
• 2. Economic Diplomacy Takes Shape, 1921–1923
• 3. German Rehabilitation and French Security, 1923–1925
• 4. Toward Monetary Stability, 1924–1926
• 5. Economic Diplomacy Falters, 1927–1928
• 6. Changing Times, Old Approaches, 1929–1930
• 7. Crisis, Action, and Uncertainty, 1931
• 8. Hoover and the Failure of Economic Diplomacy, 1932
• 9. Roosevelt and the Dilemmas of Policymaking, 1933
• 10. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index