Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [104]
The French ambassador saw Lloyd George the day after the armistice was signed: “The Prime Minister said that he had never hoped for such a rapid solution nor envisaged such a complete collapse of German power.” Among the Allied leaders only General Pershing, the top American military commander, thought the Allies should press on, beyond the Rhine if necessary. The French did not want any more of their men to die. Their chief general, Marshal Foch, who was also the supreme Allied commander, warned that they ran the risk of stiff resistance and heavy losses. The British wanted to make peace before the Americans became too strong. And Smuts spoke for many in Europe when he warned gloomily that “the grim spectre of Bolshevist anarchy is stalking the front.”2
The mistake the Allies made, and it did not become clear until much later, was that, as a result of the armistice terms, the great majority of Germans never experienced their country’s defeat at first hand. Except in the Rhineland, they did not see occupying troops. The Allies did not march in triumph into Berlin, as the Germans had done in Paris in 1871. In 1918, German soldiers marched home in good order, with crowds cheering their way; in Berlin, Friedrich Ebert, the new president, greeted them with “No enemy has conquered you!”3 The new democratic republic in Germany was shaky, but it survived, thanks partly to grudging support from what was left of the German army. The Allied advantage over Germany began to melt.
And the Allied forces were shrinking. In November 1918, there were 198 Allied divisions; by June 1919, only 39 remained. And could they be relied upon? There was little enthusiasm for renewed fighting. Allied demobilization had been hastened by protests, occasionally outright mutiny. On the home fronts there was a longing for peace, and lower taxes. The French were particularly insistent on the need to make peace while the Allies still could dictate terms. The Germans, Clemenceau warned, could not be trusted. They were already becoming “insolent” again; in Weimar, the constituent assembly had concluded its deliberations by singing “Deutschland über Alles.” It was madness for the Allies to say to them, “Go on. Do as you like. Perhaps we shall some day threaten to break off relations; but just now we will not be firm.” What would it be like by April, when American troops had gone home? “France and Britain would be left alone to face the Germans.”4
While his pessimism was premature, it is true that by the spring of 1919 Allied commanders were increasingly doubtful about their ability to successfully wage war on Germany. The German army had been defeated on the battlefield, but its command structure, along with hundreds of thousands of trained men, had survived. There were 75 million Germans and only 40 million French, as Foch kept repeating. And the German people, Allied observers noticed, were opposed to signing a harsh peace. Who knew what resistance there would be as Allied armies moved farther and farther into the country? They would face, warned the military experts, a sullen population, perhaps strikes, even gunfire. It was very unlikely that the Allies could get as far as Berlin. 5
The great Allied weapon of the blockade was also starting to look rather rusty. Although it still remained in force in 1919, and although Allied ships still patrolled