Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [109]
Disarmament was good in itself, but it was difficult to reach agreement on how much of an army Germany should be left with. The new German government had to be able to put down rebellion at home. Should it also be strong enough to hold off the Bolshevik threat from the east? The Allies could not do it for them. Neither could the states of central Europe. They were not only struggling to survive, but, as Hankey said severely, “there has not been the smallest sign of any serious attempt at combined effort to resist the Bolshevists among them. On the contrary, they show all the worst qualities that we have become accustomed to in the Balkan states.” The Germans, for all their flaws, were at least “a solid, patriotic, reliable and highly-organised people.” From the French point of view, however, German forces were always a danger. Foch in particular argued from the first that the Allies must confiscate German military equipment, occupy the Rhineland and its bridgeheads, destroy German fortifications along its frontiers with France and limit the German army to 100,000 men. These demands, he said implausibly, were merely military.2
One of the few top French generals to come out of the war with his reputation enhanced, Foch liked to refer to himself as a simple soldier. He was short, fair-haired, unassuming and rather sloppy in appearance. “At a distance of 15 feet,” in the opinion of an American expert, “one would never pick him for the generalissimo.” Born into a modest family in the Pyrenees, Foch was a devout Catholic and irreproachable family man who liked gardening and shooting and the theater (as long as it was nothing too modern) and hated politicians and Germans. The English general Henry Wilson, a great friend, revered his courage and refusal to give up, even in the darkest moments of the war. Foch, he said, had “an uncanny instinct as to the right thing to be done. He cannot always give you reasons.” On the other hand, the American commander, General Pershing, who clashed with him in the last days of the war, saw only “a narrow, small, self-opinionated man.” President Wilson grew to see him as the embodiment of French vengefulness and blindness. He also found him dull.3
Clemenceau, who had known him for years, was always ambivalent. “He was a great General,” he told the Supreme Council in 1919, but “not a military Pope.” During the war he had weighed General Pétain against Foch as supreme Allied commander. “I found myself between two men, one of whom told me we were finished and the other who came and went like a mad man and who wanted to fight. I said to myself ‘Let’s try Foch!’” And Clemenceau felt he had been right. “I always see him,” he said, “in March 1918, more confident, more fervent than ever, showing himself truly like a great leader, and having only one idea: to fight, and to go on until the enemy gave up.” But Clemenceau had reservations. “During the war,” he said, “it was necessary for me to see Foch practically every day in order to keep him from doing something foolish.”4
Clemenceau never could trust any soldier entirely, especially not a religious one. He did not name Foch as a French delegate to the Peace Conference and made it clear that Foch would attend its meetings only when he was invited. Foch never forgave him: “It is really extraordinary that M. Clemenceau did not think of me in the first place as a suitable person to overcome the resistance of President Wilson and Lloyd George.” When Foch and his supporters nevertheless tried to influence the peace negotiations, Clemenceau became increasingly impatient. There were dreadful scenes. During one, in the Supreme Council, Foch marched out and sat in the anteroom. When his colleagues tried to persuade him to go back in, his shouts of “Never, Never, Never” could be heard clearly within. Clemenceau thought of dismissing him from time to time, but could