Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [302]
The shock was echoed in Germany. Why should Germany lose 13 percent of its territory and 10 percent of its population? After all, had Germany lost the war? Since the armistice, the military and its sympathizers had been busily laying the foundations of the stab-in-the-back theory: that Germany had been defeated not on the battlefield but by treachery at home. Why should Germany alone be made to disarm? Why, and this was the question that became the focus of German hatred of the treaty, should Germany be the only country to take responsibility for the Great War? Most Germans still viewed the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 as a necessary defense against the threat from the barbaric Slavs to the east. The treaty was completely unacceptable, said Philipp Scheidemann, the chancellor. “What hand would not wither which placed this chain upon itself and upon us?” What had happened to Wilson’s promises? “Well, I’ll give you some open diplomacy,” said Gustav Noske, the tough, crude minister of defense, to an American journalist. “You Americans go back home and bury yourself [sic] with your Wilson.” Where Wilson had been seen to this point as Germany’s savior, he overnight became the wicked hypocrite. When he died in 1924, the German embassy, alone among the foreign embassies in Washington, refused to lower its flag. 15
What is striking at this distance is the outrage—and the surprise. In its preparations for the peace negotiations, the Foreign Office had anticipated many of the terms: on disarmament; the demilitarization and occupation of the Rhineland; the loss at the very least of the Saar mines; considerable losses, probably including Danzig, on Germany’s eastern frontier; and reparations of at least 60 billion marks. The best explanation for what was an inexplicable reaction comes from an American observer who said in April 1919: “The Germans have little left but Hope. But having only that I think they have clung to it—the Hope that the Americans would do something, the Hope that the final terms would not be so severe as the Armistice indicated and so on. Subconsciously, I think the Germans have been more optimistic than they realized.” And, he added prophetically, “when they see the terms in cold print, there will be intense bitterness, hate and desperation.” 16
It was in that mood that the German delegation prepared its observations on the peace terms. By the end of May it had produced pages of closely reasoned objections and counterproposals. The overall thrust was that the treaty was not the just and fair one the Allies had promised. In the territory being taken from Germany, Germans were being denied the right of self-determination. The reparations were condemning the German people to “perpetual slave labor.” Germany alone was being asked to disarm. Brockdorff-Rantzau had decided to pursue a particular strategy that was to have dangerous consequences. Germany, he insisted, was not going to accept all the guilt for the war. “Such a confession in my mouth,” he had told his audience at the Trianon Palace, “would be a lie.” But neither he nor Germany was being asked to make such a confession. The notorious Article 231 of the treaty, which the Germans inaccurately called the “war guilt” clause, had been put in to establish German liability for reparations. There were similar clauses in the treaties with Austria and Hungary; they never became an issue, largely because the governments concerned did not make them so. 17
The Germans’ reaction was different partly because they had been nervously anticipating the accusation for months. Liberals, who had criticized their own government during the war, had been arguing that Germany should not have to carry the burden of guilt. The great sociologist Max Weber and a group of leading professors issued a public manifesto: “We do not deny the responsibility of those in power before and