Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [307]
In Germany, the political situation was chaotic. The coalition government was deeply divided over whether to sign the treaty. Political leaders in the west, along the Allied invasion route, were for peace at all costs, as were the premiers of most of the German states, who saw themselves having to make separate treaties with the victors. The nationalists talked bravely of defiance without making any useful suggestions about how to put it into practice. Among the military, wild schemes circulated: to set up a new state in the east which would be a fortress against the Allies; to have a mass revolt by the officers against the government; or to assassinate the leading advocate of signing, the centrist politician Matthias Erzberger.35
The son of a village postman from the Catholic south, Erzberger was bold, cheerful and pragmatic. During the war, his had been the most influential voice for a moderate, negotiated peace. His enemies, and they were many, loathed him for his red face and little eyes, his maddening smile and his habit of saying the unthinkable. Brockdorff-Rantzau, his opposite in almost every respect, could barely be civil to him. In 1919, Erzberger was Germany’s armistice commissioner. He was convinced that Germany could not afford to start fighting again. Public opinion, for all the noisy demonstrations from the nationalists, seemed to agree with him. Yes, he told his colleagues in the cabinet, the treaty will place terrible burdens on the German people; and, yes, the right might try a military coup. But there would be a chance for Germany to survive. With the state of war ended, factories would start producing again, unemployment would go down, exports would rise and Germany could afford imports. “Bolshevism will lose its attraction.” If Germany did not sign, then the picture would be very different. The Allies would occupy the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland; their advance eastward would cut the country in half; the Poles would probably attack from the east; the economy and the transportation system would collapse. “Plunder and murder will be the order of the day.” Germany would break up into “a crazy patchwork quilt” of states, some under Bolshevik rule, others under right-wing dictatorships. Germany must sign.36
That was not how Brockdorff-Rantzau saw it. He asserted, without much solid evidence, that the Allies were bluffing. They did not want to have to occupy Germany. They were bound to make concessions, even negotiate seriously, if only Germany stood firm. Britain and the United States would probably break with France. His delegation passed a unanimous recommendation: “The conditions of peace are still unbearable, for Germany cannot accept them and continue to live with honour as a nation.” The military took the same view. He could not, said Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, hold out any hope of success against the Allies, “but as a soldier I can only prefer honourable defeat to a disgraceful peace.”37 The cabinet, which had been leaning toward acceptance of the terms, was deadlocked and resigned on June 20. Brockdorff-Rantzau resigned as head of the German delegation and left politics altogether. (In 1922 he returned as ambassador to Moscow, where his imperious manners deeply impressed the Bolsheviks and where he worked, with considerable success, for closer relations between his country and the Soviet Union.)
Germany now had no government and no spokesman. It almost did not have a president, but Ebert was persuaded that he had a duty to stay on. The deadline of seven P.M. on June 23 drifted closer. On June 22, Ebert finally managed to put together a government. After another lengthy debate, the National Assembly voted in favor of signing, with the reservation that Germany did not recognize the articles dealing with the surrender and trial of those responsible for the war and the “war guilt” clause. The response from Paris was swift: “The German government must accept or refuse,