Forging a New World? Peacemaking at Paris

Was peace doomed from the beginning? Or did the ‘economic consequences’ of the peace undermine the achievements of the peacemakers? How valid are the criticisms of Keynes?

After reading the materials for this week, I remain convinced that the key failure of the Paris Peace Conference and Treaty of Versailles was economic, i.e., that the terms imposed upon Germany were onerous to the point of nearly guaranteeing its future economic instability and, thus, political instability. However, although far more has made said about the reparations payments Germany was required to make being the core reason why the treaty ultimately failed, it seems more important was the extraction of such a large proportion of Germany's resources, rendering it unable to make these payments. Had it retained more of its resources or had access to them on the market or had it lost its resources but not been subjected to reparations, Germany might have become sufficiently economically and politically stable.

In this regard, I really do find Keynes's arguments persuasive. For one thing, he does not suggest that any type of monetary punishment of Germany would be too onerous. Oh the matter of coal, for example, he writes, "This [annual delivery of coal to France for 10 years] is a reasonable provision if it stood by itself, and one which Germany should be able to fulfil if she were left her other resources to do it with."[1] Elsewhere, he is even more blunt: "There is no question but that Germany lost lose these ore-fields. The only question is how far she is to be allowed facilities for purchasing their produce."[2] He makes his case perhaps no more clear than when he writes, "Yet if these feelings [of victors' justice] and these rights are allowed to prevail, beyond what wisdom would recommend, the reactions on the social and economic life of Central Europe will be far too strong to be confined within their original limits."[3]

Among the cases made against Keynes, Zara Steiner's is perhaps the most vociferous, but I don't find it particularly compelling. First, she claims that Keynes found the reparations clauses "morally unjustified and financially unworkable,"[4] but she cites no source on this point, nor does she stipulate why he saw the terms as unworkable. In directly addressing Keynes's argument, which she considers "pernicious but brilliant,"[5] she does little more than argue that the terms of Versailles were not so bad because the terms Germany dictated to the Soviets at Brest-Litovsk were worse. Her most direct statement, i.e., "Even in the short term, the Versailles treaty did not leave Germany prostrate; on the contrary, Germany industry revived, and some historians believe that stabilization might have come earlier had the political structure been less fractured,"[6] i.e., is also unsourced.

Moreover, it seems to put the cart before the horse to some extent, in placing the fractured political structure of Germany because the cause of the treaty's failure, rather than considering that the cause and effect might have been reversed. In fact, with a broad social democratic government including liberal parties, it is hard to argue that Germany was badly political divided in 1919. The Kapp Putsch was a year off and based at least in part on the ultimate imposition of Versailles. Thus, I don't find Steiner's criticisms valid.

====

[1] John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Row, 1920), 86.
[2] Ibid, 98.
[3] Ibid, 94.
[4] Zara Steiner, The Lights that Failed: European International History, 1918-1933 (New York: Oxford UP, 2005), 64.
[5] Ibid, 67.
[6] Ibid, 67-68.

The Revolutionary Background

Here's my first discussion post for the term:

Was there a danger that the Bolshevik Revolution would spread from Russia in the period 1917-1920?

Stipulating up front that hindsight always provides 20/20 vision, I have to conclude that there was virtually no danger that the Bolshevik Revolution would spread beyond Russia in the aftermath of World War I. Part of drawing this conclusion of course is dependent on how comparatively easy revolutions in Berlin, Munich, Budapest, and Bratislava were put down, but the other part of the issue regards how well entrenched the ruling elites were in these countries (and others), as well as how badly the Bolsheviks, in attempting to export revolution, misjudged the power of nationalism and the forces of reaction.

On the first point, Charles Maier argues compellingly that Marxist revolution was contained in concerted efforts by the bourgeoisie to prevent the loss of status and power. Of the three countries on which Maier focuses his argument, Germany is the most important since it experienced two Marxist uprising with temporary success. Part of the success of counter-revolution in Germany was how well entrenched traditional bases of power, i.e., the military and aristocratic landowners, still were when the war ended. Maier writes, "The constitutional system of the Reich and the three-class Prussian voting system, as well as the continuing dominance of the army and bureaucracy, preserved the power of the Junkers until 1918 and even beyond."[1] These power bases, as well the important Catholic constituency and the ascendant industrial bourgeoisie within the liberal parties, were effective controls on the power of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) before the war. With the collapse of the monarchy, these interests were willing to support the SPD against the revolutionary left, and this dependence was reciprocated in the SPD's inability to government without the center.

On the topic of nationalism, Ivan Berend's analysis is instructive. Beyond the obvious example of fascism emerging in certain places as an effective immunization against Marxism, Berend's treatment of postwar ethnic tensions in Yugoslavia provides an important context in which to read Boris Starkov's account of Soviet intrigue in the Balkans in the 1920s. Berend writes, "The long dreamt-of brotherhood of the newly founded states was very quickly found to have snags."[2] Recounting early separatist movements among, e.g., Slovaks and Croats, it is unsurprising that the necessary unity through class to render a Marxist uprising successful was lacking since unity in nationality was so contentious. Finally, it is worth noting that Kun's revolution in Hungary was put down by many of the same forces that attempted (but failed) to overthrow the Bolsheviks. Here, the key differences seem to be the comparative lack of popularity of Kun's regime and the more favorable territorial advantage held by the Bolsheviks in the Civil War.

[1] Charles S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany and Italy in the Decade after World War I (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1975), 34.

[2] Iván T. Berend, "Alternatives to Class Revolution: Central and Eastern Europe after the First World War," in Pat Thane, Geoffrey Crossick and Roderick Floud, eds., The Power of the Past: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm (New York: Cambridge, UP, 1984), 263.