First and foremost, Britain was a naval power and did not have that strong of an army. It could not have unilaterally moved even much earlier in the game. Your timeline is wrong, the militarization happened after Hitler ascended into power, in 1933, not prior and not shortly after. It was not until after 1936 or so that Germany started to become as great a threat to the British Empire as Italy or Japan.
The UK suffered from the same problems as other countries in the Depression, and more than many. Maintaining the Empire took all Britain had in the 20s and 30s, and the Depression caused Britain to detach more rather than less from the Continent, and became more attached to the Empire.
It was not until 1935 that Hitler publicly declared German rearmament and not until the following year that they reoccupied the Rhineland. Britain was in no position to resist Germany.
Overly simplistic arguments such as complacency do a disfavor to history. They must be answered with the question of where was the US? If it gets a pass because of isolationists, then the very real limitations of British power should be regarded as legitimate.
Britain was faced with a great number of potential rivals and threats to her Empire, including the Soviet Union. It was actually much weaker financially and militarily than one would assume from looking at the map of the Empire and was diplomatically isolated and vulnerable.
Nevertheless, they did recognize the dangers and started to re-militarize themselves from the mid 30s.
It is only Monday morning quarterbacking which allows one to offer such a derogatory argument.
I did not make any argument other than that your figure of 7,000,000 people lost was misleading, and it is misleading for the reason I gave: most were non-Germans, mainly Poles, who did not want to be part of Germany.
This is true even when Alsace-Lorraine is included in the totals. The 1905 German population of A-L was 1,634,000. Add to that the 741,000 Germans left in Poland and the 400,000 of Danzig and you get ~2.8 million Germans lost. That is nowhere near 7 million.
However, one reason not to include A-L is the question of the desires of the 1871 population. The ethnic Germans may not have been any more anxious to be part of a Germany dominated by Prussia than all the millions of other Germans who had resisted Prussia with force. This aversion to Prussian domination had manifested itself in war only a few years earlier, when many German states, notably the kingdoms of Saxony and Hanover, joined Austria in the final, losing struggle. If one accepts the reasonable hypothesis that the 1871 Germans of A-L preferred French rule then reversion of A-L to France in 1918 should be considered as the righting of an earlier wrong, leaving Germany with no just grounds for complaint.
To repeat a point I raised earlier… weren’t the most onerous conditions of the Treaty of Versailles eased substantially by the Locarno treaties in 1925?
If I’m wrong, please correct me. But if I’m right, Germany no longer had a real beef with its neighbors by the time Hitler came to power.
IIRC no onerous conditions were reduced: reparations were not reduced and no lost territory was returned, although the winning-side signatories somewhat treacherously left open the possibility of readjustment in Germany’s favor of its border with Poland. Treacherous because Poland had no say in the matter, and because small Danzig and tiny Memel were Germany’s only legitimate territorial grievances in the East; in justice the Locarno signatories should have made clear that the rest of Germany’s eastern border was fairly drawn.
Also IIRC early in the Depression Germany fell behind in its reparations payments, and France responded with military occupation of German Rhineland territory. That was “real beef” with a vengance, and the entire German political spectrum perceived it as such.
Besides what i mentioned in post #44 Germany remained prohibited from militarizing its Rhineland border area with France- its “own back yard” so to speak.
You can’t make one if statement and then conclude that is a reasonable hypothesis that the area would prefer French rule. The other areas were fighting to prevent the loss of their own independence and not the right to be a part of a foreign country.
As it is, we know that the Saar district right next to A-L voted overwhelmingly to return to German rule after the 15 year period.
Reparations were not reduced by the Locarno treaties, but had been in other agreements. Still, the economic damage to the German society had already been inflicted.
Other provisions of the treaty which upset the Germans included having Germany accept full responsibility for the war. While this was a far assessment of WWII, it was not so for WWI. They certainly needed to have taken more responsibility than they wanted to, but it was not a black and white case of German aggression.
Because Germany was assigned the role of the aggressor, it was not allowed to have a military other than a small army for internal affairs. No air force or subs. Germany had become one of the great nations by WWI, and placing it permanently in an inferior role contributed to the rise in nationalism.
They were not allowed to station their military in the Rhineland district of Germany, while the French could station their troops on the opposite side. This is one reason that Britain didn’t object to the remilitarization of the Rhineland was that even they thought that condition was not fair.
Danzig was a sticking point as well.
All the parties to the treaties were used to redrawing country boundaries for their own pleasure. This was only a couple of decades after Africa was parceled up.
The French occupation of the Ruhr was actually back in 1923 to 1924. The original schedule of the reparations was far too high, and with the cost of the war and rebuilding, the economy had collapsed. This was the time of the hyperinflation.
Britain had felt that the conditions of the treaty were impossible, so France moved without her help.
While the restrictions on Germany’s military after WWI were particularly onerous and unlike in WWII they didn’t intend to commit genocide on an almost unimaginable scale once they had won, WWI pretty much was entirely a black and white case of German aggression, and it entirely deserved to have been assigned the role of the aggressor. Every action it took was either directly aggressive or was clearly intended to fan the flames leading to the war, starting with Kaiser Wilhelm’s blank check to Austria-Hungary to do whatever it felt like with Serbia, an action which was certain to draw Russia into the conflict. Austria-Hungary presented Serbia with the July Ultimatum which was clearly intended to be unacceptable. Germany’s complaints about Russian mobilization was really a red herring; in a diplomatic clusterfuck the German ambassador to Russia gave both copies of Germany’s declaration of war to the Russians:
It didn’t matter what the Russians did, Germany was going to declare war on them, and notably Germany had already invaded Luxemburg when this happened. This is because when Germany declared mobilization on August 1st, it automatically meant Germany was going to war with at least France, Luxemburg, Belgium, and Russia. That was the insanity of the Schlieffen plan:
It was Germany’s only war plan; any war with Russia would result in the intricately worked out train time tables delivering the bulk of the German Army on the Belgian border where it was committed to invade neutral Belgium and deliver a sweeping stroke towards Paris. Germany presented an entirely pro forma offer to France to not declare war on them if they would agree to an entirely unacceptable ultimatum that would require France to hand over all of its border fortifications to be occupied by the Germans and agree to severely restrict the size of its military for the duration of the war.
I don’t follow you. There is nothing wrong with the statement “If one accepts the reasonable hypothesis that the 1871 Germans of A-L preferred French rule then reversion of A-L to France in 1918 should be considered as the righting of an earlier wrong, leaving Germany with no just grounds for complaint.”
There were reasons other than loss of independence for reluctance to submit to Prussian rule, such as distaste for the conditions of the Prussian mass boot camp and aggressive Prussian military adventure.
Proximity may be irrelevant or outweighed by many conditions. In this case Saar had never been part of France, while A-L had been for ~200 years.
I can’t tell if you are agreeing with me, disagreeing, or just making an observation of uncertain relevance. The Allies had an obvious, paramount, critical interest in drawing permanent, defensible European borders.
You are correct. I thought IR a similar episode later, ca. 1930-31.
Britain’s continuous spinelessness was a historical tragedy.
This is what I get for sloppy writing and reliance on old memories of The Guns of August for a basis of an argument. It had been my impression that the blame was not as complete on Germany and that the schedules for the mobilization placed some of the responsibility on France and Russia as well. However, that does not seemto be the case.
Sorry, poor phrasing. I don’t believe you’ve given much in terms of evidence that the residence of A-L preferred French rule. They were obviously unhappy with the conditions they were governed in Germany, but I don’t know if they would have preferred going back to France.
You had stated that it was treacherously left open the possibility of Germany being able to readjust her (his?) eastern borders. I was simply commenting that this was par for the course for European countries.
From 1870 to about 1895, Alsace-Lorraine only elected to the Reichstag so-called “protester deputies” who wanted a referendum on the annexation. Later, in particular as a result of Germany having granted more autonomy to Alsace, this opposition was weaker, but the region kept sending a majority of autonomists to the parliament.
The thread isn’t about if the treaty was warranted. If you believe the treaty worsened economic conditions in Germany, and also believe this deterioration allowed the rise of the Nazis, then you must agree with the standard narrative that Versailles led to war. How large a role it played is the only question.
That being said, I can’t help but wonder if German reparations went to the owners of property destroyed by Germans, or simply to the governments involved. If the latter is the case, I wonder how the property owners felt about a treaty that not only did not compensate them for their loss, but led to further uncompensated destruction of property in the near future.
Also if damaged property is the standard by which we judge whether or not a treaty is just, what sort of reparations did the Allies pay their many victims after WWII? I’m not talking about government aid to other governments. That is not necessarily compensatory, and likely causes further damage.
The same could be said of almost every nation. They were all lusting for war. There was a interlocking series of alliances that assured any war would be over the top, even tho they claimed those alliances would make war impossible.
Serbia actively encouraged and aided the Black Hand, the group that Assassinated the Archduke- which was a insanely stupid thing to do (The Archduke was actually pretty liberal). Solid evidence that the Black Hand was part of Serbian Military Intelligence, or perhaps just one of their orgs. Serbian troops cross the AH border before War was declared, making the issue even worse. Altho the Demands were Onerous, both GB and France suggested they agree. **Fault lies with Serbia. **
Austro-Hungary was tired of “Yugoslavian” separatists, the terrorism, the uprising, anarchists, etc. The government was old, tired and unstable. They deliberately over-reacted to Serbia’s Casus belli . Fault lies with A-H.**
Russia was slavering to add more of the Balkans to it’s empire, thinking that could solve unrest at home. They wanted to go to war, wanted to seize more of the balkans, and thought AH was a easy target.** Fault lies with Russia.**
France was eager to avenge the Franco-Prussian war and to seize back Alsace Lorraine. They mobilized early and aggressively, planning on attacking Germany while Germany was busy with Russia. **Fault lies with France. **
And so forth.
WWI was a clusterfuck. Certainly Germany shoulders the blame- about 1/6th of it. Saying is was Germany fault is overly simplistic.
No, it’s not overly simplistic. That countries marched happily to war once it started and that Europe was a powder keg waiting for a spark to ignite such a war doesn’t absolve Germany for starting it. You are ignoring what’s both at the top of your chain of events and the bottom is the Kaiser’s blank check to Austria-Hungary to do whatever it wanted with regards to Serbia, it would have Germany’s full backing up to and including war with Russia, and that Germany had exactly one war plan that would cause Germany to invade Belgium, Luxemburg, and France *regardless of how the war started *from the moment the order to mobilize was signed. Austria-Hungary would never have risked going to war with Russia alone over Serbia.
Your chain is also full of errors.
Russia most certainly did not regard Austria-Hungary as an easy target; Austria-Hungary was in an alliance with Germany. As noted, Russia’s response to German demands that they cease mobilization were irrelevant; Germany was going to declare war on them regardless of their response and accidentally gave them both wordings of the declaration of war.
France did not mobilize “early and aggressively”, it mobilized the same day that Germany did, August 1. Calling French mobilization “aggressive” is the height of absurdity; for France the order to mobilize did not irrevocably commit France to war. For Germany it did; and it committed Germany to war with France, Belgium, and Luxemburg regardless of the reason. That France wanted Alsace Lorraine back is hardly an act of aggression, and neither is the fact that it had an alliance with Russia. It is downright ironic that you claim France was planning on attacking Germany while Germany was busy with Russia since this is the exact opposite of the Schlieffen plan and what actually occurred. Again, the Schlieffen plan committed Germany to invading France through neutral Belgium and Luxemburg from the moment mobilization was ordered regardless of the causes in order to deal with France before turning to Russia in order to avoid a protracted two front war. In case you need reminding, Germany declared war on France on August 3rd at which point German troops were already in Luxemburg and Belgium after France declined Germany’s entirely pro forma offer to accept French neutrality on the condition that France disarm and surrender it’s border fortifications to the Germans and let Germany go beat up Russia.
The following cites affirm that 1871 A-L was decisively pro-French, and that as of 1914 it was not close to being happily assimilated with the rest of Germany:
Cite (1) reports (p57) that ca.1914 most of A-L “would perhaps like to be independent of both France and Germany” and “the heart of Alsace inclines toward France: the argument of the pocket inclines nowadays toward Germany.”
This oddly glosses over a vital third factor, political inclination, which was heavily anti-German, to the extent that the Kaiser was threatening ca.1910 to “solve” the problem by having the kingdom of Prussia annex A-L (!) so as to most easily bring it under heel.
With 2/3 factors working against Germany, and given the political impossibility of an independent A-L, it is IMO reasonable to assume that on a 1914 yes or no vote for reunion with France the “yes” votes would have won.
Furthermore:
Cite (2) reports that as many as 500,000 A-L natives (out of an original population of less than 2 million) emigrated 1871-1914 to escape German rule.
IMO it is reasonable to consider the wishes of the surviving A-L exiles, who would have been close to 100% in favor of reunion.
This is an overgeneralization of the letter and spirit of historical treaty-making. Certainly the winners do not normally envision allowing the losers to readjust their borders to their advantage. In the case of A-L all of its conquering overlords going back to Louis XIV meant to keep it, under treaty, without readjustment elsewhere on behalf of the previous owner. In the case of the history of Poland the 18th century partitioning nations likewise meant to keep their shares.