Dark Star

E. D. Litvak responds to my Munich post with some further history and perspective:

It is to the credit of the efficacy of German propaganda machine from 1920 right up today that the Treaty of Versailles imposed upon a defeated Germany is perceived has having been vindictive, unjust and harsh.

Was the Treaty of Versailles vindictive? You bet! Was it unjust? No way! Was it harsh? Well now, that depends upon what one means by 'harsh'. Compared to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk imposed by a victorious Germany upon a defeated Russia in March 1918 and the treaty of Bucharest on a defeated Romania, (which, incidentally, gave both the British & the French a pretty good idea what to expect from a Germania Triumphant which, but for the intercession of the United States might very well have come to pass) astonishingly lenient.

Compared to her co-conspirators, the Austro-Hungarian & Ottoman empires, both of which ceased to exist, Germany got off comparatively unscathed. Her territories where not subjected (unlike Belgium, Northern France, Poland and parts of Russia) to the hot rake of war, and she managed to pay off her war debts by uncontrolled inflation which not only beggared her middle classes but also legally repudiated her debts. Indeed, Germany managed to default on her debt of the two world wars she started, (debts which we are still paying off), the first one by inflation, and second one by her total collapse.

For the sake of the argument, let’s assume that it was Germany rather than Great Britain and France who laid down the peace terms at the Versailles peace conference. There is no need to speculate what those terms would have been for they were laid down in black and white by Matthias Erzberger (1875-1921) a prominent German politician, the power behind Chancellor von Bettman-Hollweg, in clear and concise terms.

In the west, France would lose the Briey-Longwy iron basin and Belfort in Upper Alsace, as well as having a permanent German military presence on her coast from the Belgian border right down to and including Boulogne and Calais (which was exactly what Germany did in 1940). Further she would a heavy indemnity imposed upon her, which would have crippled her financially. And finally she would have been stripped of her colonies. Belgium would become a German protectorate and the neutrals, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland would have to dance to the tune emanating from Berlin. As for Great Britain, Herr Erzberger wasn’t quite sure how to handle her but at the least she would be permanently excluded from Europe and be expected to pay a heavy indemnity as well as the loss of the British Channel Islands

In the East, the Kingdom of Poland would be restored to be ‘guided’ by Germany, the three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, governed as they were by local magnates who, like the junkers of East Prussia, were the descendents of the ancient Teutonic knights, would be incorporated into the German realm, and the Ukraine, separated from Russia, would also become a German protectorate.

(As an aside, and here I am speculating, it is quite within the bounds of possibility that in the event of a German victory Germany would have detached Palestine from the Ottoman empire and offered it to Jewry as a ‘national home’ for the second Reich was as philo-Semitic as he third Reich was anti-Semitic.)

It is the perceived wisdom that the Treaty of Versailles is directly responsible for the rise of Adolf Hitler, but there is a body of opinion (which obviously I share) that Germany would have started World War II in September 1939 no matter what kind of government she had at that time. That was the considered opinion of three participants of that treaty. Marshall Ferdinand Foch of France, "this is not a peace treaty, this is but an armistice"; Winston Churchill of Great Britain, "the Hun will try again"; Secretary of State Robert Lansing of the United States, "I give it twenty years," and twenty years later, on the dot, the Hun tried again and, like the first time, damn near succeeded.

Now, with the creation of the European Union, Germany is its powerhouse. She succeeded this time where her generals failed the first two times. She is now the undisputed master of Europe with only Islam as a possible contender for mastery of that continent.