“The Peace of Might” and “Postwar Idealistic Naïveté”

1B) Based on your understanding of the causes and events of the Great War, do you believe the war guilt clause and subsequent demand for reparations from Germany were justified?

    Following the aftermath of the First World War, the fledging Weimar government was left holding the reins of disillusioned and war-weary Germany. The inevitability of The Great War, a topic of historical debate, was not on the table at the time Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles in June of 1919. The nation of France, led by Georges Clemenceau, felt the effects of the war’s devastation keenly. A generation of young, able-bodied men killed, wounded or missing and an industrial infrastructure shattered by war and German occupation was an incredibly bitter pill to swallow, given the proverbial “sour stomach” the French suffered due to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine during the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. France had been bested by the German military machine twice in a half-century. By June of 1919, France was vehement about besting Germany in the peace.

    Given the multitude of factors that led to The Great War, the idea of placing blame upon Germany and forcing it to pay reparations was an absolute failure on the part of the League of Nations and France. The rise of militarism and nationalism in Europe during the pre-war era was fueled exponentially and metaphysically by the Second Industrial Revolution and European Imperialism. This reality of existence for Europeans birthed an era dominated by competitive state systems. The European nations, particularly after the unification of Germany, jockeyed against one another for resources, prestige, and the right of self-determination. As political and socioeconomic tensions throughout Europe increased alongside the hubris of the European nations, the system of cooperative and secret alliances between the European powers turned the continent into a ticking time-bomb, waiting to go off.

    It is with a great sense of irony, to read the sentiments of Clemenceau during the peace process:

Not only does she make no secret of her aim, but the intolerable arrogance of the German aristocracy, the servile good nature of the intellectual and the scholar, the gross vanity of the most competent leaders in industry, and the widespread influence of a violent and popular poetry conspire to shatter throughout the world all the time-honored traditions of individual, as well as international, dignity.

Considering the fact that not only Germans, but French soldiers marched to war in late summer of 1914 with an overwhelming sense of patriotic romanticism and eager heroic idealism helps the historian to understand that no one nation understood fully the consequences of its actions. War was the European way, the cultural tradition of settling disagreements at the national level. In France, as well as in Germany, the generation of men soon to lose their lives to the static trenches and industrialized death of modern war, felt anxious and eager to march against one another. This cultural and psychological angst was best described by a Frenchman prior to the war. In a letter written to Henri Massis and Alfred de Tarde, he states, “The existence that we lead does not satisfy us completely because, even if we possess all the elements of a good life, we cannot organize them in a practical, immediate deed that would take us, body and soul, and hurl us outside ourselves. One event will permit that deed – war; and hence we desire it.” While this was surely not the sentiment of all Europeans, it was the mentality of enough that the war, despite efforts to avoid it, was welcomed by the European powers.

    Only after the smoke had settled and a generation of European men lay dead, wounded or missing did Europe realize its folly. The psyche of Europe had been eternally scarred, The Great War shattering the soul of the warring nations. A cloud settled over the continent and infected the hearts and minds of Europeans. The works of survivors and witnesses the likes of Valéry, Remarque, and Salomen served as testimony to the disillusionment, loss and brutalization which had changed the European conscience. Germany, through internal revolution, had ousted the imperial government which had plunged the nation into war. The newly elected Weimar government sought peace and stability much along the lines suggested by American President Woodrow Wilson. In A Peace of Might, the Weimar Peace Delegation took its stand against the vengeful French government, proclaiming, “The peace to be concluded with Germany was to be a peace of right, not a peace of might.” Weimar Germany had suffered, on a psychological level, just as much as the rest of Europe and had lost its own generation of young men, just as France had. The Weimar government came to Versailles seeking a just peace, one that would allow wounds to heal and stability to take root, thus allowing a chance for a peaceful and strengthened Europe. However, France, in its short-sighted arrogance, chose revenge over wisdom. With Woodrow Wilson’s failure to secure backing for the United States’ entrance to the League of Nations, the fledgling democracy of Weimar Germany lost the one chance of fair, mediated peace. The Weimar delegation recognized the inherent dangers in dividing the German state and crippling its infrastructure and economy through forced reparations. The “Peace of the Might,” as was enacted by the Treaty of Versailles, would later prove to be the threshold Europe would cross, leaving one destructive war behind in order to speed toward and even deadlier one.

2) Wilson and Lenin both have peculiar visions of the meaning, significance and lessons to be learned from the Great War, and yet both have been accused of naïve idealism. In your opinion, and based on the historical reality they confronted, who was more naïve?

    In comparing the selected works of Woodrow Wilson and V.I. Lenin, it is initially difficult to disseminate the naïveté from the idealism both men present to their audiences. Another layer of difficulty comes from the historical context in which both men present their perceptions of the world following the Great War. On one hand, the historian has Woodrow Wilson, a democratic leader of a largely isolationist, and relatively unscathed, nation seeking mediated peace among the embroiled powers of Europe. The other hand contains V.I. Lenin, a revolutionary Marxist, head of the smallest Soviet party rallying for support in a nation revolting against the provisional democratic government. To find similar undertones in the mentality of such polar opposites is indeed a challenge.

    Both men, as stated before, are without a doubt idealistic in their perceptions of what the future held for Europe. Wilson, pushing for the (ultimately successful) establishment of the League of Nations, saw within the shattered husk of Europe the potential for a cohesive and unified state of nations, capable of protecting mutual interests on social, economic, and political levels. He states, “the free peoples of the world must draw together in some common covenant, some genuine and practical co-öperation that will in effect combine their force to secure peace and justice in the dealings of nations with one another.” The League of Nations, in Wilson’s view, would serve as the vanguard of international European peace and would be the institution from which a European Union would form. Wilson also had the foresight to understand that failure to produce a just peace with Weimar Germany would result in lingering animosity and would start the League off on bad footing. Unfortunately for Europe, Wilson was unable to garner the support of the United States government in order to establish and American mediatory presence in the League of Nations, thus sounding a death knell for European democracy.

    Lenin, stalwart in the face of chaotic and crumbling Russia, remains ever the ideologue in his evaluation of the historical reality which surrounded him. The myth of the Great Revolution, held onto by Marxists as an element of their secular religion, was not to come in the manner that Lenin and the Bolsheviks initially believed. Lenin, however, recognized the revolutionary situation as it played out, and adapted his ideology to suit the needs of the circumstances. Because the goal of Communism was already known, there existed no need for the traditional Capitalist stage. According to Lenin, the necessary tools were already at his disposal:

To concentrate all secret functions in the hands of as small a number of professional revolutionaries as possible does not mean that the latter will “do all the thinking for all” and that the rank and file will not take an active part in the movement. On the contrary, the membership will promote increasing numbers of the professional revolutionaries from its ranks; for it will know that it is not enough for a few students and for a few working men waging the economic struggle to gather in order to form a “committee,” but that it takes years to train oneself to be a professional revolutionary . . .

The “professional revolutionaries,” Lenin’s Bolsheviks, had already begun the change to Communism in Russia. Lenin figured that in the wake of the war, according to traditional Marxist ideology, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia would act as a vanguard for the new world order, spreading throughout an ideologically weakened western Europe, thus bringing the Communist ideal to fruition in the post-war world.

    Both men were certainly idealistic in their perceptions of the post-war world, however, Lenin proves to be the more naïve of the two. While Wilson was extremely, if not overly hopeful in establishing mediated peace within war-torn Europe, he had tremendous foresight and wisdom to recognize the precipice upon which Europe was poised. Lenin, on the other hand, pragmatically took advantage of the situation at hand in Russia. However, his greatest asset proved to be his greatest liability. Belief in Marxist ideology, either traditional or the adaptation he created to meet the needs of fragmented Russia, blinded Lenin to the real-world situation that existed in Western Europe. Additionally, historians have the advantage of hindsight. From the 21^st century, it can be seen that Wilson’s warnings were to be heeded and his hopes were to be realized; an unfair peace disenfranchised Germany, opened the door for the rise of fascism, and pushed Europe toward the Second World War while the close of the 20^th century saw the creation of the European Union. At the same time, the 20^th century witnessed the meteoric rise of Communist Russia and its whimpering demise 79 years later.