Children Will Suffer.
But It’s Alright, They’re German.
Many Are Appalled.
Special to The Great War Project.
(10 May) At Versailles the Germans continue to work hard to provide the Allies with a response to the treaty.
So reports historian Thomas Fleming.
They are deeply divided over what approach to take. The German foreign minister refuses to obey his government’s order to walk out and return to Berlin.
Effect of the war guilt clause in Germany..
“He remained convinced,” according to Fleming, “that the Germans had signed a contract in the armistice agreement for a peace based on Wilson’s Fourteen Points.”
He and his staff send a stream of objections to French Prime Minster Clemenceau, who shares them with Wilson and British PM Lloyd George.
“The rattled German delegation did not improve its case by objecting to everything,” reports Fleming.
“But most of the German delegates’ wrath settled on the war guilt clause.
They linked this objection to the open-ended reparations article, figuring that if they could eliminate the guilt clause, bargaining on reparations would be tilted in their favor.”
This startles the Allies, who do not expect the Germans would oppose the war guilt clause so fiercely.
“But,” reports Fleming, “the Allies had no inclination to yield the point, especially after the Germans published the treaty. Once the guilt charge became public knowledge, in England and France, and the United States, hatred of “the Hun” became part of the political atmosphere.
“Woodrow Wilson felt no compunction about backing it unreservedly, even though it violated his previous statements about the origin of war.”
Fleming writes: “Not a single objection was made in the U.S. Congress or the British Parliament about the treaty’s harshness.
Instead of backing down, the Allies raised the denunciatory ante by telling the Germans that the war was the greatest crime against humanity and the freedom of peoples that any nation calling itself civilized has ever consciously committed.”
Many are appalled to learn that if Germany refuses to sign the treaty, the Allies are ready to reimpose the blockade.
Clemenceau and Lloyd George have overruled Wilson’s objection to this decision. Among them, Herbert Hoover, who is running the delivery operation of humanitarian food aid to various suffering populations including Germany. Hoover and his staff are in a daily race to provide food to Germany’s pitifully undernourished children. “But it is leaving their elders still on the brink of starvation.”
Herbert Hoover
Behind the scenes, Hoover and his relief staff “worked to persuade Wilson and others in the American delegation to make major changes in the treaty.”
“A similar effort began among the British delegation.” Slowly, questions about the treaty begin to surface.
“Before long, British PM Lloyd George was wondering aloud if major changes were needed.”
Germany’s economy is crippled, and under the terms of the treaty, its people are sure to die in the coming years. The nation’s health is already broken by the British-imposed blockade.
Speaks for itself.
The treaty, Hoover writes, is nothing less than a mass death sentence.
This argument is beginning to have an effect on the British…but not on Wilson.