Sunday, December 25, 2011

Jerusalem and I


Comments: 'Jerusalem': An unholy history of a holy city

Book review: Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Jerusalem: The Biography" tells the story of the city: its religions, its dynasties and its dark history of violence. Read article
Foreign Office,
November 2nd, 1917.
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely
Arthur James Balfour
In 1896, Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist living in Austria-Hungary, published Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State"), in which he asserted that the only solution to the "Jewish Question" in Europe, including growing antisemitism, was through the establishment of a Jewish State. Political Zionism had just been born. A year later, Herzl founded the Zionist Organization (ZO), which at its first congress, "called for the establishment of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law". Serviceable means to attain that goal included the promotion of Jewish settlement there, the organization of Jews in the diaspora, the strengthening of Jewish feeling and consciousness, and preparatory steps to attain those necessary governmental grants.
In 1914, war broke out in Europe between Britain with allies against Germany, Austria-Hungary and later that year, the Ottoman Empire. The war on the Western Front developed into a stalemate.
In 1919 the General Secretary (and future President) of the Zionist Organization, Nahum Sokolow, published a History of Zionism (1600-1918). Sokolow represented the Zionist Organization at the Paris Peace Conference. He explained:
The object of Zionism is to establish for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law." ... ...It has been said and is still being obstinately repeated by anti-Zionists again and again, that Zionism aims at the creation of an independent "Jewish State" But this is wholly fallacious. The "Jewish State" was never part of the Zionist programme. The Jewish State was the title of Herzl's first pamphlet, which had the supreme merit of forcing people to think. This pamphlet was followed by the first Zionist Congress, which accepted the Basle programme - the only programme in existence.
Henry McMahon had exchanged letters with Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca in 1915, in which he had promised Hussein control of Arab lands with the exception of "portions of Syria" lying to the west of "the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo". Palestine lies to the south of these areas and wasn't explicitly mentioned. That modern-day Lebanese region of the Mediterranean coast was set aside as part of a future French Mandate. After the war the extent of the coastal exclusion was hotly disputed. Hussein had protested that the Arabs of Beirut would greatly oppose isolation from the Arab state or states, but did not bring up the matter of Jerusalem or Palestine. Dr. Chaim Weizmann wrote in his autobiography Trial and Error that Palestine had been excluded from the areas that should have been Arab and independent. This interpretation was supported explicitly by the British government in the 1922 White Paper.
On the basis of McMahon's assurances the Arab Revolt began on 5 June 1916. However, the British and French also secretly concluded the Sykes–Picot Agreement on 16 May 1916. This agreement divided many Arab territories into British- and French-administered areas and allowed for the internationalisation of Palestine. Hussein learned of the agreement when it was leaked by the new Russian government in December 1917, but was satisfied by two disingenuous telegrams from Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner of Egypt, assuring him that the British government's commitments to the Arabs were still valid and that the Sykes-Picot Agreement was not a formal treaty.
According to Isaiah Friedman, Hussein was not perturbed by the Balfour Declaration and on March 23, 1918, in Al Qibla, the daily newspaper of Mecca, with Hussein writing:
The return of these exiles [jaliya] to their homeland will prove materially and spiritually an experimental school for their [Arab] brethren who are with them in the fields, factories, trades and all things connected to the land.
He called on the Arab population in Palestine to welcome the Jews as brethren and cooperate with them for the common welfare. Following the publication of the Declaration the British had dispatched Commander David George Hogarth to see Hussein in January 1918 bearing the message that the "political and economic freedom" of the Palestinian population was not in question. Hogarth reported that Hussein "would not accept an independent Jewish State in Palestine, nor was I instructed to warn him that such a state was contemplated by Great Britain". Continuing Arab disquiet over Allied intentions also led during 1918 to the British Declaration to the Seven and the Anglo-French Declaration, the latter promising "the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks, and the setting up of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations."
Lord Grey had been the foreign secretary during the McMahon-Hussein negotiations. Speaking in the House of Lords on the 27th March 1923, he made it clear that he entertained serious doubts as to the validity of the British government's interpretation of the pledges which he, as foreign secretary, had caused to be given to Hussein in 1915. He called for all of the secret engagements regarding Palestine to be made public. Many of the relevant documents in the National Archives were later declassified and published. Among them were the minutes of a Cabinet Eastern Committee meeting, chaired by Lord Curzon, [1] which was held on 5 December 1918. Balfour was in attendance. The minutes revealed that in laying out the government's position Curzon had explained that: "Palestine was included in the areas as to which Great Britain pledged itself that they should be Arab and independent in the future".
Source: @wikipedia.org
[1] Gilmour, David, Imperial Statesman, New York, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1994
This is British baby. Let them deal with the issue, not Israel, Not Palestine Authority, Not Iran. Not Egypt. Not Saudi Arabia and never most powerful, deep pocketed, Jewish Lobby in America. oops, plum forgot, Uncle Sam and his little European stooges, aka NATO.
...and I am Sid Harth@arabuhuru.org


The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only, and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.


Originally published Sunday, December 25, 2011 at 5:01 AM
Book review

'Jerusalem': An unholy history of a holy city

Book review: Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Jerusalem: The Biography" tells the story of the city: its religions, its dynasties and its dark history of violence.
By by Jackson Diehl
The Washington Post
'Jerusalem: The Biography'
by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Knopf, 650 pp., $35
For at least a decade, conventional wisdom in Western capitals has had it that "everyone knows" what the future of Jerusalem will be. A Palestinian state will encompass the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, with swaps of territory to allow Israel to annex the largest Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including those that ring the city.
Jerusalem will be the capital of both states; it will be open to citizens of both countries and people of all faiths. In the historic Old City, the holy sites that have been the focus of centuries — or millennia — of conflict will have their own governance: perhaps an international authority or a system of shared sovereignty.
Yet as the British writer Simon Sebag Montefiore makes clear in his sweeping and absorbing "biography" of the city, this carefully balanced compromise of shared sovereignty and tolerance would be a radical change in the history of Jerusalem — a small, arid, relatively poor and often squalid city subject to unearthly and inhuman passions.
"For 1,000 years," writes Montefiore, "Jerusalem was exclusively Jewish; for about 400 years, Christian; for 1,300 years, Islamic; and not one of the three faiths ever gained Jerusalem without the sword, the mangonel or the howitzer."
No other city on earth has such a dark history of murder, rape, pillage and torture. The 19th-century novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, one of many disillusioned visitors, wrote that "there's not a spot" in Jerusalem "at which you may look but where some violent deed has been done, some massacre, some visitors murdered, some idol worshipped with bloody rites."
Montefiore, whose previous books include a vivid portrait of Josef Stalin's Kremlin, offers a fact-rich and mostly chronological account of the conquerors, empires and warlords who have taken turns ruling and ravaging the city.
He begins with a searing and sometimes stomach-turning retelling of the most famous siege of all: the destruction of Jewish Jerusalem in A.D. 70 by the Roman commander Titus, who celebrated his grisly victory by crucifying 500 prisoners a day.
Then follows a sometimes numbing narrative of successive conquests and occupations by Canaanites, Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians, Seleucids, Romans, Byzantines, the Arab Omayyad and Abbasid dynasties, Fatimids, Seljuks, Crusaders, Saracens, Mamluks and Ottomans — and on to the 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century European colonists from France, Russia, Germany and Britain. The history ends in 1967, with the conquest of the Old City by Israel.
Montefiore is a master of colorful and telling details and anecdotes; some of the best are in the notes at the bottom of many pages. The book's strongest parts are its descriptions of the European — and particularly British — struggles over the city after 1850. Montefiore has a particular connection to this era — his great-great uncle, Moses Montefiore, was a Jewish baronet who visited Jerusalem seven times and built its first Jewish neighborhood outside the old city.
Notwithstanding his ancestry — or maybe because of it — Montefiore's account is admirably dispassionate and balanced, eschewing the anti-Zionism that often infects British writing about the former Palestine. He is unsparing in his descriptions of the bumbling, delusions and anti-Semitism of the British governors and generals who ruled Jerusalem from 1917 to 1948, even as thousands of Jews poured into the city from Europe.
Montefiore argues that the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which opened the way to Jewish immigration with its vision of "a Jewish homeland" in Palestine, was the product of "peculiar attitudes to the Jews" by then-Prime Minister Lloyd George and his foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, and a "special concatenation of circumstances," including Britain's desire to detach Russian Jews from Bolshevism.
Lenin seized power in St. Petersburg the night before the declaration's issuance; had he acted "a few days earlier," Montefiore writes, "the Balfour Declaration may never have been issued."
As he reaches the modern era, Montefiore writes with sadness about the exclusionist passions that still rule a city defined by diversity. Former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, he notes, refused to acknowledge that Jews had a history in Jerusalem or that the Temple was once located where the Dome of the Rock mosque now stands; his successors and even Palestinian historians stick to that absurd orthodoxy.
"If this book has any mission, I passionately hope that it might encourage each side to recognize and respect the ancient heritage of the Other," Montefiore writes. It could happen; there has been movement on both sides in the last 20 years. But a lot of history weighs against it.
Jackson Diehl can be reached at diehlj@washpost.com.

More Books

P.D. James channels Austen in new murder mystery

More from our network

  

News where, when and how you want it

Email Icon

Books E-mail

The latest book reviews, author interviews, and local literary events. Sent weekly. (Sample)




Advertising

Balfour Declaration of 1917

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with Balfour Declaration of 1926.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 (dated 2 November 1917) was a letter from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Rothschild (Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.
His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.[1]
The statement was issued through the efforts of Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, the principal Zionist leaders based in London; as they had asked for the reconstitution of Palestine as "the" Jewish national home, the declaration fell short of Zionist expectations.[2]
The "Balfour Declaration" was later incorporated into the Sèvres peace treaty with Turkey and the Mandate for Palestine. The original document is kept at the British Library.

Contents

[hide]

[edit] Text of the declaration

The declaration, a typed letter signed in ink by Balfour, reads as follows:
Foreign Office,
November 2nd, 1917.
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely
Arthur James Balfour
Balfour declaration unmarked.jpg

[edit] Background

In 1896, Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist living in Austria-Hungary, published Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State"), in which he asserted that the only solution to the "Jewish Question" in Europe, including growing antisemitism, was through the establishment of a Jewish State. Political Zionism had just been born.[3] A year later, Herzl founded the Zionist Organization (ZO), which at its first congress, "called for the establishment of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law". Serviceable means to attain that goal included the promotion of Jewish settlement there, the organization of Jews in the diaspora, the strengthening of Jewish feeling and consciousness, and preparatory steps to attain those necessary governmental grants.[4]
In 1914, war broke out in Europe between Britain with allies against Germany, Austria-Hungary and later that year, the Ottoman Empire. The war on the Western Front developed into a stalemate. Jonathan Shneer writes:
Thus the view from Whitehall early in 1916: If defeat was not imminent, neither was victory; and the outcome of the war of attrition on the Western Front could not be predicted. The colossal forces in a death-grip across Europe and in Eurasia appeared to have canceled each other out. Only the addition of significant new forces on one side or the other seemed likely to tip the scale. Britain's willingness, beginning early in 1916, to explore seriously some kind of arrangement with "world Jewry" or "Great Jewry" must be understood in this context. [5]

[edit] Text development and differing views

Lord Balfour's desk, in the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, in Tel Aviv
In 1919 the General Secretary (and future President) of the Zionist Organization, Nahum Sokolow, published a History of Zionism (1600-1918). Sokolow represented the Zionist Organization at the Paris Peace Conference. He explained:
The object of Zionism is to establish for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law." ... ...It has been said and is still being obstinately repeated by anti-Zionists again and again, that Zionism aims at the creation of an independent "Jewish State" But this is wholly fallacious. The "Jewish State" was never part of the Zionist programme. The Jewish State was the title of Herzl's first pamphlet, which had the supreme merit of forcing people to think. This pamphlet was followed by the first Zionist Congress, which accepted the Basle programme - the only programme in existence.[6]
The records of discussions that led up to the final text of the Balfour Declaration clarifies some details of its wording. The phrase "national home" was intentionally used instead of "state" because of opposition to the Zionist program within the British Cabinet. Both the Zionist Organization and the British government devoted efforts over the following decades, including Winston Churchill's 1922 White Paper, to denying that a state was the intention.[7] However, in private, many British officials agreed with the interpretation of the Zionists that a state would be established when a Jewish majority was achieved.[8]
The initial draft of the declaration, contained in a letter sent by Rothschild to Balfour, referred to the principle "that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people."[9] In the final text, the word that was replaced with in to avoid committing the entirety of Palestine to this purpose. Similarly, an early draft did not include the commitment that nothing should be done which might prejudice the rights of the non-Jewish communities. These changes came about partly as the result of the urgings of Edwin Samuel Montagu, an influential anti-Zionist Jew and secretary of state for India, who was concerned that the declaration without those changes could result in increased anti-Semitic persecution. The draft was circulated and during October the government received replies from various representatives of the Jewish community. Lord Rothschild took exception to the new proviso on the basis that it presupposed the possibility of a danger to non-Zionists, which he denied.[10]
At that time the British were busy making promises. At a War Cabinet meeting, held on 31 October 1917, Balfour suggested that a declaration favorable to Zionist aspirations would allow Great Britain "to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and America"[11]
Immediately following the publication of the declaration Germany entered negotiations with Turkey to put forward counter proposals. A German-Jewish Society was formed Vereinigung Judicher Organisationen Deutschlands zur Wahrung der Rchte des Osten (V.J.O.D.) and in January 1918 the Turkish Grand Vizier, Talaat, issued a statement which promised legislation by which "all justifiable wishes of the Jews in Palestine would be able to find their fulfilment".[12]

[edit] The McMahon–Hussein Correspondence

Henry McMahon had exchanged letters with Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca in 1915, in which he had promised Hussein control of Arab lands with the exception of "portions of Syria" lying to the west of "the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo". Palestine lies to the south of these areas and wasn't explicitly mentioned. That modern-day Lebanese region of the Mediterranean coast was set aside as part of a future French Mandate. After the war the extent of the coastal exclusion was hotly disputed. Hussein had protested that the Arabs of Beirut would greatly oppose isolation from the Arab state or states, but did not bring up the matter of Jerusalem or Palestine. Dr. Chaim Weizmann wrote in his autobiography Trial and Error that Palestine had been excluded from the areas that should have been Arab and independent. This interpretation was supported explicitly by the British government in the 1922 White Paper.
On the basis of McMahon's assurances the Arab Revolt began on 5 June 1916. However, the British and French also secretly concluded the Sykes–Picot Agreement on 16 May 1916.[13] This agreement divided many Arab territories into British- and French-administered areas and allowed for the internationalisation of Palestine.[13] Hussein learned of the agreement when it was leaked by the new Russian government in December 1917, but was satisfied by two disingenuous telegrams from Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner of Egypt, assuring him that the British government's commitments to the Arabs were still valid and that the Sykes-Picot Agreement was not a formal treaty.[13]
According to Isaiah Friedman, Hussein was not perturbed by the Balfour Declaration and on March 23, 1918, in Al Qibla, the daily newspaper of Mecca, with Hussein writing:[14]
The return of these exiles [jaliya] to their homeland will prove materially and spiritually an experimental school for their [Arab] brethren who are with them in the fields, factories, trades and all things connected to the land.
He called on the Arab population in Palestine to welcome the Jews as brethren and cooperate with them for the common welfare.[15] Following the publication of the Declaration the British had dispatched Commander David George Hogarth to see Hussein in January 1918 bearing the message that the "political and economic freedom" of the Palestinian population was not in question.[13] Hogarth reported that Hussein "would not accept an independent Jewish State in Palestine, nor was I instructed to warn him that such a state was contemplated by Great Britain".[16] Continuing Arab disquiet over Allied intentions also led during 1918 to the British Declaration to the Seven and the Anglo-French Declaration, the latter promising "the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks, and the setting up of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations."[13][17]
Lord Grey had been the foreign secretary during the McMahon-Hussein negotiations. Speaking in the House of Lords on the 27th March 1923, he made it clear that he entertained serious doubts as to the validity of the British government's interpretation of the pledges which he, as foreign secretary, had caused to be given to Hussein in 1915. He called for all of the secret engagements regarding Palestine to be made public.[18] Many of the relevant documents in the National Archives were later declassified and published. Among them were the minutes of a Cabinet Eastern Committee meeting, chaired by Lord Curzon,which was held on 5 December 1918. Balfour was in attendance. The minutes revealed that in laying out the government's position Curzon had explained that: "Palestine was included in the areas as to which Great Britain pledged itself that they should be Arab and independent in the future".[19]

[edit] Negotiation

One of the main proponents of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was Weizmann, the leading spokesperson for organized Zionism in Britain. Weizmann was a chemist who had developed a process to synthesize acetone via fermentation. Acetone is required for the production of cordite, a powerful propellant explosive needed to fire ammunition without generating tell-tale smoke. Germany had cornered supplies of calcium acetate, a major source of acetone. Other pre-war processes in Britain were inadequate to meet the increased demand in World War I, and a shortage of cordite would have severely hampered Britain's war effort. Lloyd-George, then minister for munitions, was grateful to Weizmann and so supported his Zionist aspirations. In his War Memoirs, Lloyd-George wrote of meeting Weizmann in 1916 that Weizmann
... explained his aspirations as to the repatriation of the Jews to the sacred land they had made famous. That was the fount and origin of the famous declaration about the National Home for the Jews in Palestine .... As soon as I became Prime Minister I talked the whole matter over with Mr Balfour, who was then Foreign Secretary.
However, this version of the story of the declaration's origins has been described as "fanciful", a fair assessment considering that discussions between Weizmann and Balfour had begun at least a decade earlier. In late 1905 Balfour had requested of Charles Dreyfus, his Jewish constituency representative, that he arrange a meeting with Weizman, during which Weizman asked for official British support for Zionism; they were to meet again on this issue in 1914.[20]
During the first meeting between Weizmann and Balfour in 1906, Balfour asked what Weizmann's objections were to the idea of a Jewish homeland in Uganda, (the Uganda Protectorate in East Africa in the British Uganda Programme), rather than in Palestine. According to Weizmann's memoir, the conversation went as follows:
"Mr. Balfour, supposing I was to offer you Paris instead of London, would you take it?" He sat up, looked at me, and answered: "But Dr. Weizmann, we have London." "That is true," I said, "but we had Jerusalem when London was a marsh." He ... said two things which I remember vividly. The first was: "Are there many Jews who think like you?" I answered: "I believe I speak the mind of millions of Jews whom you will never see and who cannot speak for themselves." ... To this he said: "If that is so you will one day be a force."[21]
James Gelvin, a Middle East history professor, cites at least three other reasons for why the British government chose to support Zionist aspirations. Issuing the Balfour Declaration would appeal to Woodrow Wilson’s two closest advisors, who were avid Zionists.
"The British did not know quite what to make of President Woodrow Wilson and his conviction (before America's entrance into the war) that the way to end hostilities was for both sides to accept "peace without victory." Two of Wilson's closest advisors, Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, were avid Zionists. How better to shore up an uncertain ally than by endorsing Zionist aims? The British adopted similar thinking when it came to the Russians, who were in the midst of their revolution. Several of the most prominent revolutionaries, including Leon Trotsky, were of Jewish descent. Why not see if they could be persuaded to keep Russia in the way by appealing to their latent Jewishness and giving them another reason to continue the fight?" ... These include not only those already mentioned but also Britain's desire to attract Jewish financial resources.[22]

[edit] Conflicts and broken treaty commitments (contradictory assurances)

The Anglo-French Declaration of November 1918 pledged that Great Britain and France would "assist in the establishment of indigenous governments and administrations in Syria and Mesopotamia by "setting up of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations".
Balfour resigned as foreign secretary following the Versailles Conference in 1919, but continued in the Cabinet as lord president of the council. In a memorandum addressed to new Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon, he stated that the Balfour Declaration contradicted the letters of the covenant (referring to the League Covenant) the Anglo-French Declaration, and the instructions to the King-Crane Commission. All of the other engagements contained pledges that the Arab populations could establish national governments of their own choosing according to the principle of self-determination.
Balfour explained:
"The contradiction between the letters of the Covenant [of the League of Nations] and the policy of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the ‘independent nation’ of Palestine than in that of the ‘independent nation‘ of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose to even go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country though the American [King-Crane] Commission is going through the form of asking what they are.
The Four Great Powers [Britain, France, Italy and the United States] are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, and future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right.
What I have never been able to understand is how it can be harmonized with the [Anglo-French] declaration, the Covenant, or the instruction to the [King-Crane] Commission of Enquiry.
I do not think that Zionism will hurt the Arabs, but they will never say they want it. Whatever be the future of Palestine it is not now an ‘independent nation’, nor is it yet on the way to become one. Whatever deference should be paid to the views of those living there, the Powers in their selection of a mandatory do not propose, as I understand the matter, to consult them. In short, so far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate.
If Zionism is to influence the Jewish problem throughout the world Palestine must be made available for the largest number of Jewish immigrants. It is therefore eminently desirable that it should obtain the command of the water-power which naturally belongs to it whether by extending its borders to the north, or by treaty with the mandatory of Syria, to whom the southward flowing waters of Hamon could not in any event be of much value.
For the same reason Palestine should be extended into the lands lying east of the Jordan. It should not, however, be allowed to include the Hedjaz Railway, which is too distinctly bound up with exclusively Arab Interests..." [23]

[edit] Controversy behind declaration

British public and government opinion became increasingly less favorable to the commitment that had been made to Zionist policy. In February 1922, Winston Churchill telegraphed Herbert Samuel asking for cuts in expenditure and noting:[24]
In both Houses of Parliament there is growing movement of hostility, against Zionist policy in Palestine, which will be stimulated by recent Northcliffe articles. I do not attach undue importance to this movement, but it is increasingly difficult to meet the argument that it is unfair to ask the British taxpayer, already overwhelmed with taxation, to bear the cost of imposing on Palestine an unpopular policy.
Sir John Evelyn Shuckburgh of the new Middle East department of the Foreign Office discovered that the correspondence prior to the declaration was not available in the Colonial Office, 'although Foreign Office papers were understood to have been lengthy and to have covered a considerable period'." The 'most comprehensive explanation' of the origin of the Balfour Declaration the Foreign Office was able to provide was contained in a small 'unofficial' note of Jan 1923 affirming that:
little is known of how the policy represented by the Declaration was first given form. Four, or perhaps five men were chiefly concerned in the labour-the Earl of Balfour, the late Sir Mark Sykes, and Messrs. Weizmann and Sokolow, with perhaps Lord Rothschild as a figure in the background. Negotiations seem to have been mainly oral and by means of private notes and memoranda of which only the scantiest records seem to be available.[25]
In his posthumously published 1981 book The Anglo-American Establishment, Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley explained that the Balfour Declaration was actually drafted by Lord Alfred Milner. Quigley wrote:
This declaration, which is always known as the Balfour Declaration, should rather be called "the Milner Declaration," since Milner was the actual draftsman and was, apparently, its chief supporter in the War Cabinet. This fact was not made public until 21 July 1937. At that time Ormsby-Gore, speaking for the government in Commons, said, "The draft as originally put up by Lord Balfour was not the final draft approved by the War Cabinet. The particular draft assented to by the War Cabinet and afterwards by the Allied Governments and by the United States...and finally embodied in the Mandate, happens to have been drafted by Lord Milner. The actual final draft had to be issued in the name of the Foreign Secretary, but the actual draftsman was Lord Milner."[26]
More recently, William D. Rubinstein, Professor of Modern History at Aberystwyth University, Wales, wrote that Conservative politician and pro-Zionist Leo Amery, as Assistant Secretary to the British war cabinet in 1917, was the main author of the Balfour Declaration.[27]

[edit] Arab opposition

The Arabs expressed disapproval in November 1918 at the parade marking the first anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. The Muslim-Christian Association protested the carrying of new "white and blue banners with two inverted triangles in the middle". They drew the attention of the authorities to the serious consequences of any political implications in raising the banners.[28][Need quotation to verify]
Later that month, on the first anniversary of the occupation of Jaffa by the British, the Muslim-Christian Association sent a lengthy memorandum and petition to the military governor protesting once more any formation of a Jewish state.[29]
On November 1918 the large group of Palestinian Arab dignitaries and representatives of political associations addressed a petition to the British authorities in which they denounced the declaration. The document stated:
...we always sympathized profoundly with the persecuted Jews and their misfortunes in other countries... but there is wide difference between such sympathy and and the acceptance of such a nation...ruling over us and disposing of our affairs.[30]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Yapp, M.E. (1987-09-01). The Making of the Modern Near East 1792-1923. Harlow, England: Longman. p. 290. ISBN 978-0-582-49380-3.
  2. ^ Balfour Declaration. (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 12, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
  3. ^ Friedman, Isaiah. "Herzl, Theodor." Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed. Vol. 9. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. 54-66. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 15 April 2010.
  4. ^ Avish, Shimon. "Herzl, Theodor [1860–1904]." Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Ed. Philip Mattar. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. 1021-1022. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 15 April 2010.
  5. ^ Schneer, Jonathan. The Balfour Declaration. pp. 152.
  6. ^ See History of Zionism (1600-1918), Volume I, Nahum Sokolow, 1919 Longmans, Green, and Company, London, pages xxiv-xxv
  7. ^ See the report of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, UN Document A/364, 3 September 1947
  8. ^ Mansfield, Peter (1992). The Arabs. London: Penguin Books. pp. 176–77.
  9. ^ Stein, Leonard (1961). The Balfour Declaration. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 470.
  10. ^ Palestine Papers 1917-1922, Doreen Ingrams, page 13
  11. ^ Palestine Papers 1917-1922, Doreen Ingrams, page 16
  12. ^ MacMunn, Lieut.-General Sir George (1928) Military Operations. Egypt and Palestine. From the outbreak of war with Germany to June 1917. HMSO. Pages 219,220.
  13. ^ a b c d e Khouri, Fred John (1985). The Arab-Israeli Dilemma. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-2340-3, pp. 8-10.
  14. ^ It Could Have Been Different
  15. ^ Palestine, a Twice-promised Land?: The British, the Arabs & Zionism, 1915-1920 By Isaiah Friedman, page 171
  16. ^ Huneidi, Sahar (2000). A Broken Trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians, 1920-1925. IB Tauris. ISBN 978-1-86064-172-5, p. 66.
  17. ^ Report of a Committee Set up to Consider Certain Correspondence Between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca in 1915 and 1916, UNISPAL, Annex A, paragraph 19.
  18. ^ Report of a Committee Set Up To Consider Certain Correspondence Between Sir Henry McMahon and The Sharif of Mecca[dead link]
  19. ^ cited in Palestine Papers, 1917-1922, Doreen Ingrams, page 48 from the UK Archive files PRO CAB 27/24.
  20. ^ Harry Defries, Conservative Party Attitudes to Jews 1900-1950, Routledge, 2001, ISBN 978-0-7146-5221-4. pp.50-51.
  21. ^ Weizmann, Trial and Error, p.111, as quoted in W. Lacquer, The History of Zionism", 2003, ISBN 978-1-86064-932-5. p.188
  22. ^ Gelvin, James (2005). The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War. New York: Cambridge. pp. 82 and 83.
  23. ^ Edward Said (1992). Question of Palestine. Vintage Books Edition. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-679-73988-3., Doreen Ingrams (1973). Palestine Papers 1917-1922. George Braziller Edition. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-8076-0648-3. Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1931, First series Vol 4. page 345 memorandum from Lord Balfour to Lord Curzon, August 11, 1919, and quoted by The Origin of the Palestine-Israeli Conflict 2nd Edition, 2002, Jews for Justice. Verified 24 October 2007.[dead link]
  24. ^ CO 733/18, Churchill to Samuel, Telegram, Private and Personal, 25 February 1922. Cited Huneidi, Sahar "A Broken Trust, Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians" 2001, ISBN 978-1-86064-172-5, p.57.
  25. ^ Full text of note included CO 733/58, Secret Cabinet Paper CP 60 (23), 'Palestine and the Balfour Declaration, January 1923. FO unofficial note added 'little referring to the Balfour Declaration among such papers as have been preserved'. Shuckburgh's memo asserts that 'as the official records are silent, it can only be assumed that such discussions as had taken place were of an informal and private character'.[1]
  26. ^ Quigley, Carroll (1981-06). The Anglo-American Establishment. New York: Books in Focus. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-945001-01-0.
  27. ^ William D. Rubinstein (2000). "The Secret of Leopold Amery". Historical Research (Institute of Historical Research) 73 (181, June 2000): 175–196. doi:10.1111/1468-2281.00102.
  28. ^ Zu'aytir, Akram, Watha'iq al-haraka a-wataniyya al-filastiniyya (1918-1939), ed. Bayan Nuwayhid al-Hut. Beirut 1948. Papers, p. 5. Cited by Huneidi, Sahar "A Broken Trust, Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians". ISBN 978-1-86064-172-5 p.32.
  29. ^ 'Petition from the Moslem-Christian Association in Jaffa, to the Military Governor, on the occasion of the First Anniversary of British Entry into Jaffa', 16 November 1918, Zu'aytir papers pp. 7-8. Cited by Huneidi p.32.
  30. ^ Benny Morris. The Righteous Victims. 2001 ISBN 0-679-74475-4 p.76

[edit] Further reading

  • Schneer, Jonathan. The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Random House, 2010) 464pp; ISBN 978-1-4000-6532-5

[edit] External links

[show]
Key documents of Mandate Palestine Flag of the United Kingdom.svg Palestine-Mandate-Ensign-1927-1948.svg
[show]
[show]
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki

Armistice with Germany

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the armistice which ended the First World War. For annual commemoration of the event, see Armistice Day.
black and white photograph of five men in military uniforms standing side-to-side in front of a railcar. Four men are disembarking behind them.
The allied representatives at the signing of the armistice. Ferdinand Foch, second from right, seen outside his railway carriage in the forest of Compiègne.
The armistice between the Allies and Germany was an agreement that ended the fighting in the First World War. It was signed in a railway carriage in Compiègne Forest on 11 November 1918 and marked a victory for the Allies and a complete defeat for Germany, although not technically a surrender. The Germans were responding to the policies proposed by American President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points. The actual terms, largely written by French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, included the cessation of hostilities, the withdrawal of German troops to behind their own borders, the preservation of infrastructure, the exchange of prisoners, a promise of reparations, the disposition of German warships and submarines, and conditions for prolonging or terminating the armistice.
The exuberance with which people greeted the armistice quickly succumbed to feelings of exhaustion, relief, sorrow, and a sense of absurdity.[1]

Contents

[hide]

[edit] October 1918 telegrams

First page of the New York Times on November 11
On 29 September 1918 the German Supreme Command informed Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Imperial Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling at army headquarters in Spa, Belgium, that the military situation facing Germany was hopeless. Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff, probably fearing a breakthrough, claimed that he could not guarantee that the front would hold for another 24 hours and demanded a request be given to the Entente for an immediate ceasefire. In addition, he recommended the acceptance of the main demands of US President Woodrow Wilson (the Fourteen Points) and put the Imperial Government on a democratic footing, hoping for more favourable peace terms. This enabled him to save the face of the Imperial Army and put the responsibility for the capitulation and its consequences squarely into the hands of the democratic parties and the parliament. As he said to officers of his staff on 1 October: "They now must lie on the bed that they've made us." Thus was born the "Stab-in-the-back" notion that the army had not failed, only the civilians.[citation needed]
Armistice day is on the 11th November each year. On 3 October liberal Prince Maximilian of Baden was appointed Chancellor of Germany instead of Georg von Hertling in order to negotiate an armistice.[2]
On 5 October 1918 Germany asked Wilson to negotiate terms. In the subsequent two exchanges, Wilson's allusions "failed to convey the idea that the Kaiser's abdication was an essential condition for peace. The leading statesmen of the Reich were not yet ready to contemplate such a monstrous possibility."[3] As a precondition for negotiations Wilson demanded the retreat of Germany from all occupied territories, the cessation of submarine activities and the Kaiser's abdication, writing on 23 October: "If the Government of the United States must deal with the military masters and the monarchical autocrats of Germany now, or if it is likely to have to deal with them later in regard to the international obligations of the German Empire, it must demand not peace negotiations but surrender."[4]
Ludendorff, in a sudden change of mind, declared the conditions of the Allies unacceptable. He now demanded to resume the war which he himself had declared lost only one month earlier. However the German soldiers were pressing to get home. It was scarcely possible to arouse their readiness for battle anew, and desertions were on the increase. The Imperial Government stayed on course and replaced Ludendorff with General Wilhelm Groener. On 5 November the Allies agreed to take up negotiations for a truce, now demanding reparation payments.
A much bigger obstacle, which contributed to the five-week delay in the signing of the armistice and to the resulting social deterioration in Europe, was the fact that the Entente Powers had no desire to accept the Fourteen Points and Wilson's subsequent promises. As Czernin points out:[5]
The Allied statesmen were faced with a problem: so far they had considered the 'fourteen commandments' as a piece of clever and effective American propaganda, designed primarily to undermine the fighting spirit of the Central Powers, and to bolster the morale of the lesser Allies. Now, suddenly, the whole peace structure was supposed to be built up on that set of 'vague principles,' most of which seemed to them thoroughly unrealistic, and some of which, if they were to be seriously applied, were simply unacceptable.

[edit] German Revolution

The sailors' revolt which took place during the night of 29 to 30 October 1918 in the naval port of Wilhelmshaven spread across the whole country within days and led to the proclamation of a republic on 9 November 1918 and to the announcement of the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II.[6] After a renewed demand by the Supreme Command, the new German government headed by Friedrich Ebert accepted the harsh terms of the Entente for a truce.
Ebert was a Social Democrat, whilst Erzberger, who negotiated the armistice, was from the Catholic Centre Party. These parties had enjoyed an uneasy relationship with the Imperial government since Bismarck's era in the 1870s and 1880s. They were well-represented in the Imperial Reichstag, which had little power over the government, and had been calling for a negotiated peace since 1917. Their prominence in the peace negotiations would cause the new Weimar Republic to lack legitimacy in right-wing and militarist eyes.

[edit] Negotiation process

The Armistice was agreed at 5 a.m. on 11 November, to come into effect at 11 a.m. Paris time, for which reason the occasion is sometimes referred to as "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month". It was the result of a hurried and desperate process. German chief of staff Paul von Hindenburg had requested arrangements for a meeting from Ferdinand Foch by telegram on 7 November. He was under pressure of imminent revolution in Berlin, Munich, and elsewhere across Germany. The German delegation headed by Matthias Erzberger crossed the front line in five cars and was escorted for ten hours across the devastated war zone of Northern France. They were then entrained and taken to the secret destination, aboard Foch's private train parked in a railway siding in the forest of Compiègne.[7]
Foch appeared only twice in the three days of negotiations: on the first day, to ask the German delegation what they wanted, and on the last day, to see to the signatures. In between, the German delegation discussed the details of the Allied terms with French and Allied officers. The Armistice amounted to complete German demilitarization, with few promises made by the Allies in return. The naval blockade of Germany would continue until complete peace terms could be agreed upon.[8]
There was no question of negotiation. The Germans were able to correct a few impossible demands (for example, the decommissioning of more submarines than their fleet possessed) and registered their formal protest at the harshness of Allied terms. But they were in no position to refuse to sign. On Sunday 10 November, they were shown newspapers from Paris to inform them that the Kaiser had abdicated. Erzberger was not able to get instructions from Berlin because of the fall of the government. The instructions to sign came from Hindenburg, who felt that an armistice was absolutely necessary.[9] Signatures were made between 5:12 a.m. and 5:20 a.m., Paris time.

[edit] Prolongation

The Armistice was prolonged three times before peace was finally ratified.
  • First Armistice (11 November 1918 - 13 December 1918)
  • First prolongation of the armistice (13 December 1918 - 16 January 1919)
  • Second prolongation of the armistice (16 January 1919 - 16 February 1919)
  • Third prolongation of the armistice (16 February 1919 - 10 January 1920)[10]
Peace was ratified at 4:15 p.m. on 10 January 1920.[11]

[edit] The Armistice Carriage

Painting depicting the signature of the armistice in the railway carriage. From left to right are German Admiral Ernst Vanselow, German Count Alfred von Oberndorff of the Foreign Ministry, German General Detlof von Winterfeldt (with helmet), British naval officer Captain Jack Marriott, and standing in front of the table, Matthias Erzberger, head of the German delegation. Behind the table are two British naval officers, Rear-Admiral George Hope, First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, and the French representatives, Marshal Ferdinand Foch (standing), and General Maxime Weygand.
The armistice was signed in a carriage of Foch's private train, CIWL #2419 ("Le Wagon de l'Armistice"). It was later put back into regular service with the Compagnie des Wagons-Lits, but after a short period it was withdrawn to be attached to the French presidential train.
From April 1921 to April 1927, it was on exhibition in the Cour des Invalides in Paris.
In November 1927, it was ceremonially returned to the forest in the exact spot where the Armistice was signed. Marshal Foch, General Weygand and many others watched it being placed in a specially constructed building: the Clairiere de l’Armistice.
There it remained, a monument to the defeat of the Kaiser’s Germany, until 22 June 1940, when swastika-bedecked German staff cars bearing Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop and others swept into the Clairiere and, in that same carriage, demanded and received the surrender armistice from France.
During the Occupation of France, the Clairiere de l’Armistice was destroyed and the carriage taken to Berlin, where it was exhibited in the Lustgarten.
After the Allied advance into Germany in early 1945, the carriage was removed by the Germans for safe keeping to the town of Ohrdruf, but as an American armoured column entered the town, the detachment of the SS guarding it set it ablaze, and it was destroyed.
After the war, the Compiègne site was restored, but not until Armistice Day 1950 was a replacement carriage, correct in every detail, re-dedicated: an identical Compagnie des Wagon-Lits carriage, no. 2439, built in 1913 in the same batch as the original, was renumbered no. 2419D.

[edit] Key personnel

For the Allies, the personnel involved were entirely military:
For Germany:
General Weygand and General von Gruennel[who?] are not mentioned in the French copy of the armistice document.

[edit] Terms

The terms contained the following major points:[12]
  • Termination of military hostilities within six hours after signature.
  • Immediate removal of all German troops from France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Alsace-Lorraine.
  • Subsequent removal of all German troops from territory on the west side of the Rhine plus 30 km radius bridgeheads of the right side of the Rhine at the cities of Mainz, Koblenz, and Cologne with ensuing occupation by Allied and US troops.
  • Removal of all German troops at the eastern front to German territory as it was on 1 August 1914.
  • Renunciation of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Russia and of the Treaty of Bucharest with Romania.
  • Internment of the German fleet.
  • Surrender of material: 5,000 cannons, 25,000 machine guns, 3,000 minenwerfers, 1,700 airplanes, 5,000 locomotive engines, and 150,000 railcars.

[edit] Aftermath

The British public was notified of the armistice by a subjoined official communiqué issued from the Press Bureau at 10:20 a.m., when David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, announced: "The armistice was signed at five o'clock this morning, and hostilities are to cease on all fronts at 11 a.m. to-day."[13] An official communique was published by the United States at 2:30 p.m.: "In accordance with the terms of the Armistice, hostilities on the fronts of the American armies were suspended at eleven o'clock this morning."[14]
News of the armistice being signed was officially announced towards 9 a.m. in Paris. One hour later, Foch, accompanied by a British admiral, presented himself at the Ministry of War, where he was immediately received by Georges Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France. At 10:50 a.m., Foch issued this general order: "Hostilities will cease on the whole front as from November 11 at 11 o'clock French time The Allied troops will not, until further order, go beyond the line reached on that date and at that hour."[15] Five minutes later, Clemenceau, Foch and the British admiral went to the Élysée Palace. At the first shot fired from the Eiffel Tower, the Ministry of War and the Élysée Palace displayed flags, while bells around Paris rang. Five hundred students gathered in front of the Ministry and called upon Clemenceau, who appeared on the balcony. Clemenceau exclaimed "Vive la France!"—the crowd echoed him. At 11:00 a.m., the first peace-gunshot was fired from Fort Mont-Valérien, which told the population of Paris that the armistice was concluded, but the population were already aware of it from official circles and newspapers.[16]
The peace between the Allies and Germany would subsequently be settled in 1919, by the Paris Peace Conference, and the Treaty of Versailles that same year.

[edit] Last casualties

Gravestone of Henry N. Gunther in Baltimore
The news was quickly given to the armies during the morning of 11 November, but even after hearing that the armistice was due to start at 11:00 a.m., intense warfare continued right until the last minute. Many artillery units continued to fire on German targets to avoid having to haul away their spare ammunition. The Allies also wished to ensure that, should fighting restart, they would be in the most favourable position. Consequently there were 10,944 casualties of which 2,738 men died on the last day of the war.[17]
Augustin Trébuchon was the last Frenchman to die when he was shot on his way to tell fellow soldiers that hot soup would be served after the ceasefire. He was killed at 10:45 a.m. The last soldier from the UK to die, George Edwin Ellison of the 5th Royal Irish Lancers, was killed earlier that morning at around 9:30 a.m. while scouting on the outskirts of Mons, Belgium. The final Canadian, and Commonwealth, soldier to die, Private George Lawrence Price, was killed just two minutes before the armistice to the north of Mons at 10:58 a.m., to be recognized as one of the last killed with a monument to his name. And finally, American Henry Gunther is generally recognized as the last soldier killed in action in World War I. He was killed 60 seconds before the armistice came into force while charging astonished German troops who were aware the Armistice was nearly upon them.[18][19]
The last reported German casualty occurred after the 11 a.m. armistice. A Lieutenant Tomas, in the Meuse-Argonne sector, went to inform approaching American soldiers that he and his men would be vacating houses that they had been using as billets. However, he was shot by soldiers who had not been told about the ceasefire.[citation needed]

[edit] Legacy

Celebration of the Armistice became the centrepiece of memories of the war, along with salutes to the unknown soldier. Nations built monuments to the dead and the heroic soldiers, but seldom to the generals and admirals.[20]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Jay Winter, "A taste of ashes," History Today, Nov 1998, Vol. 48 Issue 11, pp 8-13
  2. ^ Ferdinand Czernin, Versailles, 1919 (1964)
  3. ^ Czernin, Versailles, 1919 (1964) p 7
  4. ^ Czernin, Versailles, 1919 (1964) p 9
  5. ^ Czernin, Versailles, 1919 (1964) p 23
  6. ^ The announcement by Prince Maximilian of Baden had great effect, but the abdication document was not formally signed until 28 November.
  7. ^ Harry Rudin, Armistice, 1918 (1967) pp 320-49
  8. ^ Rudin, Armistice, 1918 (1967) p 377
  9. ^ Rudin, Armistice, 1918 (1967) p 389
  10. ^ Edmonds 1943 pp 42-43
  11. ^ Edmonds 1943 p. 189
  12. ^ Rudin, Armistice, 1918 (1967) p 426-7
  13. ^ "Peace Day in London". The Poverty Bay Herald (Gisborne, New Zealand): p. 2. 2 January 1919. Retrieved 2010-09-07.
  14. ^ "World Wars: Daily Mirror Headlines: Armistice, Published 12 November 1918". London: BBC. Retrieved 7 September 2010.
  15. ^ "Reich Quit Last War Deep in French Forest". The Milwaukee Journal (Milwaukee): p. 10. 7 May 1945. Retrieved 7 September 2010.
  16. ^ "The News in Paris". The Daily Telegraph. 11 November 1918.
  17. ^ Persico, Joseph E (2004). Eleventh month, eleventh day, eleventh hour. Random House. ISBN 9780099445395.
  18. ^ "The last soldiers to die in World War I". BBC News Magazine. October 29, 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-06.
  19. ^ "Michael Palin: My guilt over my great-uncle who died in the First World War". The Telegraph. November 1, 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-01. "We unearthed many heart-breaking stories, such as that of Augustin Trébuchon, the last Frenchman to die in the War. He was shot just before 11 a.m. on his way to tell his fellow soldiers that hot soup would be available after the ceasefire. The parents of the American Pte Henry Gunther had to live with news that their son had died just 60 seconds before it was all over. The last British soldier to die was Pte George Edwin Ellison."
  20. ^ Christina Theodosiou, "Symbolic narratives and the legacy of the Great War: the celebration of Armistice Day in France in the 1920s," First World War Studies, Oct 2010, Vol. 1 Issue 2, pp 185-198

[edit] Bibliography

  • Best, Nicholas. The Greatest Day in History: How, on the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month, the First World War Finally Came to an End (2009) excerpt and text search
  • Brook-Shepherd, Gordon. November 1918: the last act of the Great War (1981)
  • Czernin, Ferdinand. Versailles, 1919 (1964)
  • Halperin, S. William. "Anatomy of an Armistice," Journal of Modern History, March 1971, Vol. 43 Issue 1, p107-112, evaluates the work of French historian Pierre Renouvin
  • Edmonds, J.E. (1943/1987). The Occupation of the Rhineland 1918-29. HMSO. ISBN 9780112904540.
  • Lowry, Bullitt, Armistice, 1918 (Kent State University Press, 1996) 245pp
  • Rudin, Harry. Armistice, 1918 (1967), a major scholarly study
  • Weintraub, Stanley. A stillness heard round the world: the end of the Great War (1987)

[edit] External links

Wikisourcehas original text related to this article:
Coordinates: 49.4275°N 2.906389°E
[show]
World War I

Treaty of Versailles

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the Treaty of Versailles of 28 June 1919, at the end of World War I. For other uses, see Treaty of Versailles (disambiguation).
Page semi-protected
Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany
Treaty of Versailles, English version.jpg
Cover of the English version
Signed28 June 1919
LocationVersailles, France
Effective10 January 1920
ConditionRatification by Germany and three Principal Allied Powers.
SignatoriesCentral Powers
 German Reich
Allied Powers
 British Empire
France France
 Italy
 Japan
 United States
DepositaryFrench Government
LanguagesFrench, English
Treaty of Versailles at Wikisource
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I were dealt with in separate treaties.[1] Although the armistice signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919, and was printed in The League of Nations Treaty Series.
Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial required Germany to accept responsibility for causing the war (along with Austria and Hungary, according to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the Treaty of Trianon) and, under the terms of articles 231–248 (later known as the War Guilt clauses), to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions and pay heavy reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers. The total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion Marks (then $31.4 billion, £6.6 billion) in 1921 which is roughly equivalent to US $442 billion and UK £217 billion in 2011, a sum that many economists at the time, notably John Maynard Keynes, deemed to be excessive and counterproductive and would have taken Germany until 1988 to pay.[2][3] The final payments ended up being made on 4 October 2010,[4] the 20th anniversary of German reunification, and some 92 years after the end of the war for which they were exacted.[5] The Treaty was undermined by subsequent events starting as early as 1932 and was widely flouted by the mid-1930s.[6]
The result of these competing and sometimes conflicting goals among the victors was compromise that left none contented: Germany was not pacified or conciliated, nor permanently weakened. This would prove to be a factor leading to later conflicts, notably and directly World War II.[7]

Contents

[hide]

[edit] Negotiations

Negotiations between the Allied powers started on 18 January in the Salle de l'Horloge at the French Foreign Ministry, on the Quai d'Orsay in Paris. Initially, 70 delegates of 27 nations participated in the negotiations.[8] Having been defeated, Germany, Austria, and Hungary were excluded from the negotiations. Russia was also excluded because it had negotiated a separate peace with Germany in 1918, in which Germany gained a large fraction of Russia's land and resources. The treaty′s terms were extremely harsh, as the negotiators at Versailles later pointed out.
Signing in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.
Until March 1919, the most important role for negotiating the extremely complex and difficult terms of the peace fell to the regular meetings of the "Council of Ten", which comprised the heads of government and foreign ministers of the five major victors (the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Italy, and Japan). As this unusual body proved too unwieldy and formal for effective decision-making, Japan and—for most of the remaining conference—the foreign ministers left the main meetings, so that only the "Big Four" remained.[9] After his territorial claims to Fiume (today Rijeka) were rejected, Italian Prime Minister, Vittorio Orlando left the negotiations and only returned to sign in June.
The final conditions were determined by the leaders of the "Big Three" nations: British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and American President Woodrow Wilson. Even with this smaller group it was difficult to decide on a common position because their aims conflicted with one another. The result has been called the "unhappy compromise".[10]

[edit] Britain′s aims

Britain had suffered little land devastation during the war and Prime Minister David Lloyd George supported reparations to a lesser extent than the French. Britain began to look on a restored Germany as an important trading partner and worried about the effect of reparations on the British economy.[11] Lloyd George was also worried by Woodrow Wilson′s proposal for "self-determination" and, like the French, wanted to preserve his own nation's empire. Like the French, Lloyd George supported secret treaties and naval blockades.[citation needed] Lloyd George managed to increase the overall reparations payment and Britain's share by demanding compensation for the huge number of widows, orphans, and men left unable to work as a result of war injuries.[citation needed]

[edit] United States' aims

Main article: Fourteen Points
There had been strong non-interventionist sentiment before and after the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, and many Americans were eager to extricate themselves from European affairs as rapidly as possible.[citation needed] The U.S. took a more conciliatory view toward the issue of German reparations. Before the end of the war, President Woodrow Wilson—along with other American officials including Edward M. House—put forward his Fourteen Points, which he presented in a speech at the Paris Peace Conference. The U.S. also wished to continue trading with Germany, so in turn did not want to treat them too harshly for these economic reasons.[citation needed]

[edit] France's Aims

The French delegation to Paris, led by Clemenceau, was intent on restoring French hegemony on the European continent. From 1870 until 1914, Germany underwent great economic and demographic development and surpassed France as the hegemon on the continent. Thus, Clemencau used the conference as a means to restore France's position as the great power in Europe.
"So far as possible, therefore, it was the policy of France to set the clock back and undo what, since 1870, the progress of Germany had accomplished. By loss of territory and other measures her population was to be curtailed; but chiefly the economic system, upon which the depended for her new strength, the vast fabric built upon iron, coal, and transport must be destroyed. If France could seize,even in part, what Germany was compelled to drop, the inequality of strength between the two rivals for European hegemony might be remedied for generations."[12]-John Maynard Keynes

[edit] Content

[edit] Impositions on Germany

[edit] Legal restrictions

  • Article 227 charges former German Emperor, Wilhelm II with supreme offense against international morality. He is to be tried as a war criminal.
  • Articles 228–230 tried many other Germans as war criminals.
  • Article 231 (the "War Guilt Clause") lays sole responsibility for the war on Germany and her allies, which is to be accountable for all damage to civilian populations of the Allies.

[edit] Occupation of the Rhineland

As a guarantee of compliance by Germany, Part XIV of the Treaty provided that the Rhineland would be occupied by Allied troops for a period of 15 years.[13]

[edit] Military restrictions

Part V of the treaty begins with the preamble, "In order to render possible the initiation of a general limitation of the armaments of all nations, Germany undertakes strictly to observe the military, naval and air clauses which follow."[14]
  • German armed forces will number no more than 100,000 troops, and conscription will be abolished.
  • Enlisted men will be retained for at least 12 years; officers to be retained for at least 25 years.
  • German naval forces will be limited to 15,000 men, six battleships (no more than 10,000 tons displacement each), six cruisers (no more than 6,000 tons displacement each), 12 destroyers (no more than 800 tons displacement each) and 12 torpedo boats (no more than 200 tons displacement each). No submarines are to be included.
  • The import and export of weapons is prohibited.
  • Poison gas, armed aircraft, tanks and armoured cars are prohibited.
  • Blockades on ships are prohibited.
  • Restrictions on the manufacture of machine guns (e.g. the Maxim machine gun) and rifles (e.g. Gewehr 98 rifles).

[edit] Territorial changes

Germany after Versailles:
  Administered by the League of Nations
  Annexed by neighbouring countries
Borders of Europe after the Treaty of Versailles.
Germany′s borders in 1919 had been established nearly 50 years earlier, at the country′s official establishment in 1871. Territory and cities in the region had changed hands repeatedly for centuries, including at various times being owned by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Poland, and Kingdom of Lithuania. However, Germany laid claim to lands and cities that it viewed as historically "Germanic" centuries before Germany′s establishment as a country in 1871. Other countries disputed Germany′s claim to this territory. In the peace treaty, Germany agreed to return disputed lands and cities to various countries.
Germany was compelled to yield control of its colonies, and would also lose a number of European territories. The province of West Prussia would be ceded to the restored Poland, thereby granting it access to the Baltic Sea via the "Polish Corridor" which Prussia had annexed in the Partitions of Poland. This turned East Prussia into an exclave, separated from mainland Germany.
  • Alsace and much of Lorraine—both originally German-speaking territories—were part of France, having been annexed by France′s King Louis XIV who desired the Rhine as a "natural border". After approximately 200 years of French rule, Alsace and the German-speaking part of Lorraine were ceded to Germany in 1871 under the Treaty of Frankfurt. In 1919, both regions were returned to France.
  • Northern Schleswig was returned to Denmark following a plebiscite on February 14, 1920 (area 3,984 km², 163,600 inhabitants (1920)). Central Schleswig, including the city of Flensburg, opted to remain German in a separate referendum on 14 March 1920.
  • Most of the Prussian provinces of Province of Posen (now Poznan) and of West Prussia which Prussia had annexed in the Partitions of Poland (1772–1795) were ceded to Poland (area 53,800 km², 4,224,000 inhabitants (1931)) without a plebiscite. Most of the Province of Posen had already come under Polish control during the Greater Poland Uprising of 1918–1919.
  • The Hultschin area of Upper Silesia was transferred to Czechoslovakia (area 316 or 333 km², 49,000 inhabitants) without a plebiscite.
  • The eastern part of Upper Silesia was assigned to Poland, as in the Upper Silesia plebiscite inhabitants of about 45% of communities voted for this (with general results of 717,122 votes being cast for Germany and 483,514 for Poland).
  • The area of Eupen-Malmedy was given to Belgium. An opportunity was given to the population to "protest" against the transfer by signing a register, which gathered few signatures. The Vennbahn railway was also transferred to Belgium.
  • The area of Soldau in East Prussia, an important railway junction on the Warsaw–Danzig route, was transferred to Poland without a plebiscite (area 492 km²).[15]
  • The northern part of East Prussia known as the "Memelland" or Memel Territory was placed under the control of France and was later annexed by Lithuania.
  • From the eastern part of West Prussia and the southern part of East Prussia, after the East Prussian plebiscite a small area was ceded to Poland.
  • The Territory of the Saar Basin was to be under the control of the League of Nations for 15 years, after which a plebiscite between France and Germany, was to decide to which country it would belong. During this time, coal would be sent to France. The region was then called the Saargebiet (German: "Saar Area") and was formed from southern parts of the German Rhine Province and western parts of the Bavarian Palatinate under the "Saar statute" of the Versailles Treaty of 28. 6. 1919 (Article 45–50).
  • The strategically important port of Danzig with the delta of the Vistula River on the Baltic Sea was separated from Germany as the Freie Stadt Danzig (Free City of Danzig).
  • Austria (see the Republic of German Austria) was forbidden from integrating with/into Germany.
  • In article 22, German colonies were divided between Belgium, Great Britain, and certain British Dominions, France, and Japan with the determination not to see any of them returned to Germany — a guarantee secured by Article 119.[16]
  • In Africa, Britain and France divided German Kamerun (Cameroons) and Togoland. Belgium gained Ruanda-Urundi in northwestern German East Africa, the United Kingdom obtained by far the greater landmass of this colony, thus gaining the "missing link" in the chain of British possessions stretching from South Africa to Egypt (Cape to Cairo), Portugal received the Kionga Triangle, a sliver of German East Africa. German South West Africa was mandated to the Union of South Africa.[17]
  • In the Pacific, Japan gained Germany’s islands north of the equator (the Marshall Islands, the Carolines, the Marianas, the Palau Islands) and Kiautschou in China. German Samoa was assigned to New Zealand; German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and Nauru[18] to Australia as mandatory.[19]

[edit] Shandong problem

Main article: Shandong Problem
Japanese delegation at the Paris Peace Conference 1919.
Article 156 of the treaty transferred German concessions in Shandong, China, to Japan rather than returning sovereign authority to China. Chinese outrage over this provision led to demonstrations and a cultural movement known as the May Fourth Movement and influenced China not to sign the treaty. China declared the end of its war against Germany in September 1919 and signed a separate treaty with Germany in 1921.

[edit] Reparations

Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles assigned blame for the war to Germany; much of the rest of the Treaty set out the reparations that Germany would pay to the Allies.
The total sum of war reparations demanded from Germany—around 226 billion Marks (ℳ)—was decided by an Inter-Allied Reparations Commission. In 1921, it was reduced to ℳ 132 billion, at that time, $31.4 billion (US$ 385 billion in 2011), or £6.6 billion (UK£ 217 billion in 2011).[3]
It could be seen that the Versailles reparation impositions were partly a reply to the reparations placed upon France by Germany through the 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt signed after the Franco-Prussian War; critics[who?] of the Treaty argued that France had been able to pay the reparations (5,000,000,000 francs) within three years while the Young Plan of 1929 estimated that German reparations would be paid for a further 59 years, until 1988.[20] Indemnities of the Treaty of Frankfurt were in turn calculated, on the basis of population, as the precise equivalent of the indemnities imposed by Napoleon I on Prussia in 1807.[21]
The Versailles Reparations came in a variety of forms, including coal, steel, intellectual property (e.g. the trademark for Aspirin) and agricultural products, in no small part because currency reparations of that order of magnitude would lead to hyperinflation, as actually occurred in post-war Germany (see 1920s German inflation), thus decreasing the benefits to France and Britain.
Reparations due in the form of coal played a big part in punishing Germany. The Treaty of Versailles declared that Germany was responsible for the destruction of coal mines in Northern France, parts of Belgium, and parts of Italy. Therefore, France was awarded full possession of Germany′s coal-bearing Saar basin for a period. Also, Germany was forced to provide France, Belgium, and Italy with millions of tons of coal for 10 years. However, under the control of Adolf Hitler, Germany stopped outstanding deliveries of coal within a few years, thus violating the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.[citation needed]
Germany finally finished paying its reparations in 2010.[22]

[edit] The creation of international organizations

Part I of the treaty was the Covenant of the League of Nations which provided for the creation of the League of Nations, an organization intended to arbitrate international disputes and thereby avoid future wars.[23] Part XIII organized the establishment of the International Labour Organization, to promote "the regulation of the hours of work, including the establishment of a maximum working day and week; the regulation of the labour supply; the prevention of unemployment; the provision of an adequate living wage; the protection of the worker against sickness, disease and injury arising out of his employment; the protection of children, young persons and women; provision for old age and injury; protection of the interests of workers when employed in countries other than their own; recognition of the principle of freedom of association; the organization of vocational and technical education and other measures"[24] Further international commissions were to be set up, according to Part XII, to administer control over the Elbe, the Oder, the Niemen (Russstrom-Memel-Niemen) and the Danube rivers.[25]

[edit] Other

The Treaty contained many other provisions (economic issues, transportation, etc.). One of the provisions was the following:
ARTICLE 246. Within six months from the coming into force of the present Treaty, ... Germany will hand over to His Britannic Majesty's Government the skull of the Sultan Mkwawa which was removed from the Protectorate of German East Africa and taken to Germany.

[edit] Reactions

[edit] Among the allies

[edit] France

France signed the Treaty and was active in the League. Clemenceau had failed to achieve all of the demands of the French people, and he was voted out of office in the elections of January 1920. French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch—who felt the restrictions on Germany were too lenient—declared (quite accurately), "This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years."[26]

[edit] United States rejects Treaty

The Republican Party—led by Henry Cabot Lodge—controlled the U.S. Senate after the election of 1918, but the Senators were divided into multiple positions on the Versailles question. It proved possible to build a majority coalition, but impossible to build a two-thirds coalition that was needed to pass a treaty.[27]
An angry bloc of 12-18 "Irreconcilables", mostly Republicans but also representatives of the Irish and German Democrats, fiercely opposed the Treaty. One block of Democrats strongly supported the Versailles Treaty, even with reservations added by Lodge. A second group of Democrats supported the Treaty but followed Wilson in opposing any amendments or reservations. The largest bloc—led by Senator Lodge—[28] comprised a majority of the Republicans. They wanted a treaty with reservations, especially on Article X, which involved the power of the League Nations to make war without a vote by the U.S. Congress.[29] All of the Irreconcilables were bitter enemies of President Wilson, and he launched a nationwide speaking tour in the summer of 1919 to refute them. However, Wilson collapsed midway with a serious stroke that effectively ruined his leadership skills.[30]
The closest the Treaty came to passage was on November 19, 1919, as Lodge and his Republicans formed a coalition with the pro-Treaty Democrats, and were close to a two-thirds majority for a Treaty with reservations, but Wilson rejected this compromise and enough Democrats followed his lead to permanently end the chances for ratification.
Among the American public as a whole, the Irish Catholics and the German Americans were intensely opposed to the Treaty, saying it favored the British.[31]
After Wilson's successor Warren G. Harding continued American opposition to the League of Nations, Congress passed the Knox–Porter Resolution bringing a formal end to hostilities between the U.S. and the Central Powers. It was signed into law by Harding on July 21, 1921.[32]

[edit] House's views

Wilson's former friend Edward Mandell House, present at the negotiations, wrote in his diary on 29 June 1919:
I am leaving Paris, after eight fateful months, with conflicting emotions. Looking at the conference in retrospect, there is much to approve and yet much to regret. It is easy to say what should have been done, but more difficult to have found a way of doing it. To those who are saying that the treaty is bad and should never have been made and that it will involve Europe in infinite difficulties in its enforcement, I feel like admitting it. But I would also say in reply that empires cannot be shattered, and new states raised upon their ruins without disturbance. To create new boundaries is to create new troubles. The one follows the other. While I should have preferred a different peace, I doubt very much whether it could have been made, for the ingredients required for such a peace as I would have were lacking at Paris.[33]

[edit] In Germany

German delegates in Versailles: Professor Dr. Walther Schücking, Reichspostminister Johannes Giesberts, Justice Minister Dr. Otto Landsberg, Foreign Minister Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau, Prussian State President Robert Leinert, and financial advisor Dr. Carl Melchior.
On April 29, the German delegation under the leadership of the Foreign Minister Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau arrived in Versailles. On May 7, when faced with the conditions dictated by the victors, including the so-called "War Guilt Clause", von Brockdorff-Rantzau replied to Clemenceau, Wilson and Lloyd George: "We know the full brunt of hate that confronts us here. You demand from us to confess we were the only guilty party of war; such a confession in my mouth would be a lie."[34] Because Germany was not allowed to take part in the negotiations, the German government issued a protest against what it considered to be unfair demands, and a "violation of honour",[35] soon afterward withdrawing from the proceedings of peace conference.
Germans of all political shades denounced the treaty—particularly the provision that blamed Germany for starting the war—as an insult to the nation's honor. They referred to the treaty as "the Diktat" since its terms were presented to Germany on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Germany′s first democratically elected Chancellor—Philipp Scheidemann—refused to sign the treaty and resigned. In a passionate speech before the National Assembly on March 21, 1919, he called the treaty a "murderous plan" and exclaimed,
Which hand, trying to put us in chains like these, would not wither? The treaty is unacceptable.[36]
After Scheidemann′s resignation, a new coalition government was formed under Gustav Bauer. President Friedrich Ebert then asked Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg if the army was capable of any meaningful resistance in the event the Allies decided to renew hostilities. If there was even the slightest chance that the army could hold out, Ebert intended to recommend against ratifying the treaty. Hindenburg—after prodding from his chief of staff, Wilhelm Groener—concluded the army′s position was untenable. However, rather than inform Ebert himself, he had Groener cable the army′s recommendation to the government. Upon receiving this, the new government recommended signing the treaty. The National Assembly voted in favour of signing the treaty by 237 to 138, with five abstentions. Foreign minister Hermann Müller and colonial minister Johannes Bell traveled to Versailles to sign the treaty on behalf of Germany. The treaty was signed on June 28, 1919 and ratified by the National Assembly on July 9 by a vote of 209 to 116.[37]
Demonstration against the Treaty in front of the Reichstag.
Conservatives, nationalists and ex-military leaders condemned the peace and democratic Weimar politicians, socialists, communists, and Jews were viewed by them with suspicion, due to their supposed extra-national loyalties.[citation needed] It was rumored that the Jews had not supported the war and had played a role in selling out Germany to its enemies. Those who seemed to benefit from a weakened Germany, and the newly formed Weimar Republic, were regarded as having "stabbed Germany in the back" on the home front, by either opposing German nationalism, instigating unrest and strikes in the critical military industries or profiteering.[citation needed] These theories were given credence by the fact that when Germany surrendered in November 1918, its armies were still on French and Belgian territory. Furthermore, on the Eastern Front, Germany had already won the war against Russia and concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In the West, Germany had seemed to have come close to winning the war with the Spring Offensive earlier in 1918.[citation needed] Its failure was blamed on strikes in the arms industry at a critical moment of the offensive, leaving soldiers with an inadequate supply of materiel. The strikes were regarded by nationalists as having been instigated by traitors, with the Jews taking most of the blame.[citation needed]

[edit] Violations

Question book-new.svg
This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2011)
The German economy was so weak that only a small percentage of reparations was paid in hard currency.[citation needed] Nonetheless, even the payment of this small percentage of the original reparations (132 billion gold marks) still placed a significant burden on the German economy. Although the causes of the devastating post-war hyperinflation are complex and disputed, Germans blamed the near-collapse of their economy on the Treaty, and some economists estimated that the reparations accounted for as much as one third of the hyper-inflation.[citation needed]
In March 1921, French and Belgian troops occupied Duisburg, which formed part of the demilitarized Rhineland, according to the Treaty of Versailles. In January 1923, French and Belgian forces occupied the rest of the Ruhr area as a reprisal after Germany failed to fulfill reparation payments demanded by the Versailles Treaty. The German government answered with "passive resistance", which meant that coal miners and railway workers refused to obey any instructions by the occupation forces. Production and transportation came to a standstill, but the financial consequences contributed to German hyperinflation and completely ruined public finances in Germany. Consequently, passive resistance was called off in late 1923. The end of passive resistance in the Ruhr allowed Germany to undertake a currency reform and to negotiate the Dawes Plan, which led to the withdrawal of French and Belgian troops from the Ruhr Area in 1925.
Some significant violations (or avoidances) of the provisions of the Treaty were:
  • In 1919, the dissolution of the General Staff appeared to happen; however, the core of the General Staff was hidden within another organization, the Truppenamt, where it rewrote all Heer (Army) and Luftstreitkräfte (Air Force) doctrinal and training materials based on the experience of World War I.[citation needed]
  • On April 16, 1922, representatives of the governments of Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Rapallo Treaty at a World Economic Conference at Genoa in Italy. The treaty re-established diplomatic relations, renounced financial claims on each other and pledged future cooperation.
  • In 1932, the German government announced it would no longer adhere to the treaty's military limitations, citing the Allies' violation of the treaty by failing to initiate military limitations on themselves as called for in the preamble of Part V of the Treaty of Versailles.
  • In March 1935, under the government of Adolf Hitler, Germany violated the Treaty of Versailles by introducing compulsory military conscription in Germany and rebuilding the armed forces. This included a new Navy (Kriegsmarine), the first full armored divisions (Panzerwaffe), and an Air Force (Luftwaffe).
  • In June 1935, Great Britain effectively withdrew from the treaty with the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement.
  • In March 1936, Germany violated the treaty by reoccupying the demilitarized zone in the Rhineland.
  • In March 1938, Germany violated the treaty by annexing Austria in the Anschluss.
  • In September 1938, Germany, with the approval of France, Britain, and Italy, violated the Treaty by annexing the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.
  • In March 1939, Germany violated the treaty by occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia.
  • On 1 September 1939, Germany violated the treaty by invading Poland, thus initiating World War II in Europe.
Another significant circumvention of the treaty was that with heavy artillery being banned, the Nazis pursued development of the V-2 long-range rocket.[38] So in this sense, the Treaty of Versailles was influential in ushering in the era of spaceflight.

[edit] Historical assessments

In his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes referred to the Treaty of Versailles as a "Carthaginian peace", a misguided attempt to destroy Germany on behalf of French revanchism, rather than to follow the fairer principles for a lasting peace set out in President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, which Germany had accepted at the armistice. He stated: "I believe that the campaign for securing out of Germany the general costs of the war was one of the most serious acts of political unwisdom for which our statesmen have ever been responsible."[7] Keynes had been the principal representative of the British Treasury at the Paris Peace Conference, and used in his passionate book arguments that he and others (including some US officials) had used at Paris.[39] He believed the sums being asked of Germany in reparations were many times more than it was possible for Germany to pay, and that these would produce drastic instability.[40]
Let me contrast the principles enunciated by the Fourteen Points with the extent to which those principles were embodied in the eventual Treaties of Peace.Our covenants of peace were not openly arrived at: seldom has such secrecy been maintained in any diplomatic gathering. The Freedom of the seas was not secured. So far from Free Trade being established in Europe, a set of tariff-walls were erected, higher and more numerous than any known before. National armaments were not re-
duced. The German Colonies were distributed among the victors in a manner which was neither free, nor open-minded, nor impartial. The wishes, to say nothing of the interests, of the populations were (as in the Saar, Shantung and Syria) flagrantly dis-
regarded. Russia was not welcomed into the Society of Nations, nor was she acc-
orded unhampered freedom to develop her own institutions. The frontiers of Italy were not adjusted along the lines of nationality. The Turkish portions of the Ottoman Empire were not assured a secure sovereignty. The territories of Poland include many people who are indisputably not Polish. The League of Nations has not, in practice, been able to assure political independence to Great and Small nations alike. Provinces and peoples were, in fact, treated as pawns and chattels in a game. The territorial settlements, in almost every case, were based on mere adjustments and compromis-
es between the claims of rival States. Elements of discord and antagonism were in fact perpetuated. Even the old system of Secret Treaties was not entirely and univ-
ersally destroyed.Of President Wilson's twenty-three conditions, only four can, with any accuracy, be said to have been incorporated in the Treaties of Peace.[41]
“
”
—The English diplomat Harold Nicolson
describes the Treaty and its genesis
French Resistance economist Étienne Mantoux disputed that analysis. During the 1940s, Mantoux wrote a posthumously published book titled "The Carthaginian Peace, or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes" in an attempt to rebut Keynes' claims.
More recently, it has been argued (for instance by historian Gerhard Weinberg in his book "A World At Arms"[42]) that the treaty was in fact quite advantageous to Germany. The Bismarckian Reich was maintained as a political unit instead of being broken up, and Germany largely escaped post-war military occupation (in contrast to the situation following World War II.) In a 1995 essay, Weinberg noted that with the disappearance of Austria-Hungary and with Russia withdrawn from Europe, that Germany was now the dominant power in Eastern Europe.[43] Weinberg wrote that given that a mere 21 years after Versailles, Germany had conquered more land than she had in 1914, it is very questionable whatever Versailles was as anything harsh and crippling as Germans at the time and since claimed it was.[44] Writing in 1995, Weinberg further added against the idea that territorial losses Germany suffered in 1919 brought about the Third Reich in 1933, commenting if that was the case, then the even greater territorial losses Germany suffered after 1945 should have brought about a Fourth Reich.[44] Weinberg sarcastically commented that those who claimed that territorial losses Germany suffered in 1919 caused National Socialism have never explained why — the even greater territorial losses Germany suffered in 1945 did not bring about a return of the Nazis, as logic would dictate if it were true.[44]
The British military historian Correlli Barnett claimed that the Treaty of Versailles was "extremely lenient in comparison with the peace terms that Germany herself, when she was expecting to win the war, had had in mind to impose on the Allies". Furthermore, he claimed, it was "hardly a slap on the wrist" when contrasted with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that Germany had imposed on a defeated Russia in March 1918, which had taken away a third of Russia's population (albeit of non-Russian ethnicity), one half of Russia's industrial undertakings and nine-tenths of Russia's coal mines, coupled with an indemnity of six billion Marks.[45] Eventually, even under the "cruel" terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany′s economy had been restored to its pre-war status.
Barnett also claims that, in strategic terms, Germany was in fact in a superior position following the Treaty than she had been in 1914. Germany′s eastern frontiers faced Russia and Austria, who had both in the past balanced German power. But Barnett asserts that, because the Austrian empire fractured after the war into smaller, weaker states and Russia was wracked by revolution and civil war, the newly restored Poland was no match for even a defeated Germany. In the West, Germany was balanced only by France and Belgium, both of which were smaller in population and less economically vibrant than Germany. Barnett concludes by saying that instead of weakening Germany, the Treaty "much enhanced" German power.[46] Britain and France should have (according to Barnett) "divided and permanently weakened" Germany by undoing Bismarck's work and partitioning Germany into smaller, weaker states so it could never have disrupted the peace of Europe again.[47] By failing to do this and therefore not solving the problem of German power and restoring the equilibrium of Europe, Britain "had failed in her main purpose in taking part in the Great War".[48]
The British historian of modern Germany—Richard J. Evans—wrote that the German right was committed to an annexationist program of Germany annexing most of Europe and Africa during the war and in some cases before 1914 would have found any peace treaty that did not leave Germany as the conqueror unacceptable to them.[49] Short of allowing Germany to keep all the conquests of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Evans argued that there was nothing that could have been done to persuade the German right to accept Versailles.[49] Evans further noted that parties of the "Weimar coalition", namely the SPD, the DDP and the Catholic Center were all equally opposed to Versailles, and it is false to claim as some historians have that opposition to Versailles also equalled opposition to the Weimar republic.[49] Finally, Evans argued that it is untrue that Versailles caused the end of Weimar, instead contending that it was the Great Depression of the early 1930s that put an end to German democracy, and that Versailles was not the "main cause" of National Socialism and the German economy was "only marginally influenced by the impact of reparations".[49]
Regardless of modern strategic or economic analysis, resentment caused by the treaty sowed fertile psychological ground for the eventual rise of the Nazi party. The German historian Detlev Peukert wrote that Versailles was far from the impossible peace that most Germans claimed it was during the inter-war period, and though not without flaws was actually quite reasonable to Germany.[50] Rather, Peukert argued that it was widely believed in Germany that Versailles was a totally unreasonable treaty, and it was this "perception" rather than the "reality" of the Versailles treaty that mattered.[50] Peukert noted that because of the "millenarian hopes" created in Germany during World War I when for a time it appeared that Germany was on the verge of conquering all of Europe, any peace treaty the Allies imposed on the defeated Reich were bound to create a nationalist backlash, and there was nothing the Allies could have done to avoid that backlash.[50] Having noted that much, Peukert commented that the policy of rapprochement with the Western powers that Gustav Stresemann carried out between 1923 and 1929 were constructive policies that might had allowed Germany to play a more positive role in Europe, and that it was not true that German democracy was doomed to die in 1919 because of Versailles.[50] Finally, Peukert argued that it was the Great Depression and the turn to a nationalist policy of autarky within Germany at the same time that finished off the Weimar Republic, not the Treaty of Versailles.[50] Indeed, on Nazi Germany's rise to power, Adolf Hitler resolved to overturn the remaining military and territorial provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. Military buildup began almost immediately in direct defiance of the Treaty, which, by then, had been destroyed by Hitler in front of a cheering crowd. "It was this treaty which caused a chain reaction leading to World War II," claimed historian Dan Rowling (1951). Various references to the treaty are found in many of Hitler's speeches and in pre-war Nazi propaganda.[citation needed]
French historian Raymond Cartier states that millions of Germans in the Sudetenland and in Posen-West Prussia were placed under foreign rule in a hostile environment, where harassment and violation of rights by authorities are documented.[51] Cartier asserts that, out of 1,058,000 Germans in Posen-West Prussia in 1921, 758,867 fled their homelands within five years due to Polish harassment.[51] In 1926, the Polish Ministry of the Interior estimated the remaining number of Germans at less than 300,000.[citation needed] These sharpening ethnic conflicts would lead to public demands to reattach the annexed territory in 1938 and become a pretext for Hitler′s annexations of Czechoslovakia and parts of Poland.[51]

[edit] See also

Wikisourcehas original text related to this article:

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919) with Austria; Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine with Bulgaria; Treaty of Trianon with Hungary; Treaty of Sèvres with the Ottoman Empire; Davis, Robert T., ed (2010). U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security: Chronology and Index for the 20th Century. 1. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger Security International. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-313-38385-4.
  2. ^ The West Encounters and Transformations. Atlas Ed. Vol. II. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2007. p. 806
  3. ^ a b Timothy W. Guinnane (January 2004). "Vergangenheitsbewältigung: the 1953 London Debt Agreement" (PDF). Center Discussion Paper no. 880. Economic Growth Center, Yale University. Retrieved 6 December 2008. "At the pre-World War I parities, $1 gold=4.2 gold Marks. One Mark was worth one shilling sterling."
  4. ^ Fareed Zakaria (2 October 2010). "Transcript of interview". CNN. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
  5. ^ Olivia Lang (3 October 2011). "Why has Germany taken so long to pay off its WWI debt?". BBC. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
  6. ^ Viault, Birdsall S. (1990). Schaum's Outline of Modern European History. McGraw-Hill Professional. p. 471. ISBN 9780070674530.
  7. ^ a b
  8. ^ Lentin, Antony (1985) [1984]. Guilt at Versailles: Lloyd George and the Pre-history of Appeasement. Routledge. p. 84. ISBN 9780416411300.
  9. ^ Alan Sharp, "The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919", 1991.
  10. ^ Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1930–39, 250; quoted in Derek Drinkwater: Sir Harold Nicolson and International Relations: The Practitioner as Theorist, p. 139.
  11. ^ David Thomson, Europe Since Napoleon. Penguin Books. 1970, p. 605.
  12. ^ John Maynard Keynes(1920). The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Harcourt Brace and Howe.pp.34
  13. ^ Treaty of Versailles, Part XIV at Wikisource.
  14. ^ Treaty of Versailles, Part V at Wikisource.
  15. ^ Nasze miasto: Historia: Lata 1701–1871—dzialdowo.pl.
  16. ^ Louis (1967), p. 9
  17. ^ German South West Africa was the only African colony designated as a Class C mandate, meaning that the indigenous population was judged incapable of even limited self-government and the colony to be administered under the laws of the mandatory as an integral portion of its territory
  18. ^ Australia in effective control, formally together with United Kingdom and New Zealand
  19. ^ Louis (1967), p. 117-130
  20. ^ Braun, Hans-Joachim (1990). The German Economy in the Twentieth Century. Routledge. p. 46. ISBN 0415021014. "The final annuity of RM 898 million was due in 1988."
  21. ^ A.J.P. Taylor, Bismarck The Man and the Statesman. New York: Vintage Books. 1967, p. 133.
  22. ^ Hall, Allen (28 September 2010). "First World War officially ends". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2 October 2010.
  23. ^ Treaty of Versailles, Part I: Covenant of the League of Nations at Wikisource.
  24. ^ Treaty of Versailles, Part XIII: Constitution of the International Labour Office at Wikisource.
  25. ^ Treaty of Versailles, Part XII at Wikisource.
  26. ^ R. Henig, Versailles and After: 1919–1933 (London: Routledge, 1995) p. 52.
  27. ^ Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal (1945)
  28. ^ William C. Widenor, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy (1980)
  29. ^ Ralph A. Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against the League of Nations (1970)
  30. ^ John Milton Cooper, Jr. Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (2009) ch 22-23
  31. ^ John B. Duff, "The Versailles Treaty and the Irish-Americans," Journal of American History Vol. 55, No. 3 (Dec., 1968), pp. 582-598 in JSTOR
  32. ^ Wimer, Kurt; Wimer, Sarah (1967). "The Harding Administration, the League of Nations, and the Separate Peace Treaty". The Review of Politics (Cambridge University Press) 29 (1): 13–24. doi:10.1017/S0034670500023706. JSTOR 1405810.
  33. ^ Bibliographical Introduction to "Diary, Reminiscences and Memories of Colonel Edward M. House"[dead link].
  34. ^ Foreign Minister Brockdorff-Ranzau when faced with the conditions on 7 May: "Wir kennen die Wucht des Hasses, die uns hier entgegentritt. Es wird von uns verlangt, daß wir uns als die allein Schuldigen am Krieg bekennen; ein solches Bekenntnis wäre in meinem Munde eine Lüge". 2008 School Projekt Heinrich-Heine-Gesamtschule, Düsseldorf http://www.fkoester.de/kursbuch/unterrichtsmaterial/13_2_74.html
  35. ^ 2008 School Projekt Heinrich-Heine-Gesamtschule, Düsseldorf http://www.fkoester.de/kursbuch/unterrichtsmaterial/13_2_74.html
  36. ^ Lauteinann, Geschichten in Quellen Bd. 6, S. 129.
  37. ^ Koppel S. Pinson (1964). Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization (13th printing ed.). New York: Macmillan. p. 397 f. ISBN 0881334340.
  38. ^ Rincon, Paul (7 September 2004). "V-2: Hitler's last weapon of terror". news.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-12-26.
  39. ^ Markwell, Donald, John Maynard Keynes and International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace, Oxford University Press, 2006.
  40. ^ Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919 Ch VI. quote: The Treaty includes no provisions for the economic rehabilitation of Europe—nothing to make the defeated Central Empires into good neighbors, nothing to stabilize the new States of Europe, nothing to reclaim Russia; nor does it promote in any way a compact of economic solidarity amongst the Allies themselves; no arrangement was reached at Paris for restoring the disordered finances of France and Italy, or to adjust the systems of the Old World and the New. The Council of Four paid no attention to these issues, being preoccupied with others—Clemenceau to crush the economic life of his enemy, Lloyd George to do a deal and bring home something which would pass muster for a week, the President to do nothing that was not just and right. It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic problems of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of the Four. Reparation was their main excursion into the economic field, and they settled it as a problem of theology, of polities, of electoral chicane, from every point of view except that of the economic future of the States whose destiny they were handling.
  41. ^ Nicolson (2009), pp. 34–5.
  42. ^ Reynolds, David. (February 20, 1994). "Over There, and There, and There." Review of: "A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II," by Gerhard L. Weinberg. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  43. ^ Weinberg, Gerhard Germany, Hitler and World War II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995 page 16.
  44. ^ a b c Weinberg, Gerhard Germany, Hitler and World War II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995 page 11.
  45. ^ Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (London: Pan, 2002), p. 392.
  46. ^ Barnett, p. 316.
  47. ^ Barnett, p. 318.
  48. ^ Barnett, p. 319.
  49. ^ a b c d Evans, Richard In Hitler's Shadow, New York: Panatheon 1989 page 107.
  50. ^ a b c d e Peukert, Detlev The Weimar Republic, New York: Hill & Wang, 1992 page 278.
  51. ^ a b c La Seconde Guerre mondiale, Raymond Cartier, Paris, Larousse Paris Match, 1965, quoted in: Pater Lothar Groppe (2004-08-28). "Die "Jagd auf Deutsche" im Osten: Die Verfolgung begann nicht erst mit dem "Bromberger Blutsonntag" vor 50 Jahren" (in German). Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung / 28. August 2004. Retrieved 2010-09-22. "'Von 1.058.000 Deutschen, die noch 1921 in Posen und Westpreußen lebten', ist bei Cartier zu lesen, 'waren bis 1926 unter polnischem Druck 758.867 abgewandert. Nach weiterer Drangsal wurde das volksdeutsche Bevölkerungselement vom Warschauer Innenministerium am 15. Juli 1939 auf weniger als 300.000 Menschen geschätzt.'"

[edit] References

  • Andelman, David A. (2008). A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today. New York/London: J. Wiley. ISBN 9780471788980.
  • Demarco, Neil (1987). The World This Century. London: Collins Educational. ISBN 0003222179.
  • Macmillan, Margaret (2001). Peacemakers. London: John Murray. ISBN 0719559391.
  • Markwell, Donald (2006). John Maynard Keynes and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198292368.
  • Nicolson, Harold (2009) [1933]. Peacemaking, 1919. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-25604-4.
  • Wheeler-Bennett, Sir John (1972). The Wreck of Reparations, being the political background of the Lausanne Agreement, 1932. New York: H. Fertig.

[edit] Further reading

  • The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years, Boemeke, Manfred F., Gerald D. Feldman, and Elisabeth Gläser, editors. Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 1998.

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Treaty of Versailles
[show]
World War I treaties
[show]
[show]
Japan Treaties of Japan

Treaty of Sèvres

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Treaty of Sèvres
The Treaty of Peace Between the Allied and Associated Powers and the Ottoman Empire
TreatyOfSevres (corrected).PNG
Partitioning of Anatolia and Thrace according to the Treaty of Sèvres
Signed1920 August 10
LocationSèvres, France
ConditionRatification by Turkey and three Principal Allied Powers.
SignatoriesCentral Powers
 Ottoman Empire
Allied Powers
France France
 Italy
 Japan
 United Kingdom
DepositaryFrench Government
LanguagesFrench (primary), English, Italian
Treaty of Sèvres at Wikisource
The signatories of the Ottoman Empire. Left to right: Rıza Tevfik; Grand vizier Damat Ferid Pasha; ambassador Hadi Pasha; and the Ottoman Minister of Education Reşid Halis.
The Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920) was the peace treaty between the Ottoman Empire and Allies at the end of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles was signed with Germany before this treaty to annul the German concessions including the economic rights and enterprises. Also, France, Great Britain and Italy signed a secret "Tripartite Agreement" at the same date.[1] The Tripartite Agreement confirmed Britain's oil and commercial concessions and turned the former German enterprises in the Ottoman Empire over to a Tripartite corporation. The open negotiations covered a period of more than fifteen months, beginning at the Paris Peace Conference. The negotiations continued at the Conference of London, and took definite shape only after the premiers′ meeting at the San Remo conference in April 1920. France, Italy, and Great Britain, however, had secretly begun the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire as early as 1915. The delay occurred because the powers could not come to an agreement which, in turn, hinged on the outcome of the Turkish national movement. The Treaty of Sèvres was annulled in the course of the Turkish War of Independence and the parties signed and ratified the superseding Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
The representatives signed the treaty in an exhibition room at the famous porcelain factory[2] in Sèvres, France.[3]
The treaty had four signatories for the Ottoman Empire: Rıza Tevfik, the grand vizier Damat Ferid Pasha, ambassador Hadi Pasha and the minister of education Reşid Halis who were endorsed by Sultan Mehmed VI.
Of the Principal Allied powers it excluded the United States. Russia was also excluded because it had negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Ottoman Empire in 1918. In that treaty, at the insistence of the Grand Vizier Talat Pasha, the Ottoman Empire regained the lands Russia had captured in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), specifically Ardahan, Kars, and Batumi. Sir George Dixon Grahame signed for Great Britain, Alexandre Millerand for France and Count Lelio Bonin Longare for Italy.
Among the other Allied powers, Greece did not accept the borders as drawn and never ratified it.[4] Avetis Aharonian, the President of the Delegation of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, which also signed the Treaty of Batum on 4 June 1918, was a signatory of this treaty.

Contents

[hide]

[edit] Aims of the Allies

The leaders of France, Britain, and the United States had stated their differing objectives with respect to the Ottoman Empire during the Paris Peace Conference, 1919. The common theme was the sick man of Europe had come to his own end. However, it was a shock to the world when the treaty said the Allies were in agreement keeping the Ottoman Government of Constantinople,[5] which remained the capital of the Ottoman Empire, though with the reservations of the conditions of the treaty. The treaty called for the expulsion of the Ottoman Empire from Europe. The treaty imposed terms so severe that British policy seemed to have succeeded in strangling the sick man of Europe in his sick-bed in Asia Minor.[6]
The United States—having refused the Armenian mandate in the Senate—decided to have nothing to do with partition of the Ottoman Empire.[7] The U.S. wanted a permanent peace as quickly as possible, with financial compensation for its military expenditures. However, after the American Senate rejected Wilson's Armenian mandate, its only hope was its inclusion in the Treaty by the influential Greek prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos.[8]

[edit] Treaty terms

The treaty solidified the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, in accord with secret agreements among the Allied Powers.

[edit] Kingdom of Hejaz

The Kingdom of Hejaz was granted international recognition. Estimated area of 100,000 sq mi (260,000 km2), and population of about 750,000. The biggest cities were Holy Places, namely, Mecca, with a population of 80,000, and Medina, with a population of 40,000. It formerly constituted the vilayet of Hejaz, but during the war became an independent kingdom under British influence.

[edit] Armenia

First republic of Armenia – western borders defined by Woodrow Wilson
Main article: Wilsonian Armenia
Armenia was recognized as an established state by the signed parties. (Section VI "Armenia", articles 88-93).
See also: Treaty of Alexandropol

[edit] Ottoman Empire

A late 1918 map showing Europe before WWI, with new states formed after the great war in red. Includes the borders established by the Treaty of Sèvres.
The Allies were to control the Empire's finances. The financial control extended to the approval or supervision of the national budget, financial laws and regulations, and the total control on the Ottoman Bank [currency control through central bank of empire]. The Ottoman Public Debt Administration of the Ottoman Public Debt (instituted in 1881) was redesigned by including only British, French and Italian bond holders. The Ottoman debt problem dated back to the time of the Crimean War (1854–56), during which the Ottoman Empire had borrowed money from abroad, mainly from France. During the Conference of Lausanne, the council decided that the Republic of Turkey was responsible for 67% of the annuity of the pre-war debt, the question of how payment was to be made, however, was not resolved until 1928.[9] Also the capitulations of the Ottoman Empire being restored to prior to 1914. Capitulations were abolished in the first year of the war by Talaat Pasha. The control also extended to import and export duties, to the reorganization of the electoral system, and to the proportional representation of the "races" within the Empire. Empire was required to grant freedom of transit to persons, goods, vessels, etc., passing through her territory, and such goods transit in transit are to be free of all customs duties.
Future developments of the tax system, the customs system, internal or external loans, or on concessions could not be arranged without the consent of the financial commission of the Allied powers. To forestall the economic repenetration of Germany, Austria, Hungary, or Bulgaria the treaty demanded that the Empire liquidate the property of citizens of those countries in its territories. This public liquidation will be turned over to the Reparations Commission. Property rights in Baghdad Railway passed out of German control.

[edit] Military restrictions

The Ottoman Army was to be restricted to 50,700 men; the Ottoman navy could only preserve seven sloops and six torpedo boats; and the Ottoman state was prohibited from obtaining an air force.
The treaty included an Inter-allied commission of control and organization to supervise the execution of the military clauses.

[edit] International trials

See also: Malta Tribunals
The treaty required determination of those responsible for the "barbarous and illegitimate methods of warfare… [including] offenses against the laws and customs of war and the principles of humanity". Article 230 of the Treaty of Sèvres required that the Ottoman Empire "hand over to the Allied Powers the persons whose surrender may be required by the latter as being responsible for the massacres committed during the continuance of the state of war on territory which formed part of the Ottoman Empire on August 1, 1914." However, the Inter-allied tribunal attempt demanded by the Treaty of Sèvres were eventually suspended.

[edit] France (Zone of influence)

France received Syria and neighbouring parts of Southeastern Anatolia, including Antep, Urfa and Mardin. Cilicia including Adana, Diyarbakır and large portions of East-Central Anatolia all the way up north to Sivas and Tokat were declared a zone of French influence.

[edit] Greece (Zone of Smyrna)

The expansion of Greece from 1832-1947, showing territories awarded to Greece by the Treaty of Sèvres but lost in 1923.
The occupation of Smyrna established Greek administration on May 21, 1919. This was followed by the declaration of a protectorate on July 30, 1922. The Treaty transferred "the exercise of her rights of sovereignty to a local parliament" but leaving the region under Ottoman Empire. According to the provisions of the Treaty, Smyrna was to be administered by a local parliament and, if within five years time she asked to be incorporated to the Kingdom of Greece, the provision was made that the League of Nations would hold a plebiscite to decide on such matters. The treaty accepted the Greek administration of the Smyrna enclave, however its sovereignty remained, nominally, with the Sultan.

[edit] Italy (Zone of influence)

Italy was confirmed in the possession of the Dodecanese Islands (already under Italian occupation since the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912, despite the Treaty of Ouchy according to which Italy was obliged to return the islands back to the Ottoman Empire). Large portions of Southern and West-Central Anatolia (the Mediterranean coast of Turkey and the inlands) including the port city of Antalya and the historic Seljuk capital of Konya were declared an Italian zone of influence. The Antalya Province was promised by the Triple Entente to Italy in the Treaty of London.[10], and the Italian colonial authorities wished the zone to become a Italian colony under the name of Lycia.[11]

[edit] Kurdistan

Provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres for an independent Kurdistan.
A Kurdistan region was scheduled to have a referendum to decide its fate, which, according to Section III Articles 62–64, was to include the Mosul Province.
There was no general agreement among Kurds on what its borders should be because of the disparity between the areas of Kurdish settlement and the political and administrative boundaries of the region.[12] The outlines of a "Kurdistan" as an entity were proposed in 1919 by Şerif Pasha, who represented the Society for the Ascension of Kurdistan (Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti) at the Paris Peace Conference. He defined the region's boundaries as follows:
"The frontiers of Turkish Kurdistan, from an ethnographical point of view, begin in the north at Ziven, on the Caucasian frontier, and continue westwards to Erzurum, Erzincan, Kemah, Arapgir, Besni and Divick (Divrik?); in the south they follow the line from Harran, the Sinjihar Hills, Tel Asfar, Erbil, Süleymaniye, Akk-el-man, Sinne; in the east, Ravandiz, Başkale, Vezirkale, that is to say the frontier of Persia as far as Mount Ararat."[13]
This caused controversy among other Kurdish nationalists, as it excluded the Van region (possibly as a sop to Armenian claims to that region). Emin Ali Bedirhan proposed an alternative map which included Van and an outlet to the sea via Turkey's present Hatay Province.[14] Amid a joint declaration by Kurdish and Armenian delegations, Kurdish claims on Erzurum vilayet and Sassoun (Sason) were dropped but arguments for sovereignty over Ağrı and Muş remained.[15]
Neither of these proposals was endorsed by the treaty of Sèvres, which outlined a truncated Kurdistan located on what is now Turkish territory (leaving out the Kurds of Iran, British-controlled Iraq and French-controlled Syria). However, even that plan was never implemented as the Treaty of Sèvres was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne. The current Iraq-Turkey border was agreed in July 1926.
Also article 63 grants explicitly full safeguard and protection to the Assyro-Chaldean minority. This reference was later dropped in the treaty of Lausanne.

[edit] Territorial losses (cessions)

Question book-new.svg
This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2011)
DateStates
1914Ottoman Empire 613,724
Treaty Sèvres
Square Mile.		Ottoman Empire
174,900		Wilsonian Armenia
60,000		Syria
136,000		Mesopotamia
143,000		Hejaz
100,000		Asir
35,000		Yemen
75,000

[edit] Zone of Straits

The Zone of Straits was planned to be established covering both the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. One of the most important points of treaty was the provision that the navigation was to be open in the Dardanelles in times of peace and war alike to all vessels of commerce and war, no matter under what flag, thus in effect leading to internationalization of the waters. The waters were not to be subject to blockade, nor could any act of war be committed there, except in enforcing the decisions of the League of Nations.
It included not only the Straits proper but also the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara.

[edit] Free zones

Certain ports were to be declared to be of international interest. The League of Nations were completely free and absolute equality in treatment, particularly in the matter of charges and facilities insuring the carrying out of the economic provisions in commercially strategic places. These regions will be named as the "free zones." The ports were: Constantinople from St. Stefano to DolmaBahce, Haidar-Pasha, Smyrna, Alexandretta, Haifa, Basra, Trabzon, and Batum.

[edit] Thrace

Thrace, up to the Chatalja line, islands of Imbros and Tenedos, and the islands of Marmara ceded to Greece. The sea line of these islands declared international and left to administration of "Zone of Straits."

[edit] Armenia

Armenia was given a large part of the region according to the border fixed by President of the United States of America which was referred as "Wilsonian Armenia";[16] including provinces which did not have significant Armenian populations remaining after the war, such as the Black Sea port city of Trabzon.

[edit] British Mandate of Iraq

The details as reflected to the treaty regarding the British Mandate of Iraq was completed on April 25, 1920, at the San Remo conference.
Oil concession in this region was given to the British-controlled Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) which had held concessionary rights to the Mosul wilaya (province). With elimination of the Ottoman Empire with this treaty, British and Iraqi negotiators held acrimonious discussions over the new oil concession. The League of Nations vote on the disposition of Mosul, and the Iraqis feared that, without British support, Iraq would lose the area. In March 1925, the TPC renamed to the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), was granted a full and complete concession for a period of 75 years.

[edit] British Mandate for Palestine

The three principles of the British Balfour Declaration regarding Palestine were adopted in the Treaty of Sèvres:
ARTICLE 95.
The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
Palestine officially fell under the British Mandate.

[edit] French Mandate of Lebanon

The mandate settled to France at the San Remo Conference. Comprising the region between the Euphrates river and the Syrian desert on the east, and the Mediterranean sea on the west, and extending from the Alma Dagh Mountains on the south to Egypt on the south; Area of territory about 60,000 sq mi (160,000 km2) with a population of about 3,000,000. Lebanon and an enlarged Syria, which were later assigned again under League of Nations Mandate. The region was divided under the French into four governments as follows: Government of Aleppo from the Euphrates region to the Mediterranean; Great Lebanon extending from Tripoli to Palestine; Damascus, including Damascus, Hama, Hems, and the Hauran; and the country of Mount Arisarieh.

[edit] French Mandate of Syria

Faisal ibn Husayn, who had been proclaimed king of Syria by a Syrian national congress in Damascus in March 1920, was ejected by the French in July of the same year.

[edit] Fate of the treaty

While the treaty was under discussion, the Turkish national movement under Mustafa Kemal Pasha split with the monarchy based in Constantinople,[17] and set up a Turkish Grand National Assembly in Ankara in April 1920.
On October 18, the government of Damat Ferid Pasha was replaced by a provisional ministry under Ahmed Tevfik Pasha as Grand Vizier, who announced an intention to convoke the Senate with the purpose of ratification of the Treaty, provided that national unity were achieved. This required seeking for cooperation with Mustafa Kemal. The latter expressed disdain to the Treaty and started a military assault. As a result, the Turkish Government issued a note to the Entente that the ratification of the Treaty was impossible at that time.[18]
Eventually, Mustafa Kemal succeeded in his fight for Turkish independence and forced the former wartime Allies to return to the negotiating table.
Arabs were unwilling to accept the French rule in Syria, the Turks around Mosul were attacking the British, the Arabs were in arms against the British rule in Baghdad. There was also disorder in Egypt.

[edit] Subsequent treaties

In course of the Turkish War of Independence, they successfully resisted Greek, Armenian and French forces and secured a territory similar to that of present-day Turkey (Misak-ı Milli).
The Turkish national movement developed its own international relations by the Treaty of Moscow with the Soviet Union on 16 March 1921, the Accord of Ankara with France putting an end to the Franco-Turkish War, and the Treaty of Alexandropol and the Treaty of Kars fixing the eastern borders.
These events forced the former Allies of World War I to return to the negotiating table with the Turks and in 1923 negotiate the Treaty of Lausanne, which replaced the Treaty of Sèvres and recovered large territory in Anatolia and Thrace for the Turks.

[edit] See also

Wikisourcehas original text related to this article:
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Treaty of Sèvres

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Times (London), 27. Idem., Jan. 30, 1928, Editorial.
  2. ^ Helmreich, Paul C. (1974). From Paris to Sèvres. Ohio State University Press. p. 320.
  3. ^ "The Treaty of Sèvres, 1920". Harold B. Library. Brigham Young University.
  4. ^ http://www2.mfa.gr/NR/rdonlyres/3E053BC1-EB11-404A-BA3E-A4B861C647EC/0/1923_lausanne_treaty.doc
  5. ^ Finkel, Caroline (2005). Osman's Dream. Basic Books. p. 57. "Istanbul was only adopted as the city's official name in 1930.."
  6. ^ "Foreign News: Lausanne Treaty". Time Magazine. April 14, 1924.
  7. ^ "Congress Opposes Armenian Republic; General Sentiment Is Against Assuming Responsibility for New Republic". The New York Times: pp. 2, 353. April 27, 1920.
  8. ^ Gibbons, Herbert Adams. "Venizelos". Political Science Quarterly 36 (3): 519.
  9. ^ Barlas, Dilek (2004). "Friends or Foes? Diplomatic Relations between Italy and Turkey, 1923-36". International Journal of Middle East Studies (Cambridge University Press) 36 (2): 250. ISSN 0020-7438.
  10. ^ Treaty of London at firstworldwar.com
  11. ^ Franco Antonicelli, Trent'anni di storia italiana, 1915-1945, Torino, Mondadori Editore, 1961. p. 25
  12. ^ Hakan Özoğlu, Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries p. 38. SUNY Press, 2004
  13. ^ Şerif Pasha, Memorandum on the Claims of the Kurd People, 1919
  14. ^ Hakan Özoğlu,ibid p. 40
  15. ^ M. Kalman, Batı Ermenistan ve Jenosid p. 185, Istanbul, 1994.
  16. ^ ARTICLE 89
  17. ^ Finkel, Caroline, Osman's Dream, (Basic Books, 2005), 57;"Istanbul was only adopted as the city's official name in 1930.".
  18. ^ Current History, Volume 13, New York Times Co., 1921, "Dividing the Former Turkish Empire" pp. 441-444 (retrieved October 26, 2010)

[edit] Further reading

  • Fromkin, David (1989). A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-1922. New York: H. Holt. ISBN 0805008578.

[edit] External links

[show]
Links to related articles
[show]
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
Posted by at

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)