LETTERS To the Editor
LETTERS To the Editor Was 'Versailles' the Guilty Party? — A Reply to Broadus Mitchell From KURT BLOCH Dear Broadus: When I first glanced over roar piece is The New I,e*der—August I, 1944—1...
...The Minister of Finance who was responsible for Czechoslovakia's financial health was ultimately killed by an assassin...
...It failed because no German Government was willing to live up to it, and because every German Government, with the silent --quiescence of the reparation* creditors, claimed that German reconstruction and th* recovery of a Gemw standard of living higher than that of Imperial Germany and higher than that of all Other Continental *x-hellig*renta of World War I must enjoy priority over reparation...
...Let me deal with each of these phenomena separately...
...To a large extant, World War II was made inevitable whan the Carman people real ixed t'.-t after all, the coat* of war could almost wholly be written off in five year* of postwar inflation snd six years of fraudulent borrowing...
...Bloeh dispute* Dr...
...s What, then was the matter with Versailles...
...It was of fundamental importance so far as the Anglo-American gua antes of the eastern borders of Prance waa concerned...
...Accordingly, from 1924 onwards, the White House, the State Department, Wall Street i nd a pseudo-liberal public opinion manuf Hured by ill-advised academicians and foreign correspondents, combined to "sol's" the reparations problem by abolishing reparations...
...In no respect, I think, do the contemporary records of the inter-war years lead us more stray than by the attempt to establish sharply divided spheres of international diplomacy and international economic...
...Clearly the relationship between Versailles and dictatorship is extremely tenuous, to put it mildly...
...t L" 1...
...That ia why apparently the European Advisory Cmn...
...Aa far as Germany ./as concerned, it is, of course, notorious that under the Weimar Republic, the German income and inheritance taxes as .veil as the excise levies on tobacco, beer and liquor were substantially lower than those levied in victorious Britain...
...In one long paragraphs Dr...
...It waa also clear after the Washington /Conference that no such intervention could take place without the leading participation of Japan...
...As the U. S. epudiated its World War allies, announced its intention not to have any part In "uropesn policies nor in the security of the Atlantic, despite the doctrine of the Freedom of the Seaa, the Nacis were able to measure their strength and that of their opponents...
...American "neutrality" having been tested and proven in Ethiopia am' Spain, war was s < ttrartive proposition...
...If World War IPs aftermath repeats the mistake of 1919, World War III will be almost < evitable...
...Mostly because their politicians were afraid to raise by taxation what the newly-formed states required...
...But let me turn from diplomatic to economic history...
...For the present, however, 1 deny that the choice is necessary...
...Stresemann did what e could to conceal the existence of the illegal Black Reiehswehr...
...It is, how ever, right and proper that the defeated German people be poorer—or at least not richer—than the neighbors whom they hav* despoiled and tortured...
...Locarno, in Stresemann'* mind, was a clever trick giving sham security to the French and enabling Germany to follow undisturbed its schemes in esstem Europe, a forerunner, in fact, of Munich...
...This loss of balance was reflected In Europe's diplomatic constellations as well as in Europe's economic life...
...witness especially the financial history of the Czechoslovak Republic which stabilised ita currency although, as the industrial heart of the Auatro-Hungarian monarchy, Csechoslovakia should have had a harder time in doing so than anybody else...
...For good measure, he also promised economic rearmament when he bought the votes required for the Dawes Plan, by the promise of i stiff protectionist tariff...
...They knew exactly what was happening in Berlin, and had they not been intelligent enough, the truculent behavior of German diplomats—under Stresemann as under Hitler—sufficed to make them understand...
...It is true that Japan, in 1981, proceeded clumsily and provocatively and thereby took the first steps to her ultimate doom...
...Dictatorship rose first in Italy under Mussolini...
...Block'* etimw-s tea fro* too* too long for our tpaee and several cuts were mode...
...We reg/ret that Dr...
...this diplomatic background, In turn, was decisively determined by the foreign policy of the United States One curious result of the U. S. repudiation of World War I has been the tendency since 1024 to unmake the defeat of Germany...
...The failure of Weimar Anally was predetermined from the start of the Republic...
...The best answer 1 have found is the assertion that the Cxechs ore the Scotchmen of the Continent...
...Unemployment, with the exception of the British Isles, wss no major problem anywhere in Europe until 1929...
...If reparation* contribute to th* better ment of the standard of living of Germany's neighbors rather than to that of th* German standard, nobody except the German* will be any poorer...
...The policy culminated in the sequence of Hoover moratorium, neutrality legislation 'and the Johnson Act It was this sequence which encouraged, nay invited, German aggression...
...No such Government gas in fact created...
...on the contrary, such restoration would be a renewed danger to world peace...
...Reparations, coupled with the destruction —or suspension—of German sovereignty, are the mean* to secure such poverty, and the means to **cur* a more durable peace than that of Versailles...
...Let me begin in what used to be considered typically German fashion, with some reflections on the relation between politics nod economics In international affairs...
...It applies, of course, not only to Germany but also to all other nations of Europe, and especially to those which happen to be allied to the United States...
...Mitchell an the failure of Credit Anitali, and attribute* th* Anttrian hamk crath to hod hanking practice...
...By the need to compete with the nationalist slogans of the Right and Left, the parties favoring ratification of the treaty were condemned to embark on a ..ationalist course of foreign policy which, in the long run, they could not sustain and which was bound to end in the victory of an extreme nationalist party...
...Logically, Bruening pushed a scheme for Anschluss with Austria...
...They were wise snd tough enough to understand that no modern economy ean exist without a stable currency...
...Cent-action began with the great American crash and the ensuing depression...
...Ihey wanted the Anschluss of Austria, the destruction of the Czechoslovak State, control over Poland and southeastern Europe, snd they were fiercely anti-Russian...
...Fear overcame their morale and paralysed their political and economic life...
...Th* Versailles reparation* scheme did not fall because it waa inherently un sound...
...This politico-diploma tie decision is liable to em tail economic consequence* which most be carefully thought through...
...Rathenau secured training grounds for the German air force—prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles—in Ru.sia...
...Spain, a neutral war profiteer from World War I, waa next on the list of dictatorships under Primo de Rivera...
...The lesson should not be lost on those who lived through the fourteen years of the German Republic...
...Beyond that, however, it seems clear that the basic mistake of Versailles was the belief that German society could automatically create a peace-loving democratic German government...
...Most of the postwar phenomena which you describe must thus be traced to the diplomatic background of the inter-war period...
...Can really Versailles be blamed for Mussolini's rise to power...
...If there exists a sound core of the German nation—and while I believe it exists, I am ilso very sure that its existence has to be proven by German deeds over a period of years, if not decides—then the Germans will not be "demoralized" by the consequences of defeat, but the immorality of war may be brought home to them, and the necessity to atone for the wrongs they have done...
...Naval disarmament as designed in Washington meant that Japan was granted control of the Western Pacific...
...The result has been a curiously blurred picture of unrealistic generalisations regarding both diplomacy and economics...
...I>iplo.oatieally, the war-weary victors felt insecure in their victory, with the result that a complicated scheme of military alliances and armaments embraced the Continent, so that the stability which war'a end bad promised seemed precarious to everybody...
...With China being in a state of perpetual civil war, it was inevitable that sooner or later foreign intervention would once more become reality ip China...
...What really happened in most of Europe waa not that Germany was overburdened with reparations—they scarcely exceed five per cent of Germany's national income—but that democratic politicos lacked the courage to do what Czechoslovakia's fiscal authorities did, namely: to admit by deeds that reconstruction after a destructive war is a costly enterprise which requires that victorious and defeated nations alike practice what in contemporary Britain is called "austerity " International trade recovered rapidly from wartime constriction...
...Contraction of international trade an.' unemployment thus were the results primarily of the violent swings of the American business cycle which can scarcely be ascribed to the peace treaties which American foreign policy repudiated and undermined...
...Yet, the dominsting fact in postwar economic and political life, from IPSO onwards, was the repudiation of World War I by the United States...
...mission has as rived at the conclusion' that World War II must end in what amount* to the destruction of the German State, ie., the denial of statehood to the German nation until German society has been re-formed from th* social ruin which Nazism will leave behind...
...In World war II, the victims of Germany are more than thrice as numerous as the German people...
...Moreover, it should not be overlooked that the politicians of the Republic, in their foreign policy, followed no other goals than those rhich Adolph Hitler tried to secure...
...The -eague of Nations was reduced first by American non-participation, secondly, however, by the Washington Conference and its successors on naval disarmament...
...When in 1919 the Nationalist* and the Communists held simultaneous demonstrations in the streets of Berlin against the Treaty of Versailles and its ratification, the German Republic waa doomed...
...If there really was demoralisation outside Germany and Italy in Europe, it was very largely due to the fact that the victorious French, Belgians, Poles, Cxechs, Serbs saw with their own eyes how defeated Germany waa built up as a first-class industrial power with an overwhelming armaments potential snd s high standard of living, through the aid primarily of American and British investors...
...Why did the other nations of Central and Eastern Europe fare so much worse...
...If continuity were established between the Nasi State and another German Republic, the Nasi State would not be republieanised but the Republic would soon one more be nasifled...
...American public opinion in 1*24—and your good aelf even after twenty years have gone by—considered that it was not the U. S. repudiation of the guarantee pact but the reparations problem which befuddled Europe...
...With broad strokes, you paint "inflation, repudiation, unemployment, contracti . of international trade, failure of Weimar, ria of dicta torship, and reduction of the League" as the aequel of the lace treaties of 1919...
...When the New World, by deliberate negative action, ceased to redress the balance of the Old World, the result waa the loss of balance by the latter...
...Even then, however, the League of Nations, might have been aaved had not Herbert Hoover been President of the United States, had it been less well known that the U. 8. waa not going to hack ita preachment* on international morality with any action against Japan...
...within a decade—by 1929—it had reached if not exceeded prewar levels...
...By establishing continuity between the Empire and the Republic, it waa tot the Empire that was Republican-ixed but the Republic was imperialized...
...The legend that Britain was rasponsjhU for inaction against Jane nee* aggression has now finally died with Sumner Welles' account of the episode...
...Although the Republican politicians believed they could secure these goals without war, they carried on rearmament on a sizable scale...
...I belisve that your point regarding the morale of a country is very well taken...
...If, however, no such sound core exists amongst the Germans, it is clearly not worth anybody's while to plead for a restoration of their morale...
...This question has partly been' answered by the foregoing corrections of popular misunderstandings regarding the part played by the U. S. in inter-war Europe, by omission rather than by commission...
...Having withheld from Europe the guarantee of the French eastern border on which Europe's stability pended, American foreign policy embarked upon a pro-German and, simultaneously, anti-Kr nch and, to a lesser extent, anti-British policy...
...Inflation was a wartime phenomenon...
...It was not a universal postwar phenomenon...
...This waa the price Rasin had to pay for hia moral courage...
...As the treaty rested on fiction, both as regards America and as regards Germany, the peace broke down...
...A Reply to Broadus Mitchell From KURT BLOCH Dear Broadus: When I first glanced over roar piece is The New I,e*der—August I, 1944—1 decided I should reply to you, primarily becauae for almost twenty years we have been good friends, ¦econdarily becauae I think oar disagreement on your line of thought is probably less deep and fundamental than it might appear on first sight...
...As World War I had boon cheap, World Wsr II appeared to be a minor risk, especislly as the Naais expected they could slwsys rely on the Borahs, Nyes and Johnsons to keep th* United States from averting their doom...
...No other Italian Government ever waa financed from abroad ao extensively as Mussolini's Fascism, with the aid of American investors...
...Not the peace treaties but the Washington Conference spelled the death-knell of the League...
...Economically, diplomatic insecurity militated agsinst sound economic policies...
...If a peace settlement had to choose between the two alternatives: one demoralizing the Germans, another demoralising our Allies, it surely should not be difficult to make the choice...
...K Postwar poverty for Germany is, therefor*, necessary not ao much because t he peace should be "punitive," but becsus* it should be corrective and preventive...
...This repudiation wss of minor importance so far aa U. S. membership in the League waa concerned...
Vol. 27 • September 1944 • No. 37
