“Pax mundi” a lá Paris 1919 – “a lost opportunity„[1]
“Paris 1919”: The victorious powers (France, Great Britain, USA, Italy) not only wanted to create “eternal” and “just” peace, but also a new world order. In 1919, there was certainly an opportunity to achieve a “Pax mundi” by linking the postulate of peace with the plan for a new world order. What emerged, however, was a peace that the world had never known before and whose consequences can still be felt today.
„Paris 1919“ – Peace conference and Treaty of Versailles
Peace agreements bring joy, but only if they are not perceived as dictates, revenge or humiliation. This applies in particular to the Paris Peace Conference, where many hopes were dashed in the run-up. The first signs can already be found in the way the armistices were concluded with the losers: They resembled capitulations that were forced on the defeated by the victorious powers from the end of October 1918.
Finally, the opening of the peace conference in the Clock Room of the Foreign Ministry on the Quai d’Orsay: the conscious or unconscious choice of the opening day – 18 January – shows how France was pursuing symbolic politics with it: just 50 years earlier, on 18 January 1871, the German Empire had been proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. On 18 January 1919 President Raymond Poincaré gave the opening speech in which he emphasised Germany’s guilt in the war and concluded that “the peace of law also includes the punishment of lawbreakers as well as reparation and compensation.”[2] Behind this statement was France’s declared aim – to weaken Germany. Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was then elected chairman of the “peace conference”. He immediately announced a new style of negotiation, which consisted of the negotiators submitting written memoranda to the conference secretariat instead of discussions in corresponding meetings between victors and vanquished. This was a novelty compared to the Congress of Vienna 1814, as was the fact that the negotiations were closely monitored by the media and therefore under a certain amount of pressure.
The top priority of the “peacemakers” was to conclude peace with Germany. This showed the extent of the new negotiating style that Clemenceau had prescribed. All peace delegations (Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Ottoman Empire) were “interned” in Paris suburbs, personal meetings hardly ever took place, negotiations were conducted exclusively in writing and amendments were rarely accepted. The signing of the treaty between the Allies and the Germans took place on 28 June 1919 in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The time and place were chosen deliberately: just five years earlier – on 28 June 1914 – the fatal shots had been fired in Sarajevo; the German Empire had been proclaimed in Versailles in 1871. The French saw this as an affront and “returned the favour” by signing the treaty almost 50 years later.
The Treaty of Versailles is regarded as the blueprint for the other four so-called peace treaties.
The League of Nations
Democratic US President Woodrow Wilson had come to Paris to combine the peace treaty with his idea of a League of Nations to create a Pax mundi. He had already made reference to this world aréopagus in the 14th point of his 14-point programme of January 1918. In Paris, a special commission chaired by Wilson worked on the drafting of the League of Nations constitution. The League of Nations was to be established as a political institution for dispute settlement and conflict resolution with legal and judicial competences, which is why its members were obliged to disarm to a minimum level, respect the territorial integrity of the member states, collective security and arbitration, among other things.
It soon became apparent that the statutes were a document that reflected the ideal state of affairs but could not be realised in reality. The question of membership alone shows the discrepancy between ideal and reality – the USA remained outside the League of Nations. The discussions on the creation of the League of Nations once again revealed the different expectations of the “peacemakers” that had existed since the beginning of the peace negotiations: while the French saw the League of Nations as a guarantor of their security endeavours vis-à-vis Germany, Woodrow Wilson came to Paris with the hope of winning the “Europeans” over to his “new diplomacy beyond traditional, purely power-political and national interests”[3] – this meant the creation of an international system of order of democratic states based on the right of national self-determination. The British, on the other hand, played the “game of self-determination in order to secure imperial gains.”[4] In the end, the Europeans prevailed over America!
This tension between the “right to self-determination and imperialism”, between American and European interests, can be exemplified by Article 22 of the League of Nations Constitution: In it, the German colonies and the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire were placed under the League of Nations as a mandate. For “humanitarian” reasons, it was decided to transfer these territories to “advanced nations (…) for the welfare and development of these peoples”[5] in order to contribute to the realisation of their right to self-determination. In reality – contrary to Wilson’s idea – it was exclusively about the interests of Great Britain and its dominions (South Africa, Australia and New Zealand), which utilised the mandate system in the interests of British imperial interests: The Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire were divided up between Great Britain and France. In this way, both superpowers achieved their greatest colonial expansion.
Some summarising remarks
1) The Paris peace negotiations do not live up to their name; France was primarily concerned with wrestling Germany down. Instead of a “new order”, the imperial order was continued by dismantling the “old” empires and dividing up the colonies – under the supremacy of the powerful white emperors!
2) The new world order was created on the basis of imperialism and neo-colonialism – the division of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire subsequently led to conflicts in the Middle East that are still unresolved today.
3) By 1919, Europe had lost its global supremacy and was fragmented into nation states; 13 new states were formed on the soil of the former empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia alone.
4) In nationalist circles of the losers, but also of those who had fallen behind (Italy, Mutilated Peace), the results of the peace conference led to the rapid rise of National Socialism and Fascism. The claim that 1919 was solely responsible for 1939 is too short-sighted, as it would ignore all the decisions and efforts of politicians and diplomats.
5) The suburban treaties did, however, contain forward-looking approaches to a new legal order, for example through the founding of the League of Nations and the ILO, the creation of minority treaties to protect minorities, the establishment of an international court of justice or the prosecution of war criminals.
6) The centuries-long disputes between Germany and France were not overcome until 1952, when the ECSC was founded. Two years earlier – in 1950 – Robert Schuman had announced the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community in the Quaid’Orsay, 31 years after the Peace Conference.
Epilogue
A key lesson from Paris 1919 is that the desire for revenge is the worst possible basis for peace negotiations. Lasting peace and a stable international security order can only be achieved through a willingness to compromise and negotiations on an equal footing and without a desire for revenge. Future peace conferences must be based on these ideas so that they do not create an “overstretched peace” as in Paris in 1919 (Jörn Leonhard). If we finally want to learn from history, then Paris 1919 should never be repeated.
Sources:
[1] This article is based on the following literature research: Eckart Conze, Die große Illusion. Versailles 1919 und die Neuordnung der Welt, München 20192; Jörn Leonhard, Der überforderte Frieden. Versailles und die Welt 1918–1923, München 2018; Margaret MacMillian, Die Friedensmacher. Wie der Versailler Vertrag die Welt veränderte, Berlin 2015; Herbert Kalb/Thomas Olechowski/Anita Ziegerhofer (Hrsg.), Der Vertrag von St. Germain. Kommentar, Wien 2021; Michael Gehler/Thomas Olechowski/Stefan Wedrac/Anita Ziegerhofer (Hgg.), Der Vertrag von St. Germain im Kontext der europäischen Nachkriegsordnung, in: Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte Österreichs 9/2/2019.
[2] Conze, Die große Illusion, 200.
[3] Conze, Die große Illusion, 201.
[4] Conze, Die große Illusion, 256.
[5] Article 22 of the League of Nations Constitution
Author:
Anita Ziegerhofer, born 1965; Professor of Legal History, Head of the Institute for Legal Studies and the Department of Legal History and European Legal Development; research interests: History of European integration law, history of constitutional law, gender studies
