This Week in History, 1919: The Paris Peace Conference opens
Credit to Author: John Mackie| Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2020 22:25:53 +0000
The First World War ended with the signing of the armistice on Nov. 11, 1918. But the final negotiations for a peace treaty didn’t actually begin until Jan. 18, 1919, in Paris.
Only the victorious allies were invited to the Paris Peace Conference to draw up the terms of what became the Treaty of Versailles. The defeated countries — Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey — had no direct role in the process. Neither did Russia, which had signed its own treaty with Germany following the Russian Revolution in 1917.
The opening speech by French President Raymond Poincare at the Salle de la Paix set the tone.
France had “been systematically laid waste by the invader” and “paid the ultimate tribute in death,” said Poincare, even though “she had not the slightest responsibility for the frightening catastrophe which has overwhelmed the universe.”
Germany and Austria-Hungary, on the other hand, were “bathed in blood.”
“In the hope of conquering first the hegemony of Europe and next the mastery of the world, the Central Empires, bound together by a secret plot, found the most abominable of pretexts for trying to crush Serbia and force their way to the east,” Poincare stated.
“At the same time they disowned the most solemn undertakings in order to crush Belgium and force their way into the heart of France. These are the two unforgettable outrages which opened the way to aggression.
“If, after long vicissitudes, those who wished to reign by the sword have perished by the sword, they have only themselves to blame. They have been destroyed by their own blindness.”
First World War stereoview of soldiers in a battle line near Antwerp, Belgium, ready to fire. The stereoview featured two similar images that appeared to be 3-D when you looked at them through a stereoscopic viewer. This image was produced by Underwood and Underwood, an American company that was known for stereoviews of news events. Richard Crawley collection.
The peace congress was dominated by the four biggest allied powers, France, Great Britain, the United States and Italy. Canada sent Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden as a representative of Britain’s “overseas dominions.”
Before going overseas, American President Woodrow Wilson had high hopes that the conference could produce a “League of Nations” that could ensure lasting peace.
On Jan. 8, 1918 Wilson had given a speech to the U.S. Congress outlining 14 points he believed were necessary for peace, including freedom of trade and the seas, political independence for the Balkan states, and a reduction in national armaments “to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.”
But Canadian journalist John Dafoe said Wilson’s “idealistic programme of a moderate and healing peace” didn’t go down well with French Premier Georges Clemenceau.
“Clemenceau flouted President Wilson’s project of establishing peace on earth by the device of a League of Nations on the particular ground that it offered no adequate security for France against the menace of a revived Germany,” Dafoe wrote in the May 1, 1919 issue of Maclean’s magazine.
“(Clemenceau also) expressed his reasoned preference for a military alliance of the four Great Powers for the purpose, first of imposing a stiff peace upon Germany and then of providing sufficient force to enforce it and to maintain it for the period necessary to make its provisions fully effective.”
(L – R) Prime Minister David Lloyd George (Great Britian) Premier Vittorio Orlando, Italy, French Premier Georges Clemenceau, and President Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919
In the end, the hardliners got their way. When the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919 — five years after the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand ignited the war — Germany was hit with a bill for “war guilt” of about $33 billion US. (It was intended to pay for all the damage to civilians.)
The size of Germany’s armed forces was limited to 100,000, France took back the territory of Alsace-Lorraine (which it had ceded after the Franco-Prussian war in 1871), and Germany lost all its overseas colonies.
The Vancouver World reported German newspapers put black borders around their stories on the treaty, using headlines like “Germany’s Fate Sealed” and “Peace and Annihilation.”
It was a very unsettled time. Parts of Germany erupted into civil war between revolutionary socialists and the government in late 1918 and early 1919. The week before the opening of the Paris Peace Conference, the German government put down the Spartacist Uprising, a general strike that evolved into a full-scale revolt between Jan. 5 and Jan. 12, 1919.
Spartacist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were both executed on Jan. 15 after being arrested in Berlin. Liebknecht was shot in the back, while Luxemburg was beaten with a rifle butt, shot in the head and dumped in a canal.
Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points for peace, from the Jan. 8, 1918 Vancouver World.
Front page of the Vancouver Sun on Jan. 18, 1919, when the Paris Peace Conference opened.
Front page of the Vancouver Province on Jan. 18, 1919, when the Paris Peace Conference opened.
Front page of the Vancouver World on Jan. 18, 1919, when the Paris Peace Conference opened.
The Vancouver Sun’s Extra edition on Nov. 11, 1918 marking the end of the First World War. Museum of Vancouver H989.255.1.
Cartoon in the Jan. 16, 1919 Vancouver Sun, when revolution was in the air.