"Wilsonian" diplomacy, as taught in any mid 20th Century class on foreign affairs, was synonymous with failure -- ideals like disarmament, that took hold in Europe if not America, not only did not prevent WWII. By weakening the Allies, they made Hitler's aggression possible, indeed inevitable. In short, the idealism of the "do gooders" was repeatedly outflanked by the realism of the "do badders." Whether stated elegantly by Hans Moranthau ("Politics Among Nations"), or more efficiently by Mao Tse Tung ("political power flows out of the barrel of a gun"), "realism" was, and is, the order of the day. The only check on power is other power. By failing to do that, the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations, deserve an "F" -- unqualified failure.
At one level, MacMillan's book represents an arguably significant revisionist view of the causal role of what happened in Paris in 1919. Her thesis is that what happened AFTER Paris in 1919 was every bit as responsible for the disaster of 1939 as the actions AT Paris. Indeed, she argues, the supposed harsh terms of the Peace Treaty were more valuable to Hitler as propoganda than they were actual burdens on the German people. The loopholes in the treaty's limits on commissioned officers were exploited by the simple expedient of multiplying the numbers of non-commissioned officers. Shell companies in foreign countries could build the prototypes of arms outlawed in Germany. The failure to enforce the breaches of the treaty by later leaders was as important a contributer to war as was the original, flawed charter. This is the revisionist thesis.
There is another notion buried in the subtext of this book -- the idea that even when not successful, some of Wilson's ideals have persisted to this day, and in fact triumphed, at least partially. If the folks in Paris in 1919 did not adequately perceive the folly, for instance, of distributing the Kurdish people over parts of Turkey, Iraq and Iran, the fact is that today the Kurds are beginning to receive implicit recognition of their entitlement to the protection of a national state, autonomous or semi-autonomous, that conforms in broad principle with the ideals Wilson advocated.
A personal anecdote underscores the point. Over the Christmas holidays of 1991, I spent my accumulated frequent flyer miles to travel with a 20 year old nephew to Warsaw, Prague, Budaphest and Istanbul. Twelve years later, the outstanding memory from the trip is sitting at various bars when, after the beers we ordered had already arrived, two more beers or two sandwiches or two whatever simply appeared. Invariably, the bar tender's response to our mystified expressions, was a finger pointing to some guy at the end of the bar, and the comment that he just wanted to say "Thank you."
Two half-baked, and anonymous but conspicuous, Americans were receiving a symbolic gesture of thanks from people who were inhaling freedom for the first time in half a century (or more). And they knew from whence that freedom had come. These guys were reaching across generations to say thank you to more than one generation of Americans for standing by them, thank you for paying the price, thank you for believing our lives were deserving of dignity. Leaving Prague by train, again I was struck by the acknowledgment of America's role, long term, in the multiple rebirths of Eastern Europe -- the obviously new sign on the train station read: "Woodrow Wilson Station". Men come and go, ideas endure.
Reading Margaret McMillan's "Paris 1919" it is easy to become engrossed by the warts of the individuals, and the rich, telling examples of cupidity, hypocrisy and simple stupidity, that drove some of the decisions made. This comment is not intended as a criticism but rather as a caveat to the reader to be mindful that the Paris peace conference was an extraordinary human undertaking, undertaken by, yes, all to ordinary humans.
MacMillan spends 494 pages chronicling, with humor and harshness, Clemenceau's blinding hatred of the Germans, Lloyd George's superficial grasp of history, and Wilson's inconsistent, and hypocritical, "principles", all of which led to frequent mistakes (and occasional successes) of the "Big Three". Her concluding paragraph, though, in an almost forgiving tone, acknowledges that the peacemakers had to deal with the real, not the ideal. That the reality they confronted was enormous. Beyond them, and beyond us. That we too are still grappling, all too feebly, with the same problems they addressed: Taming nationalism and religious passion that threatens peace. Outlawing war.
The power of the book is, like the event it chronicles, simply the scale of the undertaking -- a litany of all that was attempted. Added to this scale is an extraordinary richness of detail for the second tier players, the representatives of all the teeming masses seeking to be free, who came to Paris on behalf of their people back home. You find yourself wishing that Wilson, Clemenceau and George had had MacMillan's information available at the time -- ah, the beauty of hindsight!
In sum, a great survey through the initial draft of the last century's effort to create a "new world order". And a useful, if cautionary, read for anyone pretending to undertake that task today.
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Top reviews from other countries
Eric Vertommen
A lire absolument pour comprendre les négociations de paix en 1919
Reviewed in France on April 2, 2024
