Britain, France and the origins of German disarmament, 1916–19

Abstract

This article re-examines the origins of Germany's disarmament by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. It focuses on British and French policy during World War I and at the Paris Peace Conference. It deals with both land and naval disarmament, and considers the influence of American diplomacy and of Allied public opinion. It traces the connections between the forced disarmament of the defeated countries and proposals for a larger disarmament regime to be negotiated between the victors. It stresses the role of inter-allied rivalries in undermining the stability of the disarmament settlement.

Key words:

• disarmament
• Germany
• 1918–19

Acknowledgement

This article is expanded from a paper given at the International Studies Association convention in Montreal in March 2004. I am indebted to Martin Alexander and Andrew Barros for inviting me to participate.

Notes

¹Text of Part V in FRUS PPC [Foreign Relations of the United States. The Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (13 vols, Washington, DC 1942–47)], Vol.XIII, 301ff.

²Lorna S. Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany: British Policy towards Postwar German Disarmament. 1914–1919 (London: Allen and Unwin 1985). Disarmament is mentioned in the surveys by Alan Sharp, The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919 (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1991), 124–5 and Margaret MacMillan, Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and its Attempt to End War (London: John Murray 2001), 178–9, but omitted from the interpretive essays edited by Manfred Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman and Elisabeth Glaser, The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years (Cambridge: CUP 1998) and Gerd Krumeich, Versailles 1919: Ziele, Wirkung, Wahrnehmung (Essen: Klartext Verlag 2001).

³In 1914, Germany committed 78 infantry and 5 cavalry divisions to its westward advance. Pierre Renouvin, La Crise européenne et la Première guerre mondiale (Paris: Felix Alcan 1939; repr. 1969 and 1972), 238–9.

⁴In 1914, Germany had 15 modern battleships, 5 battlecruisers, 22 pre-dreadnought battleships, 40 cruisers and 90 destroyers. Paul G. Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (London: UCL Press 1994), 6–9.

⁵Michael Salewski, Entwaffnung und Militärkontrolle in Deutschland, 1918–1927 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag 1966), 11.

⁶Salewski, Entwaffnung und Militärkontrolle in Deutschland, 383.

⁷Michael Hurst (ed.), Key Treaties for the European Powers, 1814–1914 (2 vols, Newton Abbot: David and Charles 1972) Vol.I, 311; Vol.II, 468–9.

⁸John W. Wheeler-Bennett, Brest-Litovsk: The Forgotten Peace, March 1918 (London: Macmillan 1938) App.V.

⁹Salewski, Entwaffnung und Militärkontrolle in Deutschland, 384–92; André Tardieu, La Paix (Paris: Payot 1921) p 173.

¹⁰F.S.L. Lyons, Internationalism in Europe, 1815–1914 (Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff 1963) Part V; and Merze Tate, The Disarmament Illusion: The Movement for a Limitation of Armaments to 1907 (New York: Macmillan 1942) Part I.

¹¹Calvin Dearmond Davis, The United States and the First Hague Peace Conference (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1962); and Jost Dülffer, Regeln gegen den Krieg? Die Haager Friedenskonferenzen von 1899 und 1907 in der Internationalen Politik (Frankfurt: Ullstein Verlag 1981).

¹²David Stevenson, Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe, 1904–1914 (Oxford: OUP 1996), 106–11; Dülffer, Regeln gegen den Krieg?; and Calvin Dearmond Davis, The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference: American Diplomacy and International Organization, 1899–1914 (Durham, NC: Duke UP 1975).

¹³J. Brown Scott (ed.), Official Statements of War Aims and Peace Proposals, December 1916 to November 1918 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Law 1921), 53, 237.

¹⁴T.J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (Princeton: PUP 1992), 126–7, 153, 204–5. American disarmament policy needs a fuller study.

¹⁵Messages by Prime Minister René Viviani and President Raymond Poincaré, 22 Dec. 1914 and 5 Aug. 1915, Journal officiel de la République française. Débats parlementaires. Chambre des députés, 1914, 3124–5; 1915, 1227.

¹⁶The Cambons recommended ‘un désarmement effectif et complet de l'Allemagne et de l'Autriche-Hongrie, portant aussi bien sur le personnel (interdiction de recrutement militaire, licenciement des cadres de l'armée et de la flotte), que sur le matériel (interdiction de fabriquer du matériel de guerre terrestre ou maritime). Ce désarmement permettra aux Alliés de convenir d'une réduction et d'une limitation de leurs armements’. However, ‘des garanties et des précautions sur les différentes frontières de l'Allemagne’ would still be required. AMAE [Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris], Série A Paix (60), ‘Projet’, 6 Nov. 1916; see AMAE, Jules Cambon MSS (19) for Jules Cambon's 3 Nov. draft.

¹⁷AMAE, Pichon MSS (4), Briand to Paul Cambon, 12 Jan. 1917; extract in G. Suarez, Briand: sa vie – son oeuvre (6 vols, Paris: Plon 1938–52) Vol.4, 128–30.

¹⁸SHAT [Service historique de l'armée de terre, Vincennes] 14N.35, Memoranda by General Staff (EMA) 2e Bureau, Aug. and Oct. 1916.

¹⁹See generally David Stevenson, French War Aims against Germany, 1914–1919 (Oxford: OUP 1982) Chs2–4; and Georges-Henri Soutou, L'Or et le sang: les buts de guerre économiques de la Première Guerre mondiale (Paris: Fayard 1989) Ch.5.

²⁰Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany, 7–22.

²¹Ibid. 24–49, 69.

²²Victor H. Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 1914–1918 (Oxford: OUP 1971), 32, 51; and Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany, 23.

²³W. Roger Louis, Great Britain and Germany's Lost Colonies, 1914–1919 (Oxford: OUP 1967), e.g. 71, 95, 100.

²⁴[Kew, The National Archives], FO[Foreign Office records]/371/2804, Report by Sir Ralph Paget and Sir William Tyrrell, 7 Aug. 1916. Like Jules Cambon and Haldane, Paget and Tyrrell envisaged German disarmament as part of a more general scheme.

²⁵Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany, 61–83.

²⁶David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (2 vols, London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson 1933) Vol.II, 1516–7.

²⁷Marshal Ferdinand Foch said the Allies could not verify that Germany had demobilized unless they occupied the entire country. Pierre Miquel, La Paix de Versailles et l'opinion publique française (Paris: Fayard, 1972), 249.

²⁸Rosslyn Wester Wemyss (First Sea Lord) and Sir David Beatty (Commander of the Grand Fleet) advised the War Cabinet on 21 Oct. 1918 that the armistice clauses must anticipate those of the peace treaty and cripple Germany's naval power. [Kew, The National Archives], CAB[inet papers]/23/14.

²⁹ FRUS PPC, Vol.III, 469–70.

³⁰Although the term ‘disarmament’ was used inconsistently in contemporary public discourse: cf. Carolyn J. Kitching, Britain and the Problem of International Disarmament, 1919–1934 (London: Routledge 1999) 7.

³¹Miquel, Paix de Versailles, 224–31, 263–73.

³²FO/608/128, Raynaud to Clemenceau, 7 Mar. 1919.

³³Miquel, Paix de Versailles, 238–9.

³⁴Cf. James F. Willis, Prologue to Nuremberg: The Politics and Diplomacy of Punishing War Criminals of the First World War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1982); Robert E. Bunselmeyer, The Cost of the War, 1914–1919: British Economic War Aims and the Origins of Reparation (Hamden, CT: Archon Books 1975); and John Horne and Allan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven: Yale UP 2001).

³⁵Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany, Ch.7.

³⁶The Admiralty advised that Britain must retain its naval ‘predominance’ and that ‘any attempt to set up arbitrary and artificial standards of relative strength or to limit the natural expression of a nation's instinctive and reasonable determination to judge how best to protect its own interests is foredoomed to failure’. [Kew, The National Archives], ADM[iralty papers]/116/1772, Admiralty to War Cabinet, 23 Dec. 1918.

³⁷David Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties (2 vols, London: Victor Gollancz 1938) Vol.I, 628–31; CAB/23/42, Imperial War Cabinet, 24 Dec. 1918; and cf. CAB/29/2, Jan Christian Smuts, ‘The League of Nations: A Programme for the Peace Conference’, 16 Dec. 1918.

³⁸Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany, Ch.9; and CAB/23/42, Imperial War Cabinet, 30 Dec. 1918.

³⁹For his initial radicalism, see Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement (3 vols, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page and Co. 1923) Vol.I, 347.

⁴⁰12 Feb. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.III, 1001–3.

⁴¹Cf. Foreign Minister Stephen Pichon in AN [Archives nationales, Paris] C7773, CTP [Commission des traités de paix], 15 July 1919.

⁴²Japan proposed this rewording. See Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, Vol.I, 367.

⁴³FO/608/240, League of Nations Commission sessions of 6, 11, 13 Feb. and 24 Mar. 1919. Cf. Seth P. Tillman, Anglo-American Relations at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Princeton: PUP 1961) Ch.11, 129–33; and George W. Egerton, Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations: Strategy, Politics, and International Organization, 1914–1919 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1978), 132–8.

⁴⁴17 Mar. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.IV, 366.

⁴⁵Miquel, Paix de Versailles, 196–213. Bourgeois and Larnaude reported to Clemenceau on 18 April that they had presented their amendments ‘conformément aux instructions que vous avez bien voulu nous donner’, and that Article 8 was ‘tout à fait insuffisante en ce qui concerne les garanties d'exécution du désarmement’. SHAT 6N.74.

⁴⁶FO/371/3446, Hardinge to Balfour, 26 Nov. 1918.

⁴⁷Stephen A. Schuker, ‘The Rhineland Question’, in Boemeke et al., The Treaty of Versailles, 291; and Salewski, Entwaffnung und Militärkontrolle in Deutschland, 19.

⁴⁸Tardieu memo, ‘Mémoire du gouvernement français sur la fixation de la frontière occidentale de l'Allemagne et l'occupation interalliée des ponts du fleuve’. Tardieu, La Paix, 165–84. Translation in CAB/29/8.

⁴⁹The National Archives map room, M.P.K. 283.

⁵⁰For example, FRUS PPC, Vol.III, 708, 897 (24 Jan. and 7 Feb.). In a note of 8 Feb., Foch argued (presumably for British consumption) that suitable frontiers would reduce the numbers of men the Allies needed to keep under arms. CAB/29/8, Foch note, 18 Feb. 1919.

⁵¹ FRUS PPC, Vol.III, 708, 905 (24 Jan., 7 Feb.).

⁵²AN C7773, Audition of Clemenceau by CTP, 11 July 1919.

⁵³Lloyd George in Council of Ten, 23 Jan. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.III, 694.

⁵⁴Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany, 166–9.

⁵⁵Council of Ten, 24 Jan. and 7 Feb. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.III, 704–6, 896–7; 3 Mar., FRUS PPC, Vol.IV, 186; cf. SHAT 6N.114, Foch to Clemenceau, 24 Dec. 1918.

⁵⁶Council of Ten, 24 and 25 Jan. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.III, 694–6, 707–13; Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany, 170–3. According to Philip Kerr, of Lloyd George's secretariat, the Prime Minister hoped to ‘break the habit of militarism in Europe’: if armaments and conscription could be interrupted for five or six years the new democratization of the continent would prevent the armaments process from starting again. LG [Lloyd George papers, House of Lords Record Office], F/89/2/23, Kerr to Lloyd George, 18 Feb. 1919.

⁵⁷Report and minutes of Loucheur committee in FO/608/267.

⁵⁸7, 8, 10 and 12 Feb. 1919, FRUS, PPC, Vol.III, 895–908, 926–34, 952, 970–9, 1001–9.

⁵⁹Intriguing parallels exist with the June 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement. Joseph A. Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933–39: A Study in Appeasement and the Origins of the Second World War (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1998) Ch.1. On the naval question at Paris, see Stephen W. Roskill, Naval Policy between the Wars. Vol. I: The Period of Anglo-American Antagonism, 1919–1929 (London: Collins 1968) Ch.1; and Arthur J. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904–1919. Vol. V: Victory and Aftermath (January 1918–June 1919) (London: OUP 1970), 249ff.

⁶⁰Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, 250. Cf. [Kew, The National Archives], AIR[Air Ministry papers]/1/344/15/226/292, Wemyss memo on naval terms, 28 Feb. 1919.

⁶¹ADM/116/1772, Admiralty memo for War Cabinet, 6 Jan. 1919. Beatty argued before the armistice that unless Germany lost most of its surface fleet the Royal Navy could not pen the U-boats in their harbours. CAB/23/14, War Cabinet, 21 Oct. 1918. But in addition, the First Lord of the Admiralty warned that Wilson intended to use reallocated German vessels to create ‘a sea power other than our own’. ADM/116/1771, Geddes to War Cabinet, 7 Nov. 1918. Lloyd George offered the French some German ships (see LG F/147/1, Note on meeting with Clemenceau and House, 7 Mar. 1919). However, at the same meeting he warned that Britain would prevent any other power from overtaking her at sea.

⁶²Roskill, Naval Policy between the Wars. Vol. I, 87, 100.

⁶³Ibid, 91; and Tillman, Anglo-American Relations, Ch.11.

⁶⁴Report on naval peace terms, 5 Mar. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.IV, 243. Benson in Council of Ten, 6 Mar. 1919, Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, 221. The commission assumed that Germany would not regain its colonies and noted their ‘complete accord on the main issue, i.e. the extent to which the German Fleet should be reduced’. FO/608/154, Preamble to ‘Naval Conditions for Peace with Germany’, 5 Mar. 1919.

⁶⁵Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, 229.

⁶⁶[Churchill College Archive Centre], WMYS [Rosslyn Wester Wemyss papers] 11/1, Wemyss to Hope, 22 June 1919.

⁶⁷Roskill, Naval Policy between the Wars. Vol. I, 92; ADM/116/1772, Admiralty memo to War Cabinet, 21 Jan. 1919. Clemenceau supported this position. AN C7773, Georges Leygues in CTP, 1 Aug. 1919. Ostensibly the French wanted the submarines against Germany. WMYS 11/1, Memo by Rear-Adm. George Hope, 28 Apr. 1919.

⁶⁸Roskill, Naval Policy between the Wars. Vol. I, 84; ADM/116/1772, Admiralty memo to War Cabinet, 3 Mar 1919. However, Lloyd George reassured them that Britain would retain a veto over League disarmament proposals. CAB29/28, British Empire Delegation meeting, 13 Mar. 1919.

⁶⁹The air clauses were less controversial. The British Chief of the Air Staff was willing to leave Germany an air force for internal defence. AIR/1/35/15/1/211–229, Memo to War Cabinet, 15 Jan. 1919. None the less, the report of the inter-Allied commission on military and maritime aeronautics, submitted on 6 March, proposed a total ban on military aviation, except for a small naval aviation arm with a maximum of 1,000 personnel. FRUS PPC, Vol.IV, 239–40. The commission advised that civil aircraft and dirigibles could easily be converted into weapons of war, and therefore its majority also wanted a ban on civil aviation: the British for at least 2–5 years and the French for 20–30. The Americans alone opposed such a ban as ‘neither wise nor practicable’. FO/608/163, Report of the Commission following meeting on 14 Mar. 1919. On 17 March, Wilson opposed the ban and it was rejected – a rare example of the leaders disregarding their experts. FRUS PPC, Vol.IV, 370–2.

⁷⁰Foch, 24 Feb. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.IV, 103. Also on Foch's scepticism, see Miquel, Paix de Versailles, 250–1. Foch did, however, favour trying to fix the size of Germany's army (as well as its western frontier and reparations liability) while it was too weak to resist, possibly because he hoped to enlist the Germans against Bolshevism. LG F/89/2/24, Note by General du Cane, 18 Feb. 1919.

⁷¹Draft military terms and presentation by Foch, 3 Mar. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.IV, 183–5, 230–6.

⁷² FRUS PPC, Vol.III, 1003.

⁷³For Lloyd George (24 Jan.) and Wilson (12 Feb.), FRUS PPC, Vol.III, 707, 1002. Clemenceau agreed, though seeming less concerned about Bolshevism and more about German militarism than were his counterparts. Tardieu, La Paix, 146; AN C7773, Clemenceau testimony to CTP, 11 July and 27 Sept. 1919.

⁷⁴FO/608/267, Radcliffe to Degoutte, 28 Feb. 1919. Balfour gathered that the French and Italians rejected voluntary service because it might set a precedent for their own armies, which they did not believe could raise enough men by this means. LG F/13/4/15, Note of 5 Mar. 1919.

⁷⁵On 4 March, the War Cabinet had opposed the French proposals for the Rhineland, but been attracted by Wilson's recommendations for a long-service German army and a demilitarized left bank. CAB/23/15. For Wilson's influence, see CAB/29/8, memo of 19 Feb.; also [Imperial War Museum], HHW [Henry Wilson papers], Wilson diary, 4, 5, 6 Mar., and notebook for 6 Mar. 1919.

⁷⁶Balfour had pointed this out in a note of 5 March. LG F/3/4/13.

⁷⁷ FRUS PPC, Vol.IV, 6 and 7 Mar. 1919, 216–19, 263–4; Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties, Vol.I, 590–1. According to Lloyd George, Foch ‘wanted a big French army and feared France would be driven into disarmament once Germany had disarmed’. CAB/29/28, British Empire Delegation, 2 Feb. 1919. German propaganda alleged that the French wanted to keep the façade of a German standing army in order to justify their resistance to disarmament. FO/608/128, German wireless message, 10 Mar. 1919.

⁷⁸ FRUS PPC, Vol.III, 596; AN C7773, Clemenceau in CTP, 11 July 1919. The French parliamentary commission of inquiry supported him. FO/608/125, Report by Louis Barthou, 5 Aug. 1919, p.45. The Clemenceau papers contain three unsigned memoranda on the question. The first predicted that Foch's proposals would set a precedent for abolishing all standing armies and that ‘social upheavals’ (‘bouleversements sociaux’) might ensue. The others set out the arguments for and against Lloyd George's counter-proposal, concluding that a volunteer force of 100,000, distributed across Germany for policing purposes, would in the long term be less dangerous than maintaining conscription. SHAT 6N.73, dossier ‘Statut militaire Allemagne’. Clemenceau agreed to the voluntary principle when he met Lloyd George and House on 7 March, on the conditions that Germany's cavalry divisions were reduced from five to three and its army capped at 200,000 rather than 250,000. LG F/147/1.

⁷⁹Harold W.V. Temperley (ed.), A History of the Peace Conference of Paris. Vol.II. The Settlement with Germany (London: OUP 1920, repr. 1969), 130.

⁸⁰Lloyd George went against advice from Henry Wilson (HHW, Wilson diary and notebook, 10 Mar. 1919) and from Philip Kerr, who warned that an unrealistically low figure would later have to be adjusted upwards, starting an unstoppable process. LG F/89/2/38, Kerr to Lloyd George, 3 Mar. 1919. Foch may have been wrong-footed at the crucial meeting, when he and the Italians failed to realize that the voluntary principle had been approved. HHW 2/90/9, Wilson to Churchill, 11 Mar.1919.

⁸¹Tardieu, La Paix, 158.

⁸²10 Mar. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.IV, 298; FO/608/128, Balfour comment on minute by James W. Headlam-Morley, 14 Mar. 1919.

⁸³LG F/147/1.

⁸⁴ FRUS PPC, Vol.IV, 10 and 11 Mar. 1919, 296–8, 319.

⁸⁵Arthur Walworth, Wilson and his Peacemakers. American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference (New York: W.W. Norton 1986), 210.

⁸⁶Council of Ten, 12 Feb. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.III, 1001.

⁸⁷ FRUS PPC, Vol.IV, 17 Mar. 1919, 356–63. According to Henry Wilson, the president had protested against not being consulted over the voluntary principle, but Lloyd George silenced him by threatening to reopen the issue of the League. HHW 2/18A/16, Wilson notebook, 17 Mar. 1919, and Wilson to Churchill, 18 Mar. 1919; cf. Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany, 257, n.149.

⁸⁸Björn Forsén and Annette Forsén, ‘German Secret Submarine Exports, 1919–35’, in D.J. Stoker and J.A. Grant (eds), Girding for Battle: The Arms Trade in a Global Perspective, 1815–1940 (Westport, CT: Praeger 2003).

⁸⁹Council of Ten, 24 Jan. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.III, 709.

⁹⁰Walworth, Wilson and his Peacemakers, 208. Bliss had also served on the Loucheur Committee and dissociated himself from its recommendation to occupy Essen. FO/608/267, Third meeting of the committee, 5 Feb. 1919.

⁹¹Council of Ten, 17 Mar. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.IV, 357–9, 375–7.

⁹²Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany, 157, 162. However, when the Cabinet touched on the subject on 28 February Lloyd George was sanguine: ‘Supposing in ten years’ time Germany declared that she intended then to build ships, guns, and so on, he did not think it would be very difficult to stop her. There was no doubt that the United States would be prepared to take up arms again in order to ensure the disarmament of any offending Power …’ Lord Curzon, Walter Long (First Lord of the Admiralty), and Churchill (Secretary of State for War), in contrast, did predict clandestine German rearmament, Churchill foreseeing that it would become open when the Allies quarrelled, ‘as might unfortunately be the case’. CAB/23/15.

⁹³Council of Ten, 24 Jan. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.III, 709.

⁹⁴Council of Ten, 7 and 17 Mar. 1919, FRUS PPC, Vol.IV, 263, 359.

⁹⁵Sharp, The Versailles Settlement, 31–2; Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties, Vol.I, 404ff.

⁹⁶Lloyd George warned that Britain could contribute no more than a battalion, given domestic opposition to conscription. HHW 2/45/5, Council of Four, 22 Apr. 1919. Under the evacuation scheme Allied forces would withdraw in three stages, relinquishing the northern (Cologne) zone first and the southern (Mainz) zone last. Covering Alsace-Lorraine and being able to strike up the Main valley towards Bohemia counted for more with the French than being able to menace Essen and the Ruhr.

⁹⁷Wilson and Lloyd George agreed the principle on 5 April. [Churchill College Archive Centre], HNKY [Maurice Hankey papers] 8/14. Henry Wilson and Major-General Thwaites later redrafted the clause. HHW 2/45/3, Thwaites to Wilson, 20 Apr. 1919.

⁹⁸Tardieu, La Paix, 149–55. Lloyd George and Wilson seem to have accepted the principle on 5 April. HNKY 8/14.

⁹⁹Tardieu, La Paix, 160; AN C7773, CTP hearings of Clemenceau, 11 July, Tardieu and Clemenceau, 29 July, Clemenceau, 27 Sept. 1919. Clemenceau expected trouble: ‘La guerre continue, voilà la vérité, mais autrement et dans des conditions différentes’. AN C7773, 27 Sept.

¹⁰⁰Salewski, Entwaffnung und Militärkontrolle in Deutschland, 41.

¹⁰¹FO/608/128, Headlam-Morley minute, 14 Mar. 1919.

¹⁰²Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany, 193.

¹⁰³Ibid., 196–203. Henry Wilson noted during the drafting of the memorandum: ‘Reduce her [Germany's] army to small dimensions and impose the voluntary principle, and thereby force the other great Powers to follow suit’. HHW, Wilson notebook, 23 Mar. 1919; similarly HNKY 8/11, Hankey memo, ‘British Empire Interests’, 23 Mar. 1919.

¹⁰⁴The French government accepted the principle of reducing armaments to the minimum for national security, but reserved its position on what figure this might entail. AN C7773, Pichon in CTP, 15 July 1919.

¹⁰⁵ FRUS PPC, Vol.V, 299; Salewski, Entwaffnung und Militärkontrolle in Deutschland, 34. This formula seems to have originated with the Cabinet Secretary, Maurice Hankey, who believed the disarmament clauses were a ‘humiliation’ and would drive Germany into common cause with Bolshevism. The preamble might counter this danger by restoring German self-respect. LG F/23/4/39, HNKY 8/10, and HHW 2/90/15, Hankey to Lloyd George, 19 Mar. 1919. Philip Kerr had put a similar point to the prime minister in an undated note during February. LG F/89/2/14.

¹⁰⁶Salewski, Entwaffnung und Militärkontrolle in Deutschland, 37.

¹⁰⁷Alma Luckau, The German Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference (New York: Columbia UP 1941), 87.

¹⁰⁸The German counter-proposals caused a revolt in the British Empire delegation against the severity of the draft terms, but criticism focused on the army of occupation rather than on the disarmament clauses. CAB/29/28, Meetings of 30 May, 1 and 2 June 1919. Henry Wilson suggested a German volunteer army of 200,000, but this was not taken up. HHW 2/90, Wilson memorandum, 31 May 1919. Bliss and Lloyd George had again suggested on 23 May that 100,000 was too low, but deferred to the French view. See SHAT 7N3529, ‘Historique du projet de désarmement de l'Allemagne’ (reference supplied by Andrew Barros).

¹⁰⁹Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany, 208–12; Kitching, Britain and the Problem, 14–5. For later difficulties caused by this ‘Clemenceau letter’, cf. Andrew Webster's article in this collection.

¹¹⁰Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany, 214–24; cf. Andrew Barros's article below.

¹¹¹Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 (London: Oxford UP 1955), 482–3.

¹¹²Chapter by David French in Boemeke et al., The Treaty of Versailles, 69–86.

¹¹³Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict, 1990–1991: Diplomacy and War in the New World Order (London: Faber 1994), 417; and Kenneth M. Pollack, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (New York: Random House 2002), 52–3. Interestingly, Resolution 687 set out a 90-day timetable for establishing the UN inspection system; in 1919 the Americans supposed three months would suffice to implement the German disarmament regime.