Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933-1941

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

a. The Rise of Anglo-American Friendship

THE MAIN OBJECTIVE in American foreign policy since 1900 has been the preservation of the British Empire. Intimate ties between Britain and the United States were first forged in 1898 when Britain realized that her policy of isolation had deprived her of any faithful allies upon whom she could depend in the event of war. The guns that brought victory to Admiral Dewey at Manila Bay sounded a new note of authority in the Far East and made the British Government aware of the fact that America could be made into a useful guardian of the life lines of empire. With John Hay as Secretary of State it was not difficult for the Foreign Office to arrive at an understanding with the United States that was as intimate as it was informal.

The first Open Door note of September 6, 1899, was an exercise in Anglo-American co-operation, with Alfred E. Hippisley giving an interesting demonstration of how helpful a British official could be in the drafting of American diplomatic notes. Theodore Roosevelt was evidently impressed with this growing Anglo-American accord, and when certain European powers threatened to intervene in the war Britain waged against the Boers in South Africa, he sounded a note that became very familiar in the eventful years that preceded the outbreak of World War II: “Real liberty and real progress are bound up with the prosperity of the English-speaking peoples. . . . I should very strongly favor this country taking a hand . . . if the European continent selected this opportunity to try and smash the British Empire.”1

b. Japan Is Given a Green Light to Expand in Manchuria

In the Far East this Anglo-American parallel policy had a definite pro-Japanese inclination, with the Anglo-Japanese alliance of January 30, 1902, as the cornerstone of an imposing imperialistic structure. It was inevitable that the Department of State would favor Japan in a struggle which it assumed would result in the emancipation of North China from Russian shackles. The American press was equally pro-Japanese.

On the night of February 8, 1904, Japan launched a surprise attack upon the Russian fleet in the harbor of Port Arthur and thus started the war upon the same pattern she employed against the United States in December 1941.

It was a “sneak attack” upon the Russian fleet, but in 1904 the American press had no criticisms of this Japanese stratagem. The New York Times praised “the prompt, enterprising and gallant feat of the Japanese,”2 while the St. Louis Globe-Democrat warmly commended the “dash and intelligence” of the resourceful sons of Nippon.3 The Cleveland Plain Dealer grew lyrical in its description of this Japanese exploit: “As Drake in the harbor of Cadiz singed the beard of the King of Spain, so the active island commanders have set the Czar’s whiskers in a blaze.”4 Other American newspapers expressed similar sentiments and public opinion moved swiftly to the support of Japan. This support remained unswerving until the peace conference at Portsmouth revealed the ambitious character of the Japanese terms.

Although Japan gained substantial advantages through the terms of this treaty which established her as the dominant power in the Far East, the Japanese public was indignant that no indemnity had been secured. Rioting broke out in several Japanese cities, and Americans had to be carefully guarded against violence.5 Britain had been too astute to lend a helping hand to Roosevelt in arranging peace terms. The role of peacemaker had no attractions for the British Foreign Secretary.

President Roosevelt soon discovered that his policy of “balanced antagonisms” in the Far East was a flat failure.6 Japanese statesmen were too clever to keep alive their diplomatic differences with Russia. The British Foreign Office, moreover, smiled upon an understanding between Japan and Russia. Britain was girding for an eventual conflict with Germany and it was to her obvious advantage to have strong allies whose assistance could be paid for in terms of Chinese territory. On July 30, 1907, Japan and Russia concluded important public and secret treaties which delimited their respective spheres of influence in Manchuria and Mongolia.7 As political control over these two Chinese provinces was gradually extended by Russia and Japan, the Open Door began to creak on its rusty hinges. President Roosevelt had no desire to keep them well oiled with American support. Indeed, as far as he was concerned, the Open Door was largely a fiction. In order to confirm this fact, he concluded with Japan the Root-Takahira Agreement (November 30, 1908). The most important article in this agreement was dedicated to the maintenance of the “existing status quo . . . in the region of the Pacific Ocean.” In Manchuria the status quo meant only one thing to Japan—eventual political and economic control. To President Roosevelt this expansive phrase must have had a similar meaning, and it is the opinion of an outstanding scholar that the Root-Takahira Agreement gave Japan “a free hand in Manchuria” in return for a disavowal of aggressive intentions towards the Philippines.8

It is obvious that the President, gravely concerned over our dispute with Japan relative to immigration into California, was ready to purchase peace by acquiescing in Japanese domination of a large area in North China. In a letter to President Taft in December 1910 he frankly stated that the Administration should take no step that would make Japan feel that we are “a menace to their interests” in North China. With special reference to Manchuria he remarked: “If the Japanese choose to follow a course of conduct to which we are adverse, we cannot stop it unless we are prepared to go to war. . . . Our interests in Manchuria are really unimportant, and not such that the American people would be content to run the slightest risk of collision about them.”9

The Theodore Roosevelt viewpoint in 1910 with reference to Manchuria was a realistic one which could have been followed with profit by the Taft Administration. But Taft had his own ideas about what should be done in the Far East. As a firm believer in “dollar diplomacy” he adopted an ambitious program for increasing American interest and prestige in the Orient by building a firm financial flooring under American policy. He endeavored to push “big business” into placing large investments in China, and as one important item in this plan he proposed in November 1909 to put the railways in Manchuria under international control with the United States as one of the powers in this consortium.10

This proposal put the British Foreign Office “on the spot” and Sir Edward Grey’s polite rejection of it clearly indicated that the so-called Anglo-American parallel policy in the Far East could be invoked only when it helped to achieve British objectives. But the British Foreign Secretary had to make some gestures of conciliation. America was too strong to be continually rebuffed. In 1909, after a series of notes in which Grey moved from one position to another with equal impudence, the British Government finally accepted arbitration of the age-old quarrel with America concerning the North Atlantic fisheries. Two years later he responded to American pressure and helped to write a profitable conclusion to the long story of the fur-seal dispute.11 Apparently he was clearing the decks of the British ship of state for a possible conflict with Germany. Friendly relations with the United States became a national necessity.

c. Sir Edward Grey Scores a Diplomatic Success

In his relations with the United States, Sir Edward Grey was singularly successful. He did not owe his brilliant record to any fluency of speech or unusual ability to draft cogent diplomatic notes. He moved right into American hearts because he seemed to have honesty written in large letters across his pleasant face. There was no trace of subtlety in his open countenance; no lines of cunning that pointed to a scheming mind. He made an instant appeal to most Americans who thought they saw candor and character in eyes that seldom wavered during long diplomatic conversations. To Theodore Roosevelt he appeared as a fellow naturalist who cared more for the pattern of wild life on his country estate than for the intricate web of international intrigue that covered so many of the walls in No. 10 Downing Street. To Colonel House he seemed to be a man of simple tastes and quiet pleasures. In the eyes of the American public he was a man who could be trusted. When the great storm of 1914 blew across the fields of Europe he was widely regarded as a fearless figure who boldly defied the Kaiser’s lightning even though its bolts might blast all Britain. But the British people grew tired of a glorified lightning rod, so in 1916 he was retired from his perilous position.

During the early years of the Wilson Administration he was an astounding success with amateur diplomats like Bryan, Secretary Lansing, and Colonel House. He was quick to see the importance of extending British support to the Bryan conciliation treaties and thereby he not only won the admiration of the “Great Commoner” but he also placed a large anchor to windward in case of a heavy American blow at some future time.12 In this regard he was immeasurably smarter than the German Foreign Secretary who had little liking for the Bryan “cooling off” treaties. If such a convention has been concluded by the German Foreign Office, there would have been no American intervention in 1917 and the history of American foreign policy would not have been marred by the many mistakes of President Wilson before and during the conference at Versailles.

It was fortunate for Britain that the Germans were so inept as diplomats, and it was doubly fortunate that Sir Edward Grey was a great favorite with so many Americans. This cordial regard paid good dividends in the summer of 1914 when the shadows of war began to fall across the European landscape. It was obvious that American public opinion was friendly to both Britain and France while Germany was regarded with deep distrust. The many ties that bound us to Britain were easily discernible to multitudes of Americans. The political concert of recent years, even though on British terms, was a factor that could not be disregarded. Political accord was supplemented by intimate business connections that drew thousands of Americans into profitable relations with Britons throughout the vast regions of the Empire. The American political system traced its roots to British practices, and our legal institutions bore a definite British imprint. But the intellectual ties were far more potent than connections of any other character. Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, Dickens, Burns, Wordsworth, and a host of other British men of letters had knocked on the door of the American heart and had received a warm welcome. There had never been an American tariff on British intellectual goods nor any embargoes on British ideals. In the American mind in 1914 there was a deep substratum of British thought and it was easy for British propaganda to convince the average American that Britain’s war was “our war.”

Skillfully using this friendly American attitude as a basis for far-reaching belligerent practices, the British Government, after August 1914, began to seize American vessels under such specious pretexts that even our Anglophile President lost his patience and called for some action that would protect American rights. In 1916 legislation was enacted that provided for the construction of a navy second to none, but President Wilson had no real disposition to employ our naval strength as a weapon that would compel Britain to respect the historic American principle of the freedom of the seas. Instead of exerting pressure upon Britain, the President drifted into a quarrel with Germany over the conduct of submarine warfare.

d. The Department of State Strikes a False Note

It is apparent that the United States drifted into war with Germany because the Department of State condemned German submarine warfare as inhuman and illegal. It is not so well known that Robert Lansing, the counselor of the Department of State, was badly confused in his controversy with the German Government concerning this submarine warfare. On February 4, 1915, the German Foreign Office announced the establishment of a war zone around the British Isles. In this war zone after February 18 all “enemy merchant vessels” would be destroyed without much regard for the safety of the passengers and the crew. In a sharp note of February 10, 1915, the Department of State protested against the sinking of any merchant ships without the usual preliminary visit and search, and it gave a distinct warning that the German Government would be held to a “strict accountability” for every injury inflicted upon American citizens.13

Professor Borchard has clearly demonstrated that this acrid note of February 10 was based upon an incorrect interpretation of international law. After discussing the background of the submarine controversy, he remarks: “It is thus apparent that the first American protest on submarines on February 10, 1915, with its challenging ‘strict accountability,’ was founded on the false premise that the United States was privileged to speak not only for American vessels and their personnel, but also on behalf of American citizens on Allied and other vessels. No other neutral country appears to have fallen into this error.”14

It is remarkable that Mr. Lansing, as the counselor of the Department of State, should have drafted a note that was so patently incorrect in its interpretation of the law of nations. Before entering upon his official duties in the Department of State, he had for many years been engaged in the practice of international law. He was quite familiar with American precedents and practices, and it is quite mystifying to find that at one of the great crossroads in American history a presumably competent lawyer should give the President and the Secretary of State a legal opinion that would have shamed a novice.

Having made a fundamental error in his interpretation of international law with reference to submarine attacks upon unarmed merchant vessels of the Allied powers, he then hastened to make another error with regard to attacks upon armed merchantmen. It was Mr. Lansing’s contention, and therefore that of President Wilson, that German submarines should not sink Allied armed merchant ships without first giving a warning that would permit the passengers and crew ample time to disembark with safety. The German Foreign Office hastened to point out that armed merchantmen would take advantage of this procedure to fire upon and destroy the undersea craft. For a brief period in January and February 1916, Mr. Lansing, Secretary of State since June 1915, accepted the German contention and the Department of State was ready to insist that Allied merchant ships either go unarmed or take the consequences. But Lansing, upon the insistence of Colonel House, retreated from the sound position he had temporarily assumed and once more asserted with vehemence that armed merchantmen were not vessels of war that could be sunk at sight.15 Thus, by reason of Secretary Lansing’s final opinion, the President “and the House and Senate also, were misled into taking a position which had no foundation either in law or in common sense. Yet on that hollow platform Wilson stood in defending the immunity from attack of British armed merchantmen and of American citizens on board.”16

It is thus clear that America drifted into war in 1917 either because the chief legal adviser in the Department of State made fundamental errors of interpretation which a mere student of international law would have easily avoided, or because the adviser wanted a war with Germany and therefore purposely wrote erroneous opinions. These facts completely destroy the old popular thesis that America went to war in protest against German barbarities on the high seas.

American intervention in World War I established a pattern that led America into a second world war in 1941. If we had not entered the war in Europe in 1917, World War I would have ended in a stalemate and a balance of power in Europe would have been created. Our intervention completely shattered the old balance of power and sowed the seeds of inevitable future conflict in the dark soil of Versailles. We had a deep interest in maintaining the political structure of 1919. Thousands of American lives and a vast American treasure had been spent in its erection. We could not see it demolished without deep concern. When dictators began to weaken its foundations, the Roosevelt Administration voiced its increasing disapproval of these actions. The bungling handiwork of 1919 had to be preserved at all costs, and America went to war again in 1941 to save a political edifice whose main supports had already rotted in the damp atmosphere of disillusion. The dubious political structure of 1919 is the subject of the next section of this chapter.

e. The Allies Violate the Pre-Armistice Contract

In the period immediately preceding the outbreak of World War II it was the habit of President Roosevelt and Secretary Hull to talk constantly about the sanctity of treaties. They were international contracts that should never be broken. In this regard they were merely repeating an essential part of the ritual that became quite popular after 1919. But in Germany numerous persons could not forget the fact that the Treaty of Versailles was the cornerstone of a structure that had been built upon the dubious sands of betrayal. Lloyd George and Clemenceau had reluctantly agreed to a pre-Armistice contract that bound them to fashion the treaty of peace along the lines of the famous Fourteen Points.17 The Treaty of Versailles was a deliberate violation of this contract. In the dark soil of this breach of promise the seeds of another world war were deeply sown.

It should be kept in mind that Woodrow Wilson acquiesced in this violation of contract. His ardent admirers have contended that he was tricked into this unsavory arrangement by Lloyd George and Clemenceau who were masters of the craft sinister. Ben Hecht, in his Erik Dorn, accepts this viewpoint and pungently refers to Wilson in Paris as a “long-faced virgin trapped in a bawdy house and calling in valiant tones for a glass of lemonade.”18 In truth, Wilson ordered his glass of lemonade heavily spiked with the hard liquor of deceit, and the whole world has paid for the extended binge of a so-called statesman who promised peace while weaving a web of war.

The story of this betrayal began on October 5, 1918, when Prince Max of Baden, addressed a note to President Wilson requesting him to negotiate a peace on the basis of the Fourteen Points. Three days later the President inquired if the German Government accepted these points as the basis for a treaty. On October 12, Prince Max gave assurance that his object in “entering into discussions would be only to agree upon practical details of the application” of the Fourteen Points to the terms of the treaty of peace. Two days later President Wilson added other conditions. No armistice would be signed which did not insure “absolutely satisfactory safeguards for the maintenance of the present military supremacy” of the Allied and Associated armies. Also, a democratic and representative government should be established in Berlin. When the German Government accepted these conditions, the President informed Prince Max (October 23) that he was now prepared to discuss with the Associated governments the terms of the proposed armistice. This discussion led to an agreement on their part to accept the Fourteen Points with two exceptions. With reference to “freedom of the seas” they reserved to themselves “complete freedom” when they entered the Peace Conference. In connection with the matter of reparations they understood that compensation would be made “by Germany for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allies, and their property, by the aggression of Germany by land, by sea, and from the air.” These terms were conveyed to the German Government on November 5 and were promptly accepted by it. On November 11 an armistice placing Germany at the mercy of the Allied powers was signed in the Forest of Compiegne. With the cessation of hostilities the question of a treaty of peace came to the fore.19

The good faith of the Allied governments to make this treaty in conformity with the Fourteen Points had been formally pledged. But hardly was the ink dry on the Armistice terms when Lloyd George openly conspired to make the pre-Armistice agreement a mere scrap of paper. During the London Conference (December 1-3) the wily Welshman helped to push through a resolution which recommended an inter-Allied Commission to “examine and report on amount enemy countries are able to pay for reparation and indemnity.” The word “indemnity” could easily be stretched to cover the “costs of the war.” Although such a move was “clearly precluded by the very intent of the Pre-Armistice Agreement,” Lloyd George showed an “apparent nonchalance about principle and contract,” and started on a slippery path that “led rapidly downhill into the morasses of the December British elections.”20

f. Reparations and Rascality

In his pre-election promises Lloyd George revealed a complete disregard of the pre-Armistice contract. His assurances to the British electorate were in direct contradiction to his pledge to Colonel House that he would be guided by the Fourteen Points. At Bristol (December 11, 1918) he jauntily informed his eager audience that “we propose to demand the whole cost of the war [from Germany].”21 The spirit that animated the election was stridently expressed by Eric Geddes in a speech in the Cambridge Guildhall: “We shall squeeze the orange until the pips squeak.”22

At the Paris Peace Conference, Lloyd George (January 22, 1919) suggested the appointment of a commission to study “reparation and indemnity.” President Wilson succeeded in having the word “indemnity” deleted but it was merely a temporary victory. The French gave ardent support to the position assumed by Lloyd George. Their schemes for the dismemberment of Germany would be promoted by an exacting attitude on the part of Britain. This concerted action against the pre-Armistice agreement was strongly contested by John Foster Dulles, the legal adviser of the American members on the Reparation Commission. He insisted upon a strict adherence to the pre-Armistice promises and was supported by President Wilson who unequivocally stated that America was “bound in honor to decline to agree to the inclusion of war costs in the reparation demanded. . . . It is clearly inconsistent with what we deliberately led the enemy to expect. . . .”23

But Lloyd George and Clemenceau quietly outflanked the American position by the simple device of expanding the categories of civilian damage so that they could include huge sums that properly belonged to the categories of “war costs.” Lloyd George insisted that pensions and separation allowances should be included in the schedule of reparations, and Clemenceau hastened to his support. It was evident to both of them that these items were excluded by the express terms of the preArmistice agreement. If President Wilson adhered to the assurances he had given to his financial experts he would immediately reject this transparent scheme to violate the pledge of the Allied powers. But when these same experts indicated the obvious implications of the Lloyd George proposals and stated that they were ruled out by logic, Wilson profoundly surprised them by bursting out in petulant tones: “Logic! Logic! I don’t give a damn for logic. I am going to include pensions.”24 Not content with adding an undeserved burden that helped to break German financial backs, Wilson followed the lead of Lloyd George along other roads of supreme folly. At the meeting of the Council of Four (April 5, 1919), the British Prime Minister suggested that in the treaty of peace the Allies should “assert their claim” and Germany should recognize “her obligation for all the costs of the war.” When Colonel House remarked that such an assertion would be contrary to the pre-Armistice agreement, Clemenceau reassuringly murmured that it was largely “a question of drafting.”25

This experiment in drafting turned out to be the bitterly disputed Article 231 which placed upon Germany the responsibility “for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany.” This so-called “War Guilt Clause” aroused a deep and widespread hatred in all classes in Germany against a decision that was regarded as fundamentally unfair. And then to add insult to injury, Article 232 repeated the language of the pre-Armistice agreement with its fake formula which limited reparations to civilian damages. The ease with which this language had been twisted to Allied benefit had clearly indicated that it would be no protection to Germany.

These two American surrenders were followed by a third which meant a complete abandonment of the position that no “punitive treaty” should be imposed upon Germany. The American experts had placed much reliance upon the creation of a Reparation Commission which would have far-reaching powers to estimate what Germany could afford to pay on Allied claims and to modify the manner and date of these payments. But Clemenceau wanted this commission to be nothing more than a glorified adding machine designed merely to register the sums Germany should pay. It was to have no right to make independent judgments. The American contention that the payment of reparations should not extend more than thirty-five years was vetoed by the French who thought that fifty years might be required.26

During the heated discussions in the meeting of the Council of Four (April 5, 1919), Colonel House was so obtuse that he did not realize that the French were storming the American position until one of the French experts informed him of that fact. Norman Davis shouted to him that the French banners bore the legend: “Allied claims and not German capacity to pay should be the basis for reparations.” Although this French slogan was in direct violation of the principles which the American experts had been fighting for during three long months, the confused Colonel tore down the American flag and hoisted the dubious French tricolor. By this action he flouted “both the letter and the spirit of the Pre-Armistice Agreement.”27 When President Wilson confirmed this surrender he thereby extended a favor to Adolf Hitler who warmly welcomed illustrations of Allied bad faith as one of the best means of promoting the Nazi movement.

The financial experts at Versailles failed to fix any particular sum as the measure of German liability for having caused the World War. In 1921 the Reparation Commission remedied this omission by computing the amount to be approximately $33,000,000,000. One third of this sum represented damages to Allied property, “and one-half to two thirds, pensions and similar allowances. In short, Wilson’s decision doubled and perhaps tripled the bill.”28 Germany might have been able to pay a bill of not more than ten billion dollars, but when Wilson consented to play the part of Shylock and helped perfect a plan that would exact a pound of flesh from the emaciated frame of a war-wasted nation, he pointed the way to a financial chaos that inevitably overwhelmed Germany and Europe. He also helped to write several chapters in Mein Kampf.

g. The Colonial Question

The colonial question was dealt with in the fifth of the Fourteen Points. It provided for a “free, open-minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of colonial claims.” At the Paris Peace Conference there was no attempt to arrive at this “absolutely impartial judgment.” Long before the conference convened there had developed in the minds of prominent publicists in Britain, France, and the United States the opinion that Germany had forfeited all rights to her colonial dominion that had been conquered by Allied forces during the war. The usual argument in favor of this forfeiture was that German colonial administrators had cruelly mistreated the natives. Professor Thorstein Veblen wrote on this topic with his accustomed pontifical certitude: “In the [German] colonial policy colonies are conceived to stand to their Imperial guardian or master in a relation between that of step-child and that of an indentured servant; to be dealt with summarily and at discretion and to be made use of without scruple.”29 In Britain, Edwyn Bevan argued that the return of her colonies would not “be to content Germany but to keep up her appetite for colonial expansion; it would be to restore a condition of things essentially unstable.”30

In 1917 the American Commission of Inquiry, under the direction of Dr. Sidney E. Mezes, asked Dr. George L. Beer to prepare a series of studies on the colonial question with special reference to German colonial policy. Beer had long been regarded as an outstanding expert on the commercial policy of England during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. In an imposing series of volumes he had “presented the English point of view” with regard to colonial administration.31 After the outbreak of the World War “his sympathies were very decidedly with the Allies, and particularly with the British empire.”32

It was only natural that Dr. Beer, despite his alleged historical objectivity, should strongly condemn German colonial policy. In February 1918 he turned over to Dr. Mezes his manuscript on the German Colonies in Africa. After weighing a considerable amount of data he came to the conclusion that Germany had totally failed to “appreciate the duties of colonial trusteeship.”33 Therefore, she should lose her colonial dominions.

Dr. Beer accompanied the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference as a colonial expert and it is evident that he influenced the opinions of President Wilson who stated on July 10, 1919, that the German colonies had not “been governed; they had been exploited merely, without thought of the interest or even the ordinary human rights of their inhabitants.”34

This accusation of the President was quite groundless. A careful American scholar who made a trip to the Cameroons in order to get an accurate picture of the prewar situation, summarizes his viewpoint as follows: “My own conclusion is that Germany’s colonial accomplishments in thirty short years constitute a record of unusual achievement and entitle her to a very high rank as a successful colonial power, a view quite different from that reached in 1919. . . . I feel that if Germany had been allowed to continue as a colonial power after the war, her civil rule would have compared favorably with the very best that the world knows today.”35

The Germans were deeply incensed because the Allied governments refused to count the colonies as an important credit item in the reparation account. Some Germans had estimated the value of the colonies at nine billion dollars. If this estimate had been cut in half there would still have been a large sum that could have been used to reduce the tremendous financial burden imposed upon weary German backs. Such action would have “spared Germany the additional humiliation of losing all her overseas possessions under the hypocritical guise of humanitarian motives.”36 These needless humiliations prepared the way for the tragedy of 1939. It is obvious that the revelations in the Nürnberg documents concerning Hitler’s design for aggression are merely the last chapter in a long and depressing book that began at Versailles.

h. The Problem of Poland: Danzig—The Polish Corridor—Upper Silesia

In the discussion of questions relating to Poland, President Wilson had the advice of Professor Robert H. Lord, whose monograph on the Second Partition of Poland was supposed to make him an authority on the problems of 1919. His lack of objectivity was as striking as that of Professor Beer. It was largely a case of hysterical rather than historical scholarship.37

While the President was formulating his Fourteen Points, some of the experts on the American Commission of Inquiry suggested that an independent Polish state be erected with boundaries based upon “a fair balance of national and economic considerations, giving due weight to the necessity for adequate access to the sea.”38 In the thirteenth of the Fourteen Points, President Wilson changed the phraseology of this suggestion so that more stress would be laid upon ethnographic factors: “An independent Polish State should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea.”

(1) DANZIG

If Poland were to be given access to the Baltic Sea the port of Danzig would be of fundamental importance. In order to guide the President in this difficult matter of Polish boundaries, the American experts prepared two reports (January-February 1919).39 In dealing with Danzig they granted it to Poland because of economic considerations. They conveniently overlooked the fact that from the viewpoint of population Danzig was 97 per cent German. On February 23, while Wilson was in the United States, Colonel House cabled to him concerning the disposition of Danzig: “Our experts also believe this [the cession of Danzig to Poland] to be the best solution.”40 But the President was unwilling to confirm this suggestion, so the question of Danzig was postponed until March 17 when Lloyd George carried on a brisk exchange of opinions with Colonel House and Clemenceau. Two days later the British Prime Minister flatly refused to accept the proposal to cede both Danzig and the German Kreis of Marienwerder to Poland. He was not greatly impressed with the fact that the members of the Polish Commission and a large array of experts were in favor of this decision.41

Despite pressure from Colonel House and Dr. Mezes (the brother-in-law of Colonel House), President Wilson (March 28) rushed to the support of Lloyd George. On April 5 he and Lloyd George reached an understanding that the city and area of Danzig should become a free city with local autonomy under a commissioner of the League of Nations but connected with Poland by a customs union and port facilities. The foreign relations of the free city were to be under Polish control.42

To the Germans this large measure of Polish control over the city of Danzig was profoundly irritating, and at times the actions of the Polish authorities in connection with foreign relations and the establishment of export duties seemed unnecessarily provocative. From the viewpoint of economics, Polish control over Danzig had the most serious implications. By altering the customs tariff Poland could adversely affect the trade of the free city, and through control over the railways could extend important favors to the competing port of Gdynia.43

This situation led Gustav Stresemann, one of the most moderate of German statesmen, to remark in September 1925 that the “third great task of Germany is the . . . recovery of Danzig.”44 In 1931 the quiet, unaggressive Centrist leader, Heinrich Brüning, sounded out certain European governments in order to ascertain whether they would favor territorial revision at the expense of Poland. But this pressure to recover lost territory suddenly ended in Germany on January 26, 1934, when Marshal Pilsudski concluded with Hitler the well-known nonaggression treaty.45 The price Poland paid for this agreement was an immediate acquiescence in a German program aimed at the nazification of Danzig. When Polish statesmen, after Pilsudski’s death, tried to reverse this movement by courting British and French favor, they opened the floodgates that permitted the Nazi-Soviet tide to inundate all of Poland.

(2) THE POLISH CORRIDOR

A Polish Corridor through German territory to the Baltic Sea was distinctly forecast in the thirteenth point of the Wilson program which expressly declared that Poland should be granted “free and secure access to the sea.” This wide “right of way” was to go through territory inhabited by “indisputably Polish populations.” The American experts in their reports of January-February 1919, outlined a broad Polish path to the sea through the German provinces of Posen and West Prussia. They admitted the hardships this action would entail upon some 1,600,000 Germans in East Prussia but they regarded the benefits conferred upon many millions of Poles as of more significance.46

When the reports of these experts were accepted by the Polish Commission and were written into the text of the Treaty of Versailles, it meant that the valley of the Vistula had been placed under Polish control. In order to shut the Germans of East Prussia away, from any contact with the Vistula, “a zone fifty yards in width along the east bank was given to Poland, so that along their ancient waterway the East Prussians have no riparian rights. Though the river flows within a stone’s throw of their doors, they may not use it.”47

The Corridor itself was a wedge of territory which ran inland from the Baltic Sea for 45 miles, with a width of 20 miles at the coast, 60 miles in the center, and 140 miles in the south. Transportation across it was made difficult by Polish authorities who “instead of maintaining and developing the existing excellent system of communications by rail and road, river and canal . . . at once scrapped a large part of it in the determination to divert the natural and historical direction of traffic.” With reference to conditions in the Corridor in 1933, Professor Dawson wrote as follows: “It is true that a few transit trains cross the Corridor daily, but as they may neither put down nor pick up traffic on the way, this piece of now Polish territory, so far as provision for communication and transport goes, might be unpopulated.”48 Traffic along the highways crossing the Corridor was also very unsatisfactory. In 1931, Colonel Powell discovered that only the main east-and-west highways were open for vehicular traffic and this was “hampered by every device that the ingenuity of the Poles can suggest. Here I speak from personal experience, for I have driven my car across the Corridor four times.”49

In 1938 and 1939, Hitler tried in vain to secure from the Polish Government the right to construct a railway and a motor road across the Corridor. Relying upon British support, the Polish Foreign Office in the spring of 1939 rejected any thought of granting these concessions. This action so deeply angered Hitler that he began to sound out the Soviet Government with reference to a treaty that would mean the fourth partition of Poland. Polish diplomats had not learned the simple lesson that concessions may prevent a catastrophe.

(3) UPPER SILESIA

During the sessions of the Paris Peace Conference the decision with reference to Upper Silesia was one of the clearest indications that hysteria and not objective history guided the conclusions of some of the American experts. This was particularly so in the case of Professor Robert H. Lord. He was strongly of the opinion that Upper Silesia should go to Poland without a plebiscite to ascertain the desires of the inhabitants. When the treaty was turned over to the German delegation the Upper Silesian article was subjected to a great deal of cogent criticism. Lloyd George was convinced by the German arguments, but President Wilson still gave some heed t0 Professor Lord who complained that Germany had been sovereign over Upper Silesia for only two centuries. Even though Mr. Lamont countered with the remark that this territory had not “belonged to Poland for 400 years,” the President retained a lingering faith in the vehement protestations of Professor Lord. But this faith received a further shock when the learned professor opposed the holding of a plebiscite in Upper Silesia. Lloyd George then pertinently inquired why plebiscites were to be held in “Allenstein, Schleswig, Klagenfurt but not in Silesia.”50 There was no real answer Professor Lord could give to sustain his position so a provision was inserted in the treaty with reference to a plebiscite in Upper Silesia.

But this plebiscite was held in an atmosphere of terror. The International Commission that took over the administration of the voting area consisted of three members: General Le Rond (France); Colonel Sir Harold Percival (Britain); and General de Marinis (Italy). France immediately sent 8,000 troops to maintain French domination over Upper Silesia and then procured the appointment of General Le Rond as the head of the civil administration. Although the Allied governments had assured the German delegation at Paris (June 16, 1919) that the International Commission would insist upon the “full impartiality of the vote,” they broke faith in this regard as well as in others. Every possible concession was given to the Poles in the plebiscite area, but when the votes were taken on March 20, 1921, the results were a great shock to the French and Poles: 707,554, or 59.6 per cent, voted to remain under German control, while 478,802, or 40.4 per cent, voted to be placed under Polish administration.51

When one considers the indefensible tactics of the French before the plebiscite was held, it is surprising that the vote was so pro-German. One of the best accounts of the situation in Upper Silesia in 1919-1920 is given in the monograph by Professor René Martel, The Eastern Frontiers of Germany:

On April 4, 1919, the Polish Supreme National Council of Upper Silesia got into touch with Korfanty. Adelbert Korfanty, a former journalist and a popular leader, was the man of action for whom Dmowski was looking to prepare and organize the rising. . . . On May 1, 1919, the Polish secret societies . . . demonstrated their patriotic sentiments by pursuing the Germans. The Terror had begun. . . . The secret organizations which he [Korfanty] had built up . . . continued to exist until the plebiscite. . . . The Germans were tortured, mutilated, put to death and the corpses defiled; villages and chateaux were pillaged, burnt or blown up. The German Government has published on the subject a series of White Papers, illustrated by photographs. . . . The scenes which have thus been perpetuated pictorially surpass in horror the worst imaginable atrocities.52

When these bloody Polish outbreaks were finally suppressed, the League of Nations entrusted the task of partitioning Upper Silesia to a commission composed of representatives of Belgium, Brazil, China, Japan, and Spain. The unneutral composition of this commission is worth noting, and their decision reflected their prejudices. Under its terms Poland received nearly five-sixths of the industrial area in dispute. She also was granted “80 per cent of the coal-bearing area . . . besides all the iron ore mines; nearly all the zinc and lead ore mines and a large majority of the works dependent on the primary industries.”53

In commenting upon the farce of this plebiscite, Sir Robert Donald remarks: “Harder to bear than the material loss were the exasperating and cruel moral wrongs and injustices inflicted upon the German community. It is possible enough that had the Allies transferred Upper Silesia to Poland, basing their action upon no other law than brute force, Germany would have resigned herself to the inevitable. . . . But to inflict upon her the tragic farce of the plebiscite, with all its accompaniments of deceit, broken pledges, massacres, cruel outrages, carried out in an atmosphere of political putrescence, was to add insult to injury, moral torture to robbery under arms.”54

Despite Wilson’s reassuring words about a peace that should not be punitive, Germany had been stripped and severely whipped. After these impressive examples of Allied ill faith it was not difficult for Nazi statesmen to plan for expansion without much thought about the usual principles of international law. Law is based upon logic, and, at Versailles, Woodrow Wilson had frankly condemned the science of right reasoning: “Logic! Logic! I don’t give a damn for logic.” Hitler could not have made a more damning pronouncement.

i. The Occupation of the Rhineland

President Wilson was not always on the wrong side of the diplomatic fence at Paris. In the matter of the Rhineland occupation he adopted a vigorous role which completely blocked the execution of an ambitious French program. One of the main French objectives in 1919 was the separation of the entire left bank of the Rhine from Germany and the establishment of autonomous republics friendly to France. Wilson refused to accept this program even though it was ardently advocated by Colonel House.55 With the support of Lloyd George he was able to write into the Treaty of Versailles a moderate provision: “German territory situated to the west of the Rhine, together with the bridgeheads, will be occupied by Allied and Associated troops for a period of fifteen years from the coming into force of the present treaty.”56

The last contingent of the American Army of Occupation left the Rhineland in February 1923; some of the Allied troops remained until 1930. The mere fact that German soil was occupied for a decade aroused resentment in most German minds. This resentment was turned into a feeling of outrage when France quartered a considerable number of her Negro colonial troops in private residences in parts of the Rhine territory. Their insulting and at times brutal conduct towards the German women was regarded as an indication that France would go to extreme lengths to humiliate Germany. In December 1921, General Henry T. Allen sent to Secretary Hughes a complaint that had been filed with the High Commission by a delegation of German workingmen: “We fear to leave our homes and go to work leaving our wives and daughters in our houses with these men. This question troubles us more than houses and more food.”57 Felix Morley, during a vacation in France, was sharply critical of French behavior: “If England and America would leave France to herself, there wouldn’t be a Frenchman on German soil after a week.”58 Three years later the American consul at Cologne wrote to Secretary Hughes a bitter indictment of French practices in the Rhineland. He reported that once in a while German officials were handcuffed and the German police “beaten and kicked.” At Aachen civilians and officials were “horsewhipped.”59 Memories of these insults lingered in German minds and helped to produce a climate of opinion that justified many of the items in Hitler’s program of expansion and revenge.

j. The Starvation Blockade

The armistice of November 11, 1918, did not put an end to the Allied blockade of Germany. For many months after the war was over the Allied governments did not permit food shipments to the millions of hungry persons in Germany. This callous attitude on the part of the Allied delegations in Paris shocked the Labour Party in England which sponsored the humane “save the children” movement. Funds were raised to buy food “when owing to the blockade, starvation stalked gaunt and livid through the streets of thousands of German towns.”60

In Paris, President Wilson appealed “again and again for a free exportation of foodstuffs to the half-starving populations of Central Europe, but always the French Government thwarted him. This French policy filled [Henry] White, who had small grandchildren in Germany and heard much from his daughter of the desperate plight of the people, with futile indignation.”61

The impact of the blockade upon the German people was described by George E. R. Gedye who was sent in February 1919 upon an inspection tour of Germany:

Hospital conditions were appalling. A steady average of 10 per cent of the patients had died during the war years from lack of fats, milk and good flour. . . . We saw some terrible sights in the children’s hospital, such as the “starvation babies” with ugly, swollen heads. . . . Our report naturally urged the immediate opening of the frontiers for fats, milk and flour . . . but the terrible blockade was maintained as a result of French insistence.62

This graphic description by Gedye receives strong confirmation in a recent account written by ex-President Hoover who, in 1919, had been placed by President Wilson in charge of food distribution to the needy population of Europe. When Hoover arrived in London he suffered a severe shock:

I met with Allied ministers to discuss programs and organization. The session was at once a revelation in intrigue, nationalism, selfishness, heartlessness and suspicion. . . . Much as I am devoted to the English, they had one most irritating quality—they were masters at wrapping every national action in words of sanctity which made one really ashamed not to support it all. . . . Within a few hours I found that the greatest famine since the Thirty Years’ War did not seem to be of any great immediate concern. . . . They [the Allied governments] were determined to keep the food blockade not only on Germany and the other enemy states but also on the neutrals and liberated nations. . . . On February 1st [1919] . . . I gave him [President Wilson] the following: “Dear Mr. President: There is no right in the law of God or man that we should longer continue to starve people now that we have a surplus of food.” . . . The President duly took up the question . . . [and] the Big Four ordered my proposed agreement with the Germans applied forthwith.

To present the formula to the Germans they appointed a delegation to be headed by a British admiral, Sir Rosslyn Wemyss. . . . He said to me arrogantly, “Young man, I don’t see why you Americans want to feed these Germans.” My impudent reply was: “Old man, I don’t understand why you British want to starve women and children after they are licked.” . . . When the door for food to Germany opened, I promptly found hate so livid on the Allied side and also in some parts of America as to force me to issue a statement justifying my actions. . . . We had lost four months’ time, and the problems in Germany had in the meantime multiplied. . . . The maintenance of the food blockade until March, 1919—four months after the Armistice—was a crime in statesmanship, and a crime against civilization as a whole. . . . Nations can take philosophically the hardships of war. But when they lay down their arms and surrender on assurances that they may have food for their women and children, and then find that this worst instrument of attack on them is maintained—then hate never dies.63

Finally, under the terms of the Brussels Agreement (March 14, 1919) provision was made for the shipment of food to Germany, but before these supplies were made available thousands of Germans had gone through the tortures of slow starvation. At Versailles the beads in a long rosary of hatred and despair had been forged for the Germans by the Big Four. After 1919 they were counted over numberless times by large groups of unfortunate persons whose health had been wrecked by malnutrition. They neither forgot nor forgave.

k. German Reaction to the Treaty of Versailles

On May 7, 1919, the German delegation in Paris was formally presented with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. When Johann Giesberts read through the long bill of indictment he burst out with vehemence: “This shameful treaty has broken me, for I had believed in Wilson until today. I believed him to be an honest man, and now that scoundrel sends us such a treaty.”64 On May 12 at a great mass meeting in Berlin, Konstantin Fehrenbach, one of the leaders of the Centrist Party, alluded to the attitude that future generations in Germany would adopt relative to the treaty and ended his speech with words of warning that later were implemented by Hitler: “The will to break the chains of slavery will be implanted from childhood on.”65

These chains were confirmed by the Kellogg-Briand Pact which bestowed a formal blessing upon the injustices of Versailles. They could be broken only by force. When Hitler began to snap them, one by one, the noise was heard round the world and the American public was solemnly informed by Secretaries Stimson and Hull that a wild German bull was breaking the choicest dishes in the china shop of world peace. At Nürnberg men were hanged because they had planned to break these vessels filled with national hatreds. Nothing was said of the pseudo-statesmen who prepared at Paris the witches’ brew that poisoned German minds. The results of their criminal bungling will be told in succeeding chapters.

• 1John H. Ferguson, American Diplomacy and the Boer War (Philadelphia, 1939), pp. 208-9.
• 2February 10, 1904.
• 3February 10, 1904.
• 4February 11, 1904.
• 5Tatsuji Takeuchi, War and Diplomacy in the Japanese Empire (New York, 1936), pp. 155-57.
• 6Edward H. Zabriskie, American-Russian Rivalry in the Far East 1895-1914 (Philadelphia, 1946), pp. 101-60.
• 7Ernest B. Price, The Russo-Japanese Treaties of 1907-1916 Concerning Manchuria and Mongolia (Baltimore, 1933), pp. 34-38.
• 8A. Whitney Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (New York, 1938), pp. 129-34.
• 9Theodore Roosevelt to President William H. Taft, December 22, 1910. Knox MS, Library of Congress.
• 10John G. Reid, The Manchu Abdication and the Powers, 1908-1912 (Berkeley, 1935), chaps. 4-10.
• 11Charles Callan Tansill, Canadian-American Relations, 1875-1911 (New York, 1944), chaps. 1-4, 10-12.
• 12Merle E. Curti, “Bryan and World Peace,” Smith College Studies in History, XVI (Northampton, 1931).
• 13Charles Callan Tansill, America Goes to War (Boston, 1938), chaps. 2-6.
• 14Edwin Borchard and William P. Lage, Neutrality for the United States (New Haven, 1937), p. 183.
• 15Tansill, op. cit., pp. 459-60.
• 16Borchard and Lage, op. cit., p. 88. It is interesting to note that in the eventful days that just preceded America’s entry into the World War, President Wilson had so little regard for Secretary Lansing that he complained bitterly to Colonel House about his shortcomings: “I [House] was surprised to hear him [the President] say that Lansing was the most unsatisfactory Secretary in his Cabinet; . . . that he had no imagination, no constructive ability, and but little real ability of any kind. He was constantly afraid of him because he often undertook to launch policies himself which he, the President, had on several occasions rather brusquely reversed.” House Diary, March 28, 1917. House MS, Yale University Library.
• 17President Wilson did not have a clear idea of the actual meaning of the Fourteen Points. In his Diary, December 20, 1918, Secretary Lansing makes the following significant comments: “There are certain phrases in the President’s ‘Fourteen Points’ [Freedom of the Seas and Self-Determination] which I am sure will cause trouble in the future because their meaning and application have not been thought out. . . . These phrases will certainly come home to roost and cause much vexation. . . . He [the President] apparently never thought out in advance where they would lead or how they would be interpreted by others. In fact he does not seem to care just so his words sound well.” Lansing Papers, Library of Congress.
• 18Oscar Cargill, Intellectual America: Ideas on the March (New York, 1941), p. 504.
• 19The correspondence dealing with the pre-Armistice agreement is printed in full in Foreign Relations, 1918, Supplement, I, The World War, I (Washington, 1933), 337-38, 343, 357-58, 379-81, 382-83, 425, 468-69.
• 20Paul Birdsall, Versailles Twenty Years After (New York, 1941), pp. 35-36.
• 21David Lloyd George, Memoirs of the Peace Conference (New Haven, 1939), I, 306-9.
• 22Harold Nicolson, Peacemaking, 1919 (New York, 1939), p. 18.
• 23The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, ed. Charles Seymour (Cambridge, 1928), IV, 343.
• 24Philip M. Burnett, Reparation at the Paris Peace Conference (New York, 1940), I, 63-64.
• 25Ibid., p. 69.
• 26Ibid., pp. 832-33.
• 27Birdsall, op. cit., p. 258.
• 28Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace (New York, 1944), p. 240.
• 29Thorstein Veblen, The Nature of Peace (New York, 1917), p. 261. Secretary Lansing did not share the viewpoint that the Germans had forfeited their colonies through maladministration. In his Diary, January 10, 1918, he remarked: “This purpose of the retention of conquered territory is prima facie based upon conquest and is not in accord with the spirit of a peace based upon justice. . . . it is necessary for peace that the adjustment should be equitable.” Lansing Papers. Library of Congress.
• 30Edwyn Bevan, The Method in the Madness (London, 1917), pp. 305-6.
• 31Arthur P. Scott, “George Louis Beer,” in the Marcus W. Jernegan Essays in American Historiography, ed. W. T. Hutchinson (Chicago, 1937), p. 315.
• 32Ibid., p. 319.
• 33George L. Beer, African Questions at the Paris Peace Conference, ed. L. H. Gray (New York, 1923), pp. 58-60.
• 34Bailey, op. cit., p. 163.
• 35Harry R. Rudin, Germany in the Cameroons, 1884-1914 (New Haven, 1938), pp. 11, 414, 419.
• 36Bailey, op. cit., p. 167.
• 37It is significant that most of Professor Lord’s colleagues on the Inquiry thought that his zeal for Poland was “excessive.” Birdsall, op. cit., p. 178. See also, Hunter Miller, My Diary at the Conference of Paris (privately printed, 1928), I, 289.
• 38Ray S. Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement (Garden City, 1922), III, 37-38.
• 39Miller, op. cit., IV, 224-26.
• 40Seymour, op. cit., IV, 334-35.
• 41Lloyd George, op. cit., II, 637-42.
• 42René Martel, The Eastern Frontiers of Germany (London, 1930), pp. 49-50.
• 43William H. Dawson, Germany Under the Treaty (London, 1933), pp. 149-52.
• 44Diaries, Letters and Papers (London, 1935-37), II, 503.
• 45Documents on International Affairs, 1934, ed. John W. Wheeler-Bennett and Stephen Heald (New York), p. 424.
• 46Miller, op. cit., IV, 224-28; VI, 49-52.
• 47E. Alexander Powell, Thunder Over Europe (New York, 1931), p. 62.
• 48Dawson, op. cit., pp. 102-9. See also, I. F. D. Morrow and L. M. Sieveking, The Peace Settlement in the German Polish Borderlands (London, 1936).
• 49Powell, op. cit., p. 66.
• 50Baker, op. cit., pp. 482-84. Apparently, Henry White did much to give President Wilson the correct view of the situation in Upper Silesia. See Allan Nevins, Henry White (New York, 1930), p. 423.
• 51In the learned account written by Georges Kaeckenbeeck, The International Experiment of Upper Silesia (London, 1942), p. 6, the vote is given as 707,605 for Germany; 479,359 for Poland.
• 52(London, 1930), pp. 79-88.
• 53Dawson, op. cit., pp. 206-9.
• 54Sir Robert Donald, The Polish Corridor and the Consequences (London, 1929), pp. 197-98. See also, Sarah Wambaugh, Plebiscites Since the World War (Washington, 1933); W. J. Rose, The Drama of Upper Silesia (Brattleboro, 1936); Colonel E. S. Hutchinson, Silesia Revisited—1929 (London, 1930).
• 55Seymour, op. cit., IV, 347, 349, 383.
• 56Articles 428-432 of the Treaty of Versailles, The Treaties of Peace, 1919-1923 (New York, 1924), I, 254-55.
• 57General Henry T. Allen to Secretary Hughes, December 22, 1921. 862T.01/346, MS, National Archives.
• 58Ambassador Wallace to Secretary Hughes, Paris, April 27, 1920. 862.00/921, MS, National Archives.
• 59Emil Sauer to Secretary Hughes, Cologne, February 16, 1923. 862.00/1215, MS, National Archives.
• 60Dawson, op. cit., p. 84.
• 61Nevins, op. cit., p. 372.
• 62G. E. R. Gedye, The Revolver Republic (London, 1930), pp. 29-31.
• 63Herbert Hoover, “Communism Erupts in Europe,” Collier’s, CXXVIII (September 8, 1951), pp. 26-27, 68-71.
• 64Alma Luckau, The German Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference (New York, 1941), p. 124.
• 65Ibid., pp. 98-100.