Transcript Dolchstosslegende

The Aftermath
1919
The End of the War
World War I took the life of more than 9
million soldiers; 21 million more were
wounded. Civilian casualties caused indirectly
by the war numbered close to 10 million. The
two nations most affected were Germany and
France, each of which sent some 80 percent of
their male populations between the ages of
15 and 49 into battle. The war also marked the
fall of four imperial dynasties--Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey.
In January 1918, some ten months before the end of
World War I, US President Woodrow Wilson had
written a list of proposed war aims which he called the
"Fourteen Points." Eight of these points dealt
specifically with territorial and political settlements
associated with the victory of the Entente Powers,
including the idea of national self-determination for
ethnic populations in Europe. The remainder of the
principles focused on preventing war in the future, the
last proposing a League of Nations to arbitrate further
international disputes. Wilson hoped his proposal
would bring about a just and lasting peace, a "peace
without victory" to end the "war to end all wars."
When German leaders signed the armistice, many
of them believed that the Fourteen Points would
form the basis of the future peace treaty, but
when the heads of the governments of the
United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy met
in Paris to discuss treaty terms, the European
contingent of the "Big Four" had another plan
altogether. Viewing Germany as the chief
instigator of the conflict, the European Allied
Powers ultimately imposed particularly stringent
treaty obligations upon the defeated Germany.
After the devastation of World War I, the
victorious Western Powers imposed a series of
harsh treaties upon the defeated nations.
These treaties stripped the Central Powers
(Germany and Austria-Hungary, joined by
Ottoman Turkey and Bulgaria) of substantial
territories and imposed significant reparation
payments.
The Treaty of Versailles,
presented for German
leaders to sign on May 7,
1919, forced Germany to
concede territories to
Belgium (Eupen-Malmédy),
Czechoslovakia (Hultschin
district), and Poland
(Poznan, West Prussia, and
Upper Silesia). Alsace and
Lorraine, annexed in 1871
after the Franco-Prussian
War, returned to France. All
German overseas colonies
became League of Nation
Mandates, and the city of
Danzig, with its large
ethnically German
population, became a Free
City. The treaty demanded
demilitarization and
occupation of the
Rhineland
Perhaps the most humiliating portion of the treaty for the
defeated Germany was Article 231, commonly known as
the "War Guilt Clause," which forced Germany to accept
complete responsibility for initiating World War I. As such
Germany was liable for all material damages, and France's
premier Georges Clemenceau particularly insisted on
imposing enormous reparation payments. Aware that
Germany would probably not be able to pay such a
towering debt, Clemenceau and the French nevertheless
greatly feared rapid German recovery and a new war
against France. Hence, the French sought in the postwar
treaty system to limit Germany's efforts to regain its
economic superiority and to rearm.
The German army was to be limited to 100,000
men, and conscription proscribed. The treaty
restricted the Navy to vessels under 100,000
tons, with a ban on the acquisition or
maintenance of a submarine fleet. Moreover,
Germany was forbidden to maintain an air
force.
As a direct result of war, the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian,
and Ottoman Empires ceased to exist. The Treaty of Saint-Germainen-Laye of September 10, 1919, established the Republic of Austria,
consisting of most of the truncated German-speaking regions of the
Habsburg state. The Austrian Empire ceded crown lands to newly
established successor states like Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the
Kingdom of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs, renamed Yugoslavia in
1929. It also relinquished the South Tyrol, Trieste, Trentino, and
Istria to Italy, and Bukovina to Romania. An important tenet of the
treaty barred Austria from compromising its newly formed
independence. This restriction effectively barred it from unification
with Germany, a goal long desired by "Pan-Germanists" and an
active aim of Austrian-born Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist
(Nazi) Party.
Such economic chaos did much to increase
social unrest, destabilizing the fragile Weimar
Republic. Efforts of the Western European
powers to marginalize Germany undermined
and isolated its democratic leaders and
underscored the need to restore German
prestige through remilitarization and
expansion.
Many Germans forgot that they had
applauded the fall of the Kaiser, had
initially welcomed parliamentary
democratic reform, and had rejoiced
at the armistice. They recalled only
that the German Left—Socialists,
Communists, and Jews, in common
imagination—had surrendered
German honor to a disgraceful peace
when no foreign armies had even set
foot on German soil. This
Dolchstosslegende (stab-in-the-back
legend) was initiated and fanned by
retired German wartime military
leaders, who, well aware in 1918 that
Germany could no longer wage war,
had advised the Kaiser to sue for
peace. It helped to further discredit
German socialist and liberal circles
who felt most committed to maintain
Germany's fragile democratic
experiment.
The difficulties imposed by social and
economic unrest in the wake of
World War I and its onerous peace
terms and the raw fear of the
potential for a Communist takeover
in the German middle classes worked
to undermine pluralistic democratic
solutions in Weimar Germany. They
also increased public longing for
more authoritarian direction, a kind
of leadership which German voters
ultimately and unfortunately found in
Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist
Party. Similar conditions benefited
rightwing authoritarian and
totalitarian systems in Eastern Europe
as well, beginning with the losers of
World War I, and eventually raised
levels of tolerance for and
acquiescence in violent antisemitism
and discrimination against national
minorities throughout the region.
Efforts to revise and defy the more burdensome provisions of
the peace became a key element in their respective foreign
policies and proved a destabilizing element in international
politics. For example, the war guilt clause, its incumbent
reparation payments, and the limitations on the German
military were particularly onerous in the minds of most
Germans. Revision of the Versailles Treaty represented one of
the platforms that gave radical right wing parties in Germany,
including Hitler's Nazi Party, such credibility to mainstream
voters in the early 1920s and early 1930s.
Promises to rearm, to reclaim German
territory, particularly in the East, to
remilitarize the Rhineland, and regain
prominence again among the European and
world powers after such a humiliating defeat
and peace, stoked ultranationalist sentiment
and helped average voters to often overlook
the more radical tenets of Nazi ideology.