stable if it is judged unacceptably unjust by a disadvantaged great power. Making an
enduring peace is more of a challenge than making war. But the subsequent peace is, after
all, what the preceding war was all about. If a somewhat punitive peace settlement is
dictated without negotiation to a defeated great power, its authors require a robust plan
which will deny that great power the ability to seek eventual violent, or other coercive,
redress of its grievances. Spencer C. Tucker penetrates to the heart of the problem with
Versailles and the international relations of the next twenty years when he writes: ‘the
peace rested not so much on French strength as on German weakness’ (Tucker, 199 8 :
227). Over those twenty years, that Franco-German strategic imbalance eventually would
be reversed.
Germany’s army had been beaten in the field, but its territory had been barely touched
physically by the war. In fact, many Germans had difficulty believing that the war had
really been lost. In truth, Versailles trod an indecisive course between a punitive and a
moderate settlement. It was as punitive as France could impose, and as conciliatory as
the United States and Britain could achieve in the face of French anger and anxiety.
The details of the case signified a great deal less than did national perceptions of what
had been perpetrated. The whole peace settlement comprised treaties with Germany
(Versailles, 2 8 June 1919), Austria (Saint-Germain, 10 September 1919), Bulgaria
(Neuilly, 27 November 1919), Hungary (Trianon, 4 June 1920) and Turkey (Sèvres,
10 August 1920). The last of these needed to be revised comprehensively by the Treaty
of Lausanne of 24 July 1923, following a period of intense warfare between Greece and
Turkey and a massive enforced exchange of populations across the Aegean. It is probably
most sensible to regard the establishment of the peace settlement as being completed,
save with respect to reparations and disarmament, by the Locarno Treaty of 16 October
- This signified the general acceptance of Weimar Germany back into the family of
respectable powers. By its terms, Germany, France and Belgium guaranteed ‘the main-
tenance of the territorial status quoresulting from the frontiers between Germany and
Belgium and between Germany and France, and the inviolability of the said frontiers as
fixed by or in pursuance of the Treaty of Paris signed at Versailles on June 2 8 , 1919’
(Article 1; quoted in Goldstein, 2002: 120).
The peace settlement to World War I could not help but be a legacy of that long
struggle to the future. Its terms and the ways in which they worked, or failed to work,
depended wholly upon the dynamic political context and its associated strategic context.
The crucial changes in those contexts are examined in the next section. The settlement
satisfied no one. It humiliated and punished the Germans. In the view of the French it
made no reliable provisions for their future security. In the eyes of the British it was
unduly harsh on Germany, especially in its economic dimension. And it made unaccept-
able demands upon the Americans. They would not sign up for a League whose Covenant
was keyed to the principle of collective security, a principle that would require the United
States to take action abroad, not always at its own discretion. It left Italy convinced that
it had been short-changed in rewards for its wartime sacrifices. Rome had received
promises of extensive territorial acquisition at the expense of Austria, Hungary, Turkey
and even Germany. That was how London and Paris had bribed the country into bel-
ligerency in 1915. And, last but not least, Japan, a successfully opportunistic ally in the
war, was thoroughly aggrieved by the failure of its allies and co-belligerents, especially
the United States, to support its predatory demands upon China. However, this list of
The twenty-year armistice, 1919–39 103