By J. F. V. Keiger

Despite being a victor at the end of the war, France retained a visceral fear of the loser. The idea of imposing a harsh settlement on Germany was generally popular. France was arguably the worst hit of all the powers, with almost one and a half million dead and 700,000 disabled out of a population of barely 40 million. Most of the fighting had been done in France’s northeastern departments, which were devastated. Moral anguish and suffering were widespread, with nearly every family having lost at least one of its members. Not surprisingly, the French wanted to ensure that there would be no recurrence and that the ‘Boche’ be not only punished, but made to pay. However, although Germany was defeated, its armies were technically unbeaten on the field of battle, having agreed to an armistice proposed by the American President Wilson. Even after territorial losses, Germany still had a population of 60 million, which was younger than France’s. This gave it a ratio of men of army age in 1919 of two to France’s one. German heavy industry’s potential was four to one in Germany’s favour. Worse still, France was now devoid of any possibility of an alliance with its traditional counterweight to Germany, Russia, still in the throes of revolution.

It is not surprising that many in France, including leaders such as Marshal Foch, Premier Clemenceau and President Poincare, believed that a golden opportunity to eradicate the German threat should be seized. Before the war was over France’s war aims included regaining Alsace- Lorraine and dismantling German territory, as Germany had done to France in 1871. More extreme elements suggested that Germany be crippled by undoing the unification of 1866 and 1871 and by returning it to a pre-Bismarckian loose federation, originally of some two dozen independent political units. They subscribed to the maxim that German unity was incompatible with French security and that peace was possible only by denying Germany the means and the temptation for revenge. In the peace negotiations opened by President Poincare in 1919 on the symbolic date of 18 January (anniversary of the first proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles), Premier Clemenceau initially supported Foch’s argument that Germany territory be pushed back to the Rhine. This idea was widely supported not just in French military and nationalist circles, but amongst eminent academics and Radical- Socialist politicians. France wanted the left bank of the Rhine as a geostrategic springboard to keep the Reich militarily in check. It was believed that allied troops should be stationed permanently along the Rhine or for as long as it was necessary to ensure that a war of revanche would not take place. This would not involve French annexation, but the creation of autonomous German-speaking states possibly administered by the new League of Nations. But its ‘Anglo-Saxon’ allies opposed French plans. Division of Germany was perceived in Wilsonian terms as a vestige of the ‘old diplomacy’ with its balance-of-power doctrine. Lloyd George and President Woodrow Wilson vehemently opposed anything but temporary occupation along the Rhine with no German loss of territory. Opposition to a policy of crippling Germany pushed France into a policy of containment.

France was obliged to accept only temporary occupation of the left bank of the Rhine, with three bridgeheads to allow Allied troops to strike at the heart of Germany. A 50-kilometre strip running down the right bank was demilitarized. Seventy-five per cent of the occupation zones were occupied by 100,000 French troops. The three zones were to be evacuated over five, 10 and 15 years respectively, earlier if Germany executed the treaty before, but later in the opposite case. In exchange for the concession of temporary occupation in 1919 the USA and Britain offered France a guarantee treaty to come to its aid in the event of a German attack. Clemenceau staked much on the Anglo-American guarantee. But the US Senate, sceptical about a continued American commitment to Europe, rejected the Versailles Treaty on 19 November 1919, undoing not only the American, but also the British guarantee.

The Franco-German problem was not limited to bilateral relations. In the inter-war years it extended to the whole of Europe and notably the newly created states of Central and Eastern Europe. On every issue from the German—Polish border to Czechoslovakian independence France found itself face to face with Germany: the former representing the status quo, the latter revisionism. Europe’s future was dependent on Franco-German relations. Bereft of any great power commitment, France turned to lesser powers, with a shared fear of German aggression. German invasion through Belgium in 1914 had emphasized Belgium’s geo-strategic importance; on 7 September 1920 a Franco-Belgian military convention was signed. As a substitute for the traditional Russian bulwark against Germany in the east (and to avoid Germany establishing a MittelEuropa), France turned to Poland and Czechoslovakia. A military convention was signed with the former on 19 February 1921 and there was an exchange of letters with the latter in January 1924. France went on building its defensive eastern arc through the 1920s by additional agreements with these two allies in 1925, supplemented by others with Romania and Yugoslavia on 10 June 1926 and 11 November 1927 respectively. France’s problem was that Poland and the countries of the ‘Little Entente’ enjoyed poor relations, undermining concerted action against any potential German attack, but saddling France with onerous liabilities and commitments. Besides attempting to squeeze Germany into a ‘Slav corset’, France initially placed great faith in the new League of Nations, arguing for it to be given an international army to maintain peace. The Anglo-Saxons opposed this. Wilson preferred international disarmament, further weakening France’s ability to resist potential German aggression. France was quickly disillusioned with the League as a means of containing Germany.

Containing Germany by bilateral and collective security would prove as illusory as making Germany pay. That Germany should pay reparations was generally accepted, but the question of how much and by what means remained a bone of contention between France and the Anglo-Saxons, who favoured German economic recovery. On the Inter-Allied Reparations Commission, which was supposed to set the level of German reparations by 1 May 1921, France fought to ensure that Germany strictly honoured its reparations payments. But the Anglo-Saxons favoured more and more concessions to Germany. The Versailles Treaty’s economic clauses also provided France with an opportunity to contain German economic might by giving it access to German coal and iron. France obtained the coal-rich Sarre valley, not in perpetuity as it had hoped, but for 15 years, after which the population was to be plebiscited as to its affiliation. Germany was also obliged to deliver large amounts of coal to France, Belgium and Italy. Altogether this could divest Germany of up to one half of its coal output, the primary energy source, thereby strangling German industrial power. Other clauses in the treaty withdrew from Germany 80 per cent of its iron ore, as well as 40 per cent of its productive capacity in cast iron and 30 per cent in steel. The Treaty gave France the possibility of becoming the continent’s biggest steel producer. According to Jacques Bariety, French politicians rather than industrialists had this aim. The politicians saw this as an opportunity to deny Germany the economic might that had underpinned its military supremacy on the European continent.18 Coal and steel would remain important indicators of German industrial potential, partly explaining efforts to neutralize them through the 1951 European Coal and Steel Community.

The French also sought to contain Germany militarily. There was general agreement on denying Germany heavy and offensive weaponry in terms of a high seas fleet, submarines, aviation, heavy artillery, tanks and combat gases. But on the issue of troops Marshal Foch wished Germany to have no more than a small short-service conscription army, while Lloyd George preferred a small professional army. Here again the French lost out and consent was given for a professional army of 100,000 and a small navy of 15,000 men. The Versailles Treaty’s stringent restrictions on Germany were even conditional on general international arms limitation, which Germany would later use politically against the allies.

Thus the Versailles peace conference underscored a discrepancy between two attitudes to Germany. Britain and the USA believed that Germany could be morally disarmed through concessions, while France claimed that Germany would regard any concession as a weakness. The Anglo-Saxons won the argument, but not the peace. France lost on all fronts. Whatever the deficiencies of the Versailles settlement, it contained enough to make a new rise of Germany and a second world war impossible. The real problem was one of enforcement, which necessitated permanent understanding between France, Britain and the USA. The peace settlement was revised in as little as five years of its signature and the remainder undone within two decades. That the peace should turn out to be a 32-year truce, as Foch predicted, was more real for the French than the allies. Gradually, France was backed into the third phase of its relations with Germany — conciliation. Paris sought to neutralize potential German revanche by working more closely with it. This was epitomized in the 1925 Locarno agreements.

There was no clear demarcation between the three policies of crippling, containing and conciliating Germany. They often overlapped or even operated in parallel, according to which politician, permanent official or agency was involved. Some groups never abandoned the idea of crippling Germany, while others remained wedded to Franco-German entente. Strategies for dealing with Germany had competed since 1870. Their conflict became starkly visible in June 1940 when the issue was either continued conflict or collaboration.