International: Yalta v. Versailles

Having had a few days to ponder the results of Yalta, last week the world began to draw more considered conclusions. Some of the most interesting were comparisons of Yalta with Versailles as instruments for dealing with the immediate problem of defeated Germany. On this basis Yalta looked good.

At Versailles the Big Four had been split before the conference began. Wilson acted rather as an arbiter between an unreasonably vindictive France and a prostrate Germany than as a member of a victorious coalition. Soon British policy likewise came to favor the reconstruction of a moderately strong Germany to balance France.

At Yalta, Big Three cooperation was expressed in willingness to make mutual concessions: Stalin’s disavowal of his Free Germany Committee, Churchill’s concessions on Poland, Roosevelt’s implicit underwriting of Russian security. But most important was the fact that all agreed to the fundamental proposition that Germany must be permanently eliminated as a military power.

Versailles had provided for the occupation of only some 5% of Germany’s territory, which made effective control of German disarmament virtually impossible. Now limited Anglo-American experience in western Germany—and Russian experience in eastern Germany—seems to indicate that Germans cannot be relied on to administer Germany in the interests of peace and stability. So Yalta provided for inter-Allied administration of Germany for some time, and regional Allied control.

Versailles neither expressed unity nor provided effective machinery. Yalta promised both.

Then What? But on the basis not of the immediate problem but of the eventual problem—reconstructing a healthy, peaceful Europe—Yalta’s improvement on Versailles was not so clear.

Versailles broke down completely in solving Europe’s long-range problems—the causes of World War II. The League failed to enforce the peace. The Rhineland was evacuated five years early. When Hitler came along, even Allied governments gave him some support, because he promised order in Central Europe and a crusade against Bolshevism. The system of Versailles provided no unifying policy or principle to keep peace and plenty in Europe.

At Yalta the Big Three agreed that militarist Germany must not rise again, and designed machinery to do the job. But there was little indication that Yalta faced the long term questions: Who will replace liquidated war criminals who have been Central Europe’s rulers? Who will own and manage the economy of Europe? What idea will replace that of the Nazis?

Warrior Winston Churchill was primarily interested in destroying Nazi Germany. Joseph Stalin, mindful of his exhausted country, was interested for the moment chiefly in creating his own Good Neighborhood on pretty much his own terms. Franklin Roosevelt represented a nation which did not know what kind of a Europe it wanted; he himself had not blueprinted the future of Europe for his countrymen.

The long term questions could perhaps wait. There would be other conferences of the Big Three, or the Big Four or Five. But sometime, if peace were to endure, the eventual problem of Germany would have to be decided by united Allies. And meanwhile, it became later every day.