0.3 Great war (part ii)  (Page 7/16)

The Treaty of Versailles was a disaster and set the stage for World War II. Some historians look at the 1920s not as a period between world wars but rather as a lull in one great war that began in August of 1914 with a series of war declarations and ended in August of 1945 with the dropping of Fat Man and Little Boy on Japan.

Treaty Fight at Home

President Wilson’s decision to personally lead the US delegation to Versailles while also refusing to even keep senatorial leaders of his own party aware of the negotiations resulted in a contest back at home regarding foreign policy. While a fight between the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government regarding foreign policy was not new, such a fight was also very rare. Nonetheless, ever since the Spanish-American War, culminating with the passage of the War Powers Act of 1973, US presidents and senators have been arguing over which branch of the federal government ultimately controls US foreign policy.

The treaty to end the war and to bring to a conclusion all of the issues and problems (as the victors of the war saw those issues and problems) was signed by all parties on June 28 ^th , 1919. Known as the Treaty of Versailles, the treaty is divided into sixteen sections, containing a total of 440 articles. France gained control of some of Germany’s more productive coal fields, England seized German colonies in Africa and in Asia; France and England claimed the frontier of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East to include Palestine and Syria, and Germany was forced to disarm. The Treaty also demanded Germany to pay for all costs of the war, and approximately two thousand German politicians and military officers will be tried on a variety of crimes, mainly due to submarine warfare as the Allies viewed that as less military and more criminal in nature.

The US Senate had a difficult time getting past the first section of the Treaty, entitled “The Covenant of the League of Nations.” The tenth article of this section describes the collective nature of the League in so much that an attack against any one member will be considered an attack against all members and thus “[t]he Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League.” The common understanding of this clause was that if any member nation is attacked from a foreign power, then all member nations will mobilize their armed forces to aid in the defense of the attacked member state. Of course the underlying belief is that no country would dare attack any member of the League because such an attack would result in the full force of all member armed forces against the aggressor.

The Senate found Article 10 of the Covenant of the League of Nations to be exceptionally troubling because as they understood it, the US –as a member of the League – would be obligated to enter into every war that involves a foreign attack against any member nation. In other words, the US Senate’s authority under Article I, Section VIII of the US Constitution to declare war would be trumped by any tyrant, king, or madman who invaded a member state. Furthermore, in accordance with Article 16, if any member of the League attacked any other member, then all members were required to immediately end all trade and financial relations. The US went to war, in part, over the idea of neutral rights however if the US joined the League, the trade policy of the US could be determined not by the leaders of this country, but by the treaty requirements of the League of Nations.