Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, Volume XII

Paris Peace Conference 184.01202/44½

Major Arnold Whitridge to the Commission to Negotiate Peace

Berlin , February 15, 1919.
[Received February 18.]

1. There is inclosed herewith translation of speech delivered by Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau, German Minister of Foreign Affairs, on the foreign policy of Germany before the German National Assembly, Weimar, February 14, 1919.

A. Whitridge

[Enclosure—Translation]

Full Text of Speech of Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau Before the German National Assembly, Weimar, February 14, 1919

Ladies and Gentlemen: The new government has confirmed my appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs. This makes it my duty to render account to you concerning the fundamental lines upon which it is my intention to conduct the foreign affairs of the Empire within the bounds of the general policies of the present government. The inheritance left by the collapse of the old system to the new government is a bankrupt estate, and yet I realize that this estate cannot be liquidated according to individual judgment, but according to the wish of the creditors.

I may sum up the problems of German foreign policy in two categories: The clearing away of the situation due to the war and the bringing about of normal relations with the society of the nations. The clearing up of the war-situation is a crying need of the whole world. Germany is not responsible for the fact that it still exists. When the former German government came to an agreement with the Entente and the United States upon the basis of the Wilsonian conditions of peace and accepted the armistice conditions upon this basis, no one would have believed that peace would be so long delayed. Unfortunately, Germany’s disarmament of her free will did not render the enemies any milder, but rather put them in the position to obtain from us still further concessions by repeated threats of renewal of the offensive. Recently they have made the attempt by this means to settle matters which, unquestionably, belong among the subjects to be determined at the moment of the signing of peace and which they intended to decide one-sidedly to our disadvantage by armed pressure, while under the conditions of peace agreed upon they were to be decided upon the basis of justice. I have rejected this attempt and shall reject such attempts. Violence may be employed against us, but we cannot be forced to recognize violence as justice.

We have expected an early peace because armistice conditions only had reason of existence if made for a short duration of time. We are on the point of demobilizing our entire forces hitherto existing and replacing our old army of times of peace, that we could now make good use of in the east, by new republican troops. Nevertheless, the conditions of the armistice are made more stringent each month. If our enemies think it their duty to punish us, they are serving the idea of revenge instead of justice and are destroying the spirit upon which, according to their own declarations, peace should be made. Germany has accepted the results of her defeat and is determined to fulfill the conditions agreed upon with her opponents; these conditions mean a complete renunciation of the political aims of former Germany and the recognition of the truth spoken by one of the former great spirits of Weimar, “History is the Tribunal of the World”. But we refuse our enemies as our judges because of the prejudices. We in our hearts cannot bow to the opinion of the victor but only to the judgment of impartial parties. Therefore, I shall not allow myself to be thrust aside from the articles of the Wilsonian peace program as it is recognized by both sides. Among these belongs first of all the submission of our differences with other states to an international court of arbitration and the renunciation of armed preparations which would permit of a neighbor’s being attacked by force of arms. We stand ready for both limitations of our sovereignty if our former enemies and our future neighbors submit to similar limitations. (Quite right!).

We admit that the position taken by Germany at the peace conferences at The Hague in regard to these two fundamental questions comprised an historic wrong (unfortunately!) for which our entire nation must now suffer. This confession does not include by any means the admission that, as the enemy insists, the German people alone are responsible for the world-war and that they conducted it with a barbarism that is exclusively peculiar to them. We have had reason to complain about war plans of years standing on the part of our enemies and about grave atrocities in their conduct of the war, and we stand ready to permit unprejudiced men who enjoy the confidence of both parties in the war to establish the guilt for the war and in the war. Therefore, we hold fast to the Wilsonian theory that no costs of the war are to be paid to the victor and that no territories of the vanquished are to be ceded. (Applause.) We are duty bound and willing to make good the damages incurred through our attack by the civil population in the regions occupied by us. If we rebuild in these regions what has been destroyed by us, we will do so by our unfettered labor. (Quite right!) We protest against our prisoners being utilized to do such work as slaves, and against the possible continuance of the state of war in order to have an excuse for this compulsory service under the law of nations (Lively applause). Our enemies owe the vastly greater part of their victory not to the military but to the economic conduct of the war (Quite correct!). Hence it follows that peace must be not only a political but inherently also an economic peace. Quite rightly President Wilson characterized the principle of economic liberty and equality of rights as a fundamental condition of a just and lasting peace. We may, therefore, suppose that the decisions of the Economic Conference of Paris of 1916 will be dropped. It is evident that any differential treatment of Germany, even for a time in the matter of trade and commerce would be unacceptable to us (Applause). One cannot treat a people like the German as a second-class nation (Quite right!). One cannot impose upon it a period of quarantine before its admission into the League of Nations, as one keeps a vessel from port on account of fear of the pest (Lively applause!). If we accept just conditions of peace and give guarantees for their fulfillment that a reasonable opponent in a peace-treaty can demand, there is no ground for refusing us most-favored nation conditions.

To be sure we have much to relearn in the sphere of commercial politics. We have not always acted upon the principle that even in international relationships the truth holds—If thou wouldst receive, so must thou give (Very good!). That has come certainly in part from the one-sided bureaucratic complexion of our foreign service. (Quite right!) By bureaucratic means the economic relations of nations, which have been profoundly disorganized by the war, can never be re-established. (Quite right!) It is my intention, therefore, to appoint more than in the past experienced specialists in the foreign service. I have already made a beginning. I shall count upon it that the economic side of our foreign policy will in the future make use of the principle of commercial free trade that a just peace must give us in a manner that is as far from unstable, reckless business as it is from narrow minded, corner-grocer politics. In this way we shall be able the more readily to avoid the dislike of other nations to Germany’s business methods, which had considerable to do with preparing the atmosphere of war.

Freedom of commerce presupposes, however, the freedom of the seas. (Quite right!) Therefore that article of the Wilsonian Doctrine that deals with the freedom of the seas is one of the most important for Germany.

For us in connection with this point the important thing is not so much the rules of sea-warfare,—we do not want to speak of new wars at this time—but rather the peaceful use of the ocean highways and of its coasts and ports. Regarding this important point of the future laws of nations, however, a clear understanding does not yet exist. The Entente last fall withheld their consent to this point; the conditions that they have imposed upon Germany in connection with the promise of delivery of food supplies and the prolongation of the armistice, leads to the fear that they wish to rob Germany of its entire commercial fleet. If it is desired that Germany be forced to enter the League of Nations without a commercial fleet, that would mean a high-handed upsetting of its economic development. (Lively applause!)

Such a metamorphosis cannot take place without the accompaniment of fearful convulsions that would spell continual danger to universal peace.

Nor is it any more possible for Germany to enter the League of Nations without colonies than without a commercial fleet. (Renewed lively applause!) According to Wilson’s program, colonial questions are to be subjected to a free, generous, absolutely unpartisan settlement. According to this program we expect the restitution of our colonial territories that have been taken from us, partly by threadbare excuses. (Quite right!) We stand ready to discuss the ceding of this or that colony, but as rightful owners. Future colonial policies shall above all guarantee the humane treatment of the native population. In this respect—we must admit it—mistakes have been made also by us.

Missionary activities in which Germany played a large part—though they have been greatly circumscribed by the war—must in the interest of the natives be assured. In connection with this we favor the idea of an international control over tropical colonies under the condition that all colonial powers submit thereto and that Germany receives a just share in the utilization and in the products of the colonies. (Quite right!) To be sure participation in colonial activities can only be of importance to us when the active firms, who are to be regarded as the sole supporters of practical colonial policies, are compensated for the damages they have received at the hands of the enemy.

On the other hand we must be prepared to lose valuable portions of the real territory of the Empire. This is above all true of Alsace-Lorraine, the regaining of which was the fruit of our victories and the symbol of German unity. You know that President Wilson has posed the demand that the wrong done by Germany in 1871 by the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine shall be made good. From the standpoint of the new laws of international morality, according to which populations, in the game of the powers, should not be pushed about like chessmen, it was unjust to decide the fate of the people of Alsace and Lorraine without their consent, and even without regard to language boundaries. (Lively applause!) I shall not refer here to past injustices done the German people. I accept Wilson’s point of view because the rights of the present population of Alsace-Lorraine are at stake. Violence is being done these rights, when at this moment the French forces of occupation treat the land like a finally conquered one, and expel or imprison all persons whom they regard as obstructions to their imperialistic plans, and infringe on its language by making it French by violence. (Lively applause from all sides) The Peace Conference has not yet put its seal upon the fate of Alsace-Lorraine. Legally Alsace-Lorraine is still territory of the Empire. From this fact we derive our right to champion the cause of the population of Alsace-Lorraine that their voices be heard in the determination of their fate. (Applause.) Whether they wish to become French Departments or a German free state, whether they prefer autonomy or complete independence: Germany will never believe that the new Europe is founded upon justice until the solemn assent of the entire population of Alsace-Lorraine be given to that article of the treaty of peace that determines the future of their land.

The French plan of joining the Prussian Saar district or the Bavarian Palatinate with Alsace and Lorraine indicates an imperialistic oppression which must be criticised just as sharply as the intentions of former German Chauvinists in regard to the Longwy and Briey basins. (Quite right!) The French are acting in just the same way towards the coal treasures of the Saar as the German Imperialists did towards the mineral wealth of the Longwy and Briey basins. If such propositions are accepted by the Peace Commissioners, then that is the last of any hopes towards ennobling international relations. (Quite right! and applause). Naturally France has a political interest in any weakening of Germany as long as both great nations regard each other as mutual hereditary enemies and therefore are pitted against each other armed to the teeth. The Peace Conference will have the task of furnishing guarantees that will make such a state of affairs seem senseless, but let them beware of finding these guarantees in tearing loose parts of the German Empire which are among its most important members. (Quite right! and vigorous applause). You know what opinions are being spread abroad by France and Belgium with suspicious zeal in Rhineland and Westphalia:—the establishment of an independent republic, which would soon fall under French leadership after the French and Belgian borders had been pushed further into German territory. With great ingenuity these plans make use of centrifugal forces which were let loose in the West by an excessive centralization of our whole economic life in the war offices of the capital of the empire, and recently by certain phenomena attendant upon the revolution in Berlin. (Quite right!) Thus true and honest supporters of the idea of the German Empire have been made the victims of a dangerous subordination, against which I must give most emphatic warning in the interests of German foreign policies. (Applause!)

I must direct the same warning to certain circles in the south of our Fatherland whose cry, “Los von Berlin”, (Free from Berlin) finds an echo which can be understood to a certain extent, but is none the less lamentable. Even if the restoration of the line of the Main might for the moment seem to promise advantages, which a certain subterranean policy of our enemies tried to make the population believe, even during the war, in the long run such a separation will surely lead to the ruin of the political and economic independence of the separated members. (Quite true! and applause). The German people is beyond all state boundaries, even beyond the boundaries of the old Empire, a living unity. One single state is its natural form of existence. (Very true! and applause). We have no intention of making either the Swiss or Dutch into Germans; the only parts of Scandinavia we have annexed are her old Sagas and her present writers. (Very good!)

But our Austrian brothers and we had the same history until the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. We sat with them in the Paulskirche, and the war which separated us, has, at the best, always been thought of as a civil war which realized the “little-German”, instead of the greater-German idea. Once we find ourselves together again, after all the non-German races in the old Hapsburg Monarchy have declared their independence, we know that we have only made a tardy correction of a mistake in the foundation of the Empire, to which the Peace Conference will certainly not refuse its sanction. (Applause!). The German National Assembly may already protest and so may I as leader of German foreign policies, against the injustice done to German-Austria by former members of the Imperial Government. (Quite right!)

The new Czecho-Slovak State is only infringing on the law to which it owes its own creation, when it attempts by the force of arms to subject not only the Germans of Moravia and Bohemia to its rule, but also lays claim to districts towards the southeast inhabited by Germans. It even threatens to attack territory of the German Empire itself. Sharp protest must be made against any such attempts. (Lively applause!). The economic needs of the Czecho-Slovak State, which arise from the fact that it is cut off from the sea, can be discussed and settled quite calmly and quietly. The new Germany has just as much interest in the prosperity of its aspiring neighbor, as the latter has in Germany’s economic soundness. (Quite right!)

Even as we are determined hereafter to make good the rights of nationality where they are in favor of German brothers, we will also recognize these rights even when they are employed against our power. This applies first of all to the Poles. We have declared ourselves as ready to allow those parts of our Empire settled indubitably by Poles, to join the Polish State. We will keep our promise. What districts fall under Article 13 of Wilson’s principles is open to discussion. Some impartial power should decide that point. Until that is decided these territories belong to the Empire. (Applause!). The Prussian State and the Imperial Government are the only powers authorized to exercise sovereign prerogatives therein. The impassioned Polish national propaganda has not been willing to await the decisions of the Peace Conference, but has risen in force against German and Prussian authority, in order to enter into the peace negotiations with as favorable an array of possessions as possible. So they are bringing the horrors of war again to Eastern Germany, which is already threatened with the greater danger of Bolshevic Imperialism. Thus they prevent us from protecting the Prussian East Provinces in an effective manner against the common enemy. These facts must be sufficient to make it clear to everyone understanding the political situation that it is our first duty to call the Prussian Poles to order—to keep them from violence until the decisions of the Peace Conference have been reached. They can no longer claim that it is in self defence, for the new German government has lifted the oppressive special legislation and was ready to meet the Poles in the question of the selection of officials. Despite this, the Poles represented us as the aggressors and the Entente undertakes to forbid us using force against the Poles in our own country. The Empire has refused this unreasonable demand and has in turn demanded the withdrawal of all armed bodies of Poles from German territory. (Applause!). The German government will be in complete sympathy with any other form of procedure which the allied and associated powers wish to institute to produce quiet in Polish districts. We are obligated by the armistice conditions to allow the passage of delegations for this purpose from the Baltic Sea to the Polish State, and to assist them and the journey of the Commission in any possible way. It would be to our advantage that the atmosphere of hate that poisoned German-Polish relations even before the beginning of peace negotiations give place to the purer air of mutual understanding. Unfortunately we cannot foresee in Poland an agreeable neighboring state. (Quite true!) It must and will be our aim to find a modus vivendi which will carefully guard national interests and mutually protect national peculiarities and characteristics. In this connection must be recognized the right of the Poles to an assured communication with the Baltic. This problem can be solved by a regulation by treaty of navigation on the Vistula, and by railroad and harbor concessions, without having to encroach on the prerogatives of the Empire over inalienable West Prussian territory.

That which is just for the German Poles is fitting for the German Danes. The German government considers it its duty to grant to the Danes the same right to self-government that it demands for the Germans themselves. After the development which affairs have taken, I hope that on our northern boundary an example will be set showing how a national disagreement of years’ standing may be harmoniously settled. (Applause!). The German people is united in the wish to live in peaceful relations with the Danes, relations not disturbed by any secret complaints. The majority of the Danish people will certainly not wish that Germany’s defeat should be misused in order to make German land Danish. (Quite right!)

The coming peace negotiations will present a theme that is characteristic of them. Among all the peoples engaged in the war, millions of hearts are demanding the most serious attention for an international regulation of the social question. Even as after the Reformation, treaties of peace could not be signed without clauses regarding religious liberty, and after the upheaval of the French Revolution the question of political freedom concerned the Peace Congress, now after the world war of the masses, the question of the social freedom of the working classes must be internationally settled. (Applause!). This demand can be founded on the principle of economic equality of rights. This principle will open equal possibilities on the world market, to every member of the League of Nations. It would work to the disadvantage of socially conscientious and progressive nations, if the exploiters of human energy were free to take advantage of their low cost of production in cutting out their competitors. (Lively applause!). But here the aim sought is not only material but is of a more noble nature,—its basic thought being that the common task of all men is to make life richer and more complete, and not, in a period of high civilization to debase it to mere parts of the machine in the process of production. (ApplauseI). This thought is forcing its way with such elemental strength, that circles which have withstood it up to the present will finally have to bend before the momentum of social forces. I do not mean by that decisions by force; on the contrary I see in the policy of force now carried on by the Russian Bolshevists rather the defeat than the victory of socialistic principles. (Quite right!) It is a question of peaceful reasoning about the way which social development shall follow. Germany is not running any danger of a ruinous transformation of its existing conditions. For decades Germany has been making considerable progress down the road which all must travel. The thought of social freedom is nowhere more at home than in Germany. That makes our duty all the more imperative,—not to conclude peace without trying to secure international assent to our social program. That the peaces concluded in the east were of a purely capitalistic nature was a disavowal of our social spirit. Such treaties are today a danger for any conqueror. The German government has decided to take essentially the ground held by the conferences at Leeds and Berne when it comes to clauses in the peace treaty about labor laws and protection and insurance of laborers.

We expect that the coming peace will create a strong organization of the world in the League of Nations proposed by Wilson, which alone will make possible such a common task. The idea of a League of Nations, which only a short time ago seemed a vision of idealistic dreamers, has now come into the clear light of actuality. Already a great number of burning questions concerning a League of Nations have been brushed aside in Paris, which could not be settled by an interchange of opinions among the Powers.

Germany is resolved to cooperate unhesitatingly in the establishment of the League, even though the others should regard us with the deepest suspicion and the League should have been planned to prevent Germany from inaugurating a warlike policy,—which, indeed, is far from our ideas. This suspicion we must overcome with a clean righteous love of peace. (Approval!). An immediate proof of this will lie in the determined renunciation of any policy of armament. Germany will soon be forced for economic and financial reasons to limit its armament greatly, retaining only what is necessary for the preservation of internal order and for the security of our outer boundaries. For a foreign policy that is founded on an overwhelming armament may be a comfortable, but it is mostly an evil and an unfruitful policy. (Very true, from the Left). In any case, you can expect from me a conduct of national affairs which will not be tapping its sword every moment in order to accomplish its designs, but which rather will persuade its opponents that it is to their own interest to fall in with our purposes. A material disarmament is not sufficient, a spiritual disarmament must go hand in hand with it. We must handle all differences of righteous nature that may arise between us and any other nation in a conciliatory spirit. If they cannot be avoided diplomatically, we must leave them to the decision of a court of arbitration, even though there be danger that sometimes a wrong might be done us. At the same time, we shall make it our business to build up an international arrangement for negotiation and settlement of all problems, which are difficult of purely disinterested decision. The propositions made by Bryan^5b were the forerunner for such a union.

The establishment of the principle of arbitration in the League of Nations will result in the allaying of differences of opinion between its members, before they have taken on the harshness that demands the opinion of a court. I am persuaded that the positive problems that will eventually be placed before the League can be solved only by a strong and enduring organization. From that arises the need of officials chosen by common election and some Council of a League-Parliament such as is already prepared for by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Finally, the League of Nations must have strong means of enforcement in order to put its decrees into effect. The surrender of a considerable part of sovereignty that results therefrom can be demanded of a free people only when it can share in the executive power and furnishes on its part the means of enforcement.

We cannot enter into any League of Nations in which we shall be only a subject for executive action. (Right!) Particularly there will be many difficulties in establishing the participation of the nations in the committees of the League, as well as the jurisdiction of the committees and their methods of operation. But I do not give up hope that mankind, martyred by war, will attain to a new and better regulation of national relation as the fruit of its sacrifices and suffering. It will then be possible that hate will give way to consideration without which no human relations can exist. That must be not only for the enemy nations of the west with whose leaders we are now negotiating but also for our neighbors on the east with whom the war first broke out and with whom the first peace was made, but with whom we remain in fact in a state of war without conventions or diplomatic relations. The Russian Soviet republic has declared to the Entente a willingness to join in negotiations on the basic principles that it would stop the Bolshevistic propaganda among other peoples, on condition that it might control the domestic affairs of Russia without foreign intervention. As far as Germany is concerned, I see no reason for refusing to enter into an understanding with Russia on this principle. One would think that such a program must secure the assent of all the statesmen of the warring nations. There should be only one condition to it, that Russia also should accept the principle of Wilson referring to the self-determination of peoples. The League of Nations must remain only a rump if those nations which can be kept from war are not parties to it. It is not feasible to establish the permanent existence of a League unless the neutral nations are heard. (Very true!) The warring nations will be all the less willing to shut them out since they owe gratitude to the neutral nations for the suffering and sacrifices that they have gone through for the benefit of the warring nations. I take this opportunity to acknowledge gladly in the name of the entire German people that part of the debt of thanks which is due from Germany, and I know that I have therein the concurrence of the German National Assembly. (Vigorous approval!). I am thinking especially of the conspicuous, unforgettable service which the peoples and governments of Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Spain and Switzerland rendered to interned Germans and prisoners, and of the friendly reception which many of our children and sick found among them. (Renewed vigorous approval!). May an international truly humanitarian sentiment spring from this seed which will be more enduring than the dragons teeth of the war. (Applause!).

Ladies and gentlemen, the government in whose name I am about to conduct our foreign policy is under the guidance of the German working class. But it is the government of a unified socialist and bourgeois democracy. On that memorable day which gave to the German nation its first self-chosen government, it was established that the leaders of democratic Germany could for the first time speak to other nations fully empowered in the name of the German people. That means for me, as long as I know myself to have the confidence of the leaders of the German people, a mighty support, which my predecessors did not have. The confidence that I beseech from you will not be lessened because of the name which I have inherited from my ancestors. I hope to show you that a man can be a Count and a convinced democrat. (Good!) Democracy does not mean government by the masses as such; only the ablest must lead and govern. A wholesome people wishes nothing else. The will of the people must try for that in its elections, but it has the means to correct its mistakes. (Very true!) I know that I can hold this place only so long as it approves the conduct of my office. You are assembled here to set up the new structure of the German nation, a structure that must serve not the ends of warlike might, but the works of peace and civilization. If I have taken so much of your time on questions of foreign policy, I demand it as a right because this National Assembly must also deliberate on the different means whereby Germany may put an end to the war. The decision which you will offer to the new nation, will be the cornerstone on which the German representatives will establish their negotiations with the enemy. The spirit that may animate your debates will be conclusive on the question whether the conquerors of the German people shall recognize it as deserving of justice, or shall offer conditions which will force us rather to accept the utmost consequences than to bow to them. (Applause!). Certainly Germany will have heavy damages to pay both within and without, especially to Belgium, and on that we have no inclination to speak haughtily. (Very true! from Independent Socialists.) But we have immeasurably valuable possessions both within and without, and therefore a duty to look to our individuality and independence as against our opponents. (Vigorous applause!). We are conquered but not dishonored. (Bravo!) The greatest poet of German freedom says, “Unworthy is that nation which does not gladly place its all on its honor.” (Applause from the Right!). Contentment has gone from many of us, but will, unshakeable will, stands fast. (Applause from the Right!). A part of the dignity of the German people has been given into my hand, and I swear that I shall preserve it. (Vigorous applause and handclapping).

1. Treaties for the advancement of the general peace negotiated under the direction of William J. Bryan, Secretary of State, 1913–1915. For citations to treaty texts, see Foreign Relations, General Index, 1900–1918, p. 420.