A Case Study on Trianon

War, if reason prevails, is waged to obtain a better peace than that which existed prior to the hostilities. During the 19th and early 20th century-an era of balance of power and limited wars-the victor usually attained his goals or at least part of them, through peace negotiations, which often contained compromises. During the last war cycle which preceded World War I, this was still the case. In the Crimean War Russia lost; consequently she had to give up the southern part of Bessarabia and demilitarize her Black Sea shores. In 1859, France and its Sardinian ally won. As a result, Austria had to give up Lombardy, satisfying part of the victor's goal. In 1866 Prussia won; consequently Austria was expelled from Germany and the German Confederation was dissolved. In 1870 the Germans won, and France had to give up Alsace and Lorraine and reconcile itself to the unification of Germany. In 1905 Russia lost, resulting in Japan's expansion of its possessions in the Pacific area at the expense of Russia. In the two Balkan wars, the Balkan states won. The consequence was the virtual elimination of the Ottoman Empire from the Balkans.

In all these wars the belligerents entered the war with a design for the post-war peace and attained all or part of what they intended to gain. Thus the resulting peace was, without exception, better for the victors than what they had enjoyed prior to the wars.

This was not, however, the case in World War I. None of the great powers started hostilities in 1914 with a definitive design for the post-war peace.¹ In fact, not one of the belligerents, victors, or vanquished envisaged in 1914 anything which would have been similar to the consequences of World War I. Except for a small band who followed Pilsudsky into Russia even before the official declaration of war in 1914, no one went to war to restitute Poland nor to create a Yugoslavia. Even the small group of political and military leaders in Belgrade, who wanted the war more than anyone else, envisaged in a possible victory only the enlargement of Serbia. Nor did anyone enter the war to create Czechoslovakia. Even Masaryk went into

exile in the fall of 1914 to propagate the transformation of the Habsburg monarchy from its dualistic into a trialistic form, to achieve for the Czechs rights identical to those that the Hungarians had achieved in 1867. No one went to war to destroy the German, Russian, Ottoman or Habsburg Empires, and most certainly, no one sought to create the first socialistic state-the USSR. Not even Lenin had dreamed of its rise in the near future. Yet these were the wholly unexpected results of World War I.

After the war, considerable scholarship was devoted to substantiating the supposition that the dissolution of the four empires and the inevitable creation or enlargement of various East Central European states were the result of organic historical processes.² Inevitability is a questionable assumption in history. While economic, social and other forces certainly dominate historical developments, they do not predetermine them. Among other considerations, the effect of the individual on historical evolution is enormous. Simply consider the course of the French Revolution without Robespierre or Napoleon; 1917 without Lenin; the USSR without Stalin; or, for that matter, German National Socialism without Hitler.

The thesis that the reorganization of East Central Europe after World War I was an inevitable culmination of organic developments, determined by forces accumulated through generations, is questionable. These forces had only a moderate effect on developments, and came to play a role only when the character of war changed to totality. This, in turn, defeated any effort to conclude a rational peace.

Until 1916, excepting a few peace feelers, no meaningful peace proposal was made by belligerent governments. In late 1916 a series of peace proposals were suddenly put forward, all of them without exception advocating compromises. They contained no demands for unconditional surrender or a dictated peace.

On November 14, 1916, Lord Landsdowne,³ a minister without portfolio in the Asquith cabinet, put forward a memorandum on the need for peace negotiations. The Landsdowne memorandum recommended a serious investigation of the possibility of a peace and advocated that a statement be made by the British government indicating that the destruction of the German Empire was not her goal. He favored a peace on the basis of status quo ante bellum. The fall of the Asquith government and the installation of the Lloyd George cabinet on December 16 put an end to Landsdowne's activities,⁴ at

least temporarily. However, the affair did not die without vitriolic attacks on Landsdowne later.⁵

Shortly after the Landsdowne memorandum was drafted, Francis Joseph I died. The date was November 21, 1916. Upon ascending the throne, the new Emperor and King, Karl, declared in a manifesto⁶ his desire to do everything in his power to end as soon as possible the horrors and sacrifices of the war. Germany, embarrassed by the statement, felt obliged to issue a memorandum. It proposed that the belligerents bring forward recommendations for a post-World War peace. The Reichstag passed a peace resolution on July 1917.⁷ Shortly after the German announcement, President Wilson proposed⁸ that as an essential prerequisite to peace negotiations, the belligerents state their war aims. Several other propositions followed, including a papal Encyclical,⁹ whose aim was to promote the cause of peace. None of these propositions negated with greater force all the heretofore universally accepted theses-among them the idea of the inevitability of a factual peace arrangement for East Central Europe and the thesis of the inevitability of the dissolution of empires-than did the Sixtus affair.¹⁰ Emperor and King Karl asked his brother-in-law, Prince Sixtus of Bourbon, an officer in the Belgian army, to forward his peace proposals to the British and French governments. The Prince accepted the mission and made several trips to Vienna, Paris and London. As the particulars of the affair are well known, a detailed exposition is unnecessary; only a few points should be emphasized. Above all, the Habsburg Emperor and King was the first among all the belligerent heads of state who offered to give up territories under his own sovereignty for the sake of peace. He proposed the establishment of a South Slavic monarchy that would include Serbia, Montenegro, Albania and the two Austro-Hungarian provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. After long and arduous negotiations, in early August 1917, the entente powers' reply was positive. It contained nothing about unconditional surrender or the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, and recommended that only Trentino should be ceded to Italy. Even Trieste was to remain a free port. Instead of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the entente powers proposed the enlargement of the dual state by the addition of Silesia and Bavaria. Even resurrected Poland was to become, within her 1772 borders, a monarchy under a Habsburg king.

During the Sixtus negotiations, a number of new, concrete peace

proposals emerged. Prior to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty on February 9, 1918, none of them was anything but a compromise peace proposal. For example, Prime Minister Lloyd George declared in January 1918 that the breakup of Austria-Hungary was Britain's aim. Even according to President Wilson's fourteen points, promulgated on January 18, 1918, the place of Austria-Hungary was to be safeguarded among the nations.¹¹

Two facts are demonstrated here. First, that the entente intention was to negotiate a peace with possible compromises. Second, and more important, the dissolution of Austria-Hungary was not contemplated by the Western powers until early 1918. The question arises: why did a multitude of peace proposals begin to emerge in late 1916, whereas none had been put forward before. One can also question why the original spirit of compromise changed in 1917 to a determination to fight to the bitter end, and to impose a treaty on the vanquished rather than to negotiate with them.

With no intent at oversimplification, it should be emphasized that one of the major causes of this change of attitudes and purposes was the change in the nature of warfare in 1916 and 1917-a period when World War I changed into a total war.

Total war is an armed combat waged with all national resources: human, as well as material. In total war, big battalions are neither more nor less important than energy and financial resources such as farms, factories, mines, transportation systems, research establishments. All these become elements in waging the war and, subsequently, legitimate targets of hostile action. The unrestricted British blockade of the Central Powers and the German reply-unrestricted submarine warfare-are cases in point. Since all citizen soldiers and civilians participate in the war effort in total war, the maintenance of morale, the efforts to increase the population's will to fight and destroy the enemy, became pivotal. Thus, psychological warfare is a basic ingredient of the war effort, and it is not any less important than armed combat and economic warfare.¹²

Whether World War I was a total war is a question that can be resolved by analyzing the events of 1916 and early 1917. Between February 1916 and mid-May of 1917, three battles changed the face of World War I. In the battle of Verdun 522,000 Frenchmen and 434,000 Germans died. In the battle of Somme 615,000 allied soldiers (420,000 British and 195,000 French) and 650,000 Germans died. The Nivelle offensive, which lasted from April 29 to May 20, 1917, and

was supposed to break through the German position, resulted in the death of 120,000 Frenchmen in five days. It did not result in mentionable advance in the front.¹³ This outcome precipitated widespread mutiny in the French Army.¹⁴ Only the extraordinary discipline of the entente media and the deficiency of German intelligence service prevented the German High Command from learning that the French sectors of the western front were virtually denuded. These battles, with their unprecedented waste of human lives and material, and their remarkable lack of success, revealed that the war was hopelessly stalemated. Rapid industrial development and technological advances prior to and during the war created a formidable fire power. They did not at the same time produce equivalent means of mobility. (This happened only later, in the interwar decades.) The result was a deadlock in the trenches. Statesmen saw but two alternatives: either to start peace negotiations and accept compromises, or to push the war effort to its extreme limits, and dictate peace to the vanquished. This explains the multitude of peace proposals, most of which date from late 1916.

Since all the compromise efforts failed for one reason or another, only the second alternative appeared to remain open. Subsequently, the world was dragged into the continuation of the first total war in modern times. As it was already indicated, a basic ingredient of total war is psychological warfare. Propaganda is a major weapon in this warfare, thus it is not surprising that the role of propaganda grew by leaps and bounds, to the point of madness. In a life and death struggle, propaganda served no other purpose but to strengthen the morale of its own and undermine the enemy's will to fight. In such efforts truth plays no role.¹⁵ War propaganda on both sides fostered the belief that one's own side was without flaw while the enemy was the embodiment of evil. It created a state of mind which tolerated no compromise and which was slow in yielding its distortions. This war propaganda poisoned European minds and created a cancer more harmful and more lasting than the physical losses caused by the war. The failure of compromises led to the intensification of combat in a total war. And total war shaped total victory, and led to a reflex action: dictated peace, a peace that saw no victors. Even though the victorious leaders foresaw that a dictated peace would be the harbinger of future wars (Professor Sakmyster argues this point eloquently below), they seemed to be unwilling or incapable of overcoming its momentum. The statesmen of the victors could have shaped history

in harmony with their beliefs. They rather declined that august role. World War I, therefore, became what Raymond Aron has called a "hyperbolic war,"¹⁶ one that created more problems than it resolved. Among the problems created was Trianon.

Notes

1. Kenneth I. Calder, Britain and the Origins of New Europe, 1914-1918 (London: 1976), p. 8.

2. Wilfried Fest. Peace or Partition (New York: 1978), pp. 7-9. For a brief but excellent summary of the war aims see Gerhard Schulz. Revolutions and the Peace Treaties. This book also identifies peace feelers in 1915; first swallows that did not herald the arrival of the spring of peace. On war aims see A.J.P. Taylor "The War Aims of the Allies in the First World War" in R. Pares and A.J.P. Taylor, eds., Essays presented to Sir Lewis Namier. (London, 1956). For Hungary's position see Norman Stone "Hungary and the Crisis of July, 1914," in Walter Laquer and George L. Mosse, eds., 1914 The Coming of The First World War (New York, 1966), pp. 147-164.

3. Sir Charles Petrie, Diplomatic History, 1713-1933 (London: 1944), pp. 316, 317, 322. For the increasing interest in peace in 1916, see also Z.A.B. Zeman. The Gentlemen Negotiators: A Diplomatic History of the First World War (New York.. 1971).

4. Lloyd George, War Memoirs (London, 1933-36). W. S. Churchill, The World Crisis (London: 1923-31). A.J.P. Taylor, English History, 1914-45 (New York, 1965), p. 65.

5. Gordon A. Craig, "The Revolution in War and Diplomacy" in Jack J. Roth, ed., World War I: A Turning Point in Modern History (New York, 1967), p. 16.

6. Petrie, Diplomatic History ... , p. 317.

7. Verhandlungen des Deutschen Reichstages (1917), July 19, 1917. See also Zeman, The Gentlemen Negotiators. .,p. 116.

8. R. S. Baker, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters (New York, 1927-39).

9. Pope Benedict XV's Peace Proposal, August 1, 1917. Sidney Z. Ehler and John B. Morall, Church and State Through The Centuries (Westminster, Maryland, 1954), pp. 374-377.

10. Robert A. Kann, Die Sixtus Affare und die geheimen Friedensverhandlunger Osterreich Ungarns im ersten Weltkrieg (Wien, 1966); Pest, pp. 64-76.

11. Congressional Record, Vol. LVI (1918), part I., pp. 680-81. Richard B. Morris, ed., Basic Document in American History (New York, 1956), pp. 153-57.

12. Charles Roetter, The Art of Psychological Warfare, 1914-1945 (New York: 1974), pp. 27-94.

13. For the place of World War I in the framework of wars since the defeat of Napoleon see 3. David Singer and Melvin Small, The Wages of War 1816-1965; A Statistical Handbook.

14. Richard M. Watt, Dare Call It Treason (New York, 1963).

15. Arthur Ponsonby, M.P., Falsehood in War Time. Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated Throughout the Nations during the Great War (Torrance, Cal., 1980). First published in Britain in 1928.

16. Raymond Aron, The Century of Total War (Boston, 1955), pp. 24-31.

A Case Study on Trianon