Joachim Wintzer. Deutschland und der Völkerbund 1918-1926. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2006. 634 Seiten. EUR 98.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-506-77519-1.
Reviewed by Wolfram von Scheliha (Global and European Studies Institute, University of Leipzig)
Published on H-German (July, 2008)
The Stony Path toward Reconciliation
After the abdication of the Kaiser and in the face of the defeat in World War I, the idea of a League of Nations (LoN) was discussed in Germany with some enthusiasm. President Woodrow Wilson's concept of a "peace without victory" and without losers[1] was attractive to many Germans in the rather desperate winter of 1918/19. But German desires for a just settlement came too late. When the draft covenant for the LoN was released to the public in February 1919 after the Paris peace conference had already begun, Germans associated the LoN with French revenge. "The present League of Nations," argued historian Otto Becker in 1922, "is not the realization of the idea of reconciliation of nations, but their mockery; it is not an instrument through which to establish the relations of nations based on law and justice, but one to defend the injustices of the Versailles peace; it is not an instrument meant to reconcile nations, but one to suppress some nations--our great nation above all. It will, therefore, be short-lived."[2]
From this perspective, Joachim Wintzer's study of Germany's relations with the LoN before it applied for membership in February 1926 is instructive. His approach illuminates, from a different angle, the central debates about the general direction of foreign policy in the first years of the Weimar Republic. Wintzer draws on discussions from within as well as from without the Foreign Office. Wintzer divides his study into two parts. In the first, he introduces the German institutions that dealt with the LoN: the relevant department in the Foreign Office, political parties, the press, and NGOs like the pacifist movement and the "German League for the LoN." He then categorizes the international framework of foreign relations and differentiates between the "Versailles system" based on the power of the victors; the "Geneva system" consisting of the Wilsonian principals of law and justice in foreign relations; and the world economy, which was subject to the logic of market forces. Wintzer concludes this section with an overview of other nations' attitudes toward the LoN, as well as a summary of the LoN's organs, and of foreign political debates in Germany.
Wintzer's second part makes up almost three quarters of the book. Here, he chronologically details the development of Germany's relations to the LoN from November 1918 up to February 1926. This section is divided into twelve subchapters, each covering a period of four to ten months. This arrangement corresponds less to the dynamics of German attitudes to the LoN than to the rapid sequence of inner German and international crises in the course of which the problem of the LoN was always considered in political debates. The sheer amount of arguments concerning the LoN will require readers to have some stamina in order to make their way through the material, despite the fact that the book is written in a good, readable style. The basic line of German foreign policy toward the LoN was, as Wintzer points out, to make use of the "Geneva system" in order to modify the harsh peace conditions imposed upon Germany by the "Versailles system." Wintzer notes that Germans did not seriously consider the idea of the LoN as an instrument of peacekeeping. One crucial point in the German debate turned out to be the question of whether Germany should insist on a permanent seat in the League's council to mark its equal status as a great power. Wintzer identifies Gustav Stresemann's security initiative of January 1925 as a key moment that led to the Locarno Agreement and eventually to Germany's admission to membership in the LoN. This information does not, however, come as much of a surprise.
The study is an updated version of Wintzer's doctoral thesis. He has examined a great number of archives; in addition to the files of the Foreign Office and the Reich Chancellery, Wintzer was the first to explore the papers of Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, the Foreign Office's expert on the LoN, and the papers of Gerhard Köpke, the head of the western department. He also examined the documents of the LoN's archives, and material from the foreign ministries in Paris, Bern, and Vienna. Why Wintzer found it useful to consult Swiss and Austrian archival documents as well, and these in preference to documents from other countries (for example, Belgium or Poland), however, remains unclear.
Wintzer does not provide an underlying thesis or trenchant arguments. But one has to acknowledge the sheer amount of material he has examined and the many details and facets of the debate on the LoN he presents. Although it is doubtful whether a narrative of almost 600 pages is actually necessary to tell the story, many scholars studying German foreign policy in the first half of the 1920s will appreciate the book as a helpful reference.
Notes
[1]. Woodrow Wilson, Address to the Senate, 22 January 1917, The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, eLibrary at http://wwl2.dataformat.com/Document.aspx?doc=30688.
[2]. Otto Becker, Deutschlands Zusammenbruch und Auferstehung. Zweiter Teil: Bedingungen für Deutschlands Wiederaufstieg, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Carl Heymanns, 1922), 21.
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Citation:
Wolfram von Scheliha. Review of Wintzer, Joachim, Deutschland und der Völkerbund 1918-1926.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
July, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14765
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