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This doc­u­ment cov­ers part of the Board of Stud­ies point regard­ing the role and goals of Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Wil­son at the Paris (Ver­sailles) Peace Conference.

The 1919 Paris Peace Con­fer­ence was con­ducted at the Palace of Ver­sailles shortly – some would argue too shortly – after the con­clu­sion of the First World War. The par­tic­i­pants of this con­fer­ence included then-British Prime Min­is­ter Lloyd George, his French coun­ter­part, Pre­mier Clemenceau, Ital­ian Pres­i­dent Orlando and US Pres­i­dent Wil­son. The defeated pow­ers lacked rep­re­sen­ta­tion at this conference.

The British Prime Min­is­ter, Lloyd George, had been elected on the basis of his (party’s) slo­gans, such as “Make Ger­many pay”, and “Hang the Kaiser”. His actions were restricted by the pub­lic expec­ta­tion, and the divided sup­port of the Lib­eral Party and Con­ser­v­a­tives in Britain, which had forced his depen­dence upon the Con­ser­v­a­tives, despite hold­ing a con­sid­er­able major­ity for his coali­tion in Decem­ber 1918. Pop­u­lar sup­port of a “harsh” peace against Ger­many was one of the lead­ing fac­tors behind his elec­tion, and this polit­i­cal inse­cu­rity domes­ti­cally con­strained his abil­ity to negotiate.

French Pre­mier, Clemenceau, sim­i­larly favoured a harsh peace, although the moti­va­tion dif­fered from that held by Lloyd George and Britain.

Clemenceau, a fig­ure who entered French pol­i­tics in 1870, wit­nessed the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian war soon after this entry. This event may be seen as a cat­a­lyst for the estab­lish­ment of his anti-German sen­ti­ments which are so preva­lent at the con­clu­sion of the First World War, specif­i­cally, man­i­fested at the Paris Peace Con­fer­ence, in which Clemenceau was unyield­ing in his calls and demands for heavy repa­ra­tions against Ger­many, and, ulti­mately, for the com­plete destruc­tion of Ger­many both in an eco­nomic and mil­i­tary sense. The notion of a peace that would per­mit Ger­many any degree of self-determination in the years to fol­low was, to Clemenceau, some­thing unacceptable.

Despite his mis­giv­ings against the Ger­man state, how­ever, Clemenceau recog­nised the impos­si­bil­ity of achiev­ing the utter destruc­tion of Ger­many, regard­less as to how much him­self and the peo­ple he rep­re­sented may desire this out­come. Hav­ing said that, the “peace” process pre­sented an oppor­tu­nity to France by which Ger­many could be tem­porar­ily neutered, both mil­i­tar­ily and eco­nom­i­cally, allow­ing France at least a tem­po­rary reprieve, dur­ing which it could enjoy and exploit trade oppor­tu­ni­ties (amongst other things) which would not have been pos­si­ble if Germany’s greater pop­u­la­tion and eco­nomic capa­bil­i­ties were per­mit­ted to flour­ish as their full poten­tial would per­mit them to (as had pre­vi­ously been the case).

It was under­stood that such an advan­tage would only be tem­po­rary; whilst Ger­many could be weak­ened, it was only a mat­ter of time before the nation reasserted itself, through the re-establishment of its econ­omy, which Clemenceau desired to hin­der by harsh repa­ra­tions, and by the size of the pop­u­la­tion of Ger­many which would make this re-establishment possible.

For two rea­sons, then, it is clear exactly why Clemenceau desired the out­come he did: for France, a severe bur­den placed upon Ger­many by way of repa­ra­tion terms would result not only in the finan­cial sup­port nec­es­sary for the recon­struc­tion of post-World War One France – it would, per­haps just as impor­tantly, hold Ger­many down, per­mit­ting the French peo­ple greater eco­nomic advan­tage in the years to come.

Clemenceau’s demands were clearly against those con­sis­tent with the ideals of a “just peace”, some­thing that was clearly not in accord with Wilson’s four­teen points. Clemenceau, fully aware of this, said of Wilson’s points:

“Mr. Wil­son bores me with his Four­teen Points. Why, Almighty God has only Ten Commandments!”

– Clemenceau regarded the four­teen points as con­tra­dic­tory to his goals, and the goals of his country.

Not that dis­sim­i­larly, Lloyd George like­wise con­flicted with Wilson’s Four­teen Points and the notion of a “just peace”, although his behav­iours dur­ing the Peace Con­fer­ence were sig­nif­i­cantly less anti-German than those exhib­ited by his French coun­ter­part, Clemenceau.

Lloyd George’s goals are com­monly sur­mised in five spe­cific points upon which he wished to gain a con­ces­sion from other par­tic­i­pat­ing par­ties. These con­ces­sions relate to:

1. The destruc­tion of the Ger­man fleet;
2. The destruc­tion of the Ger­man colo­nial empire;
3. An increase in British colo­nial inter­ests and pos­ses­sions, specif­i­cally those in the Mid­dle East for the pur­poses of attain­ing oil resources;
4. The re-establishment of Euro­pean trade, which had been inter­rupted by the war, and;
5. The pre­ven­tion of any coun­try, includ­ing France – or espe­cially France – from dom­i­nat­ing Europe.

The last point is per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant, and con­veys the mis­giv­ings held by Lloyd George towards the motive and activ­i­ties of France even at the begin­ning of the Peace Conference.

Points one and two are in accor­dance with Clemenceau’s demands: the destruc­tion of the Ger­man fleet is a move toward the destruc­tion of Germany’s mil­i­tary capac­ity (albeit in a sphere which Britain wishes to dom­i­nate), and the destruc­tion of colo­nial satel­lites under Germany’s pos­ses­sion assists both in the dimin­ish­ing of the influ­ence and power of the Ger­man empire, whilst simul­ta­ne­ously hav­ing a neg­a­tive eco­nomic impact (although not an impact as severe as Clemenceau would desire) upon Germany.

Point three, relat­ing to the expan­sion of British colo­nial inter­ests, can be seen as another motive behind Lloyd George’s sup­port of the destruc­tion of Germany’s colo­nial pos­ses­sions: by attain­ing more colonies through the repa­ra­tions levied against Germany.

Lloyd George’s fourth point, per­tain­ing to the re-establishment of trade, is in con­tra­dic­tion to Clemenceau’s goals of utterly crush­ing the Ger­man nation in an eco­nomic sense; the ‘re-establishment of trade’ encom­passes trade with Ger­many, also.

Britain had become increas­ingly sus­pi­cious of the motives of France, and the final con­ces­sion Lloyd George wished to achieve ensured that France’s posi­tion could not become one of neg­a­tive dom­i­nance over Europe.

Both Lloyd George and Clemenceau aimed at an out­come ben­e­fi­cial only to their inter­ests, show­ing lit­tle con­cern for the notion put for­ward by Wil­son of a “just peace”. This, com­bined with the tim­ing of the con­fer­ence so soon after the war, and the loca­tion of the con­fer­ence – Ver­sailles, cen­tre of anti-German sen­ti­ment – lead to an out­come which was unable to simul­ta­ne­ously appease Ger­many and quell French secu­rity fears.

• McCal­lum, Anne, Evi­dence of War: Study­ing the First World War through Sources. Rigby Heine­menn, 1996.
• O’Brien, Car­olyn and Mer­ritt, Alan, 1914 – 1918: The World at War. Heine­mann Edu­ca­tional, 1991.
• Guest, Vic, Eshuys, Joe and Lawrence, Judith, World War I: Causes, Course and Con­se­quences. Macmil­lan Edu­ca­tion, 1990.
• “After­math of World War I” Wikipedia. 2004.
  Accessed 14 Nov. 2004 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_World_War_I>.

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