In 1920, this historian managed to predict World War II step by step!
He called out the Anschluss and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact included, by reading maps and history books. Buckle up, in this 🧵 we will explore the most prophetic book ever written in history.
After WW1, Germany was amputated of 13% of its territory and 10% of its population by the treaty of Versailles. The Rhineland was demilitarized, the Saar coalfields given to France, the German army reduced to 100 000 and its fleet to 6 battleships (and no submarines).
In 1920, a then obscure British economist published “The Economic Consequences of Peace”. He predicted that this harsh « Carthaginian peace » would ultimately collapse Europe’s economic model. He argued that the allies need to help, not punish, Germany. The author is John Maynard Keynes, one of the greatest economic thinkers and his book continues to shape the way we think of Versailles and post-war treaties. His book is often hailed as one of the most prescient forecast of the economics and politics of interwar Europe.
In comes… Jacques Bainville, a respected French historian who thinks Keynes is totally missing the bigger picture Politics trump economics, especially with Versailles. To make that very clear, he calls his pamphlet the Political Consequences of Peace. For Bainville Versailles is “a peace that is too soft for its hardness, and too hard for its softness.” It does humiliate Germany, but crucially it doesn’t seriously weaken it. Germany remains Europe’s demographic giant.
Worse still, Germany remains united. His main thesis is that Versailles is a moral and economic treaty, not a political treaty. As a result “Germany is unified in contrast to a fragmented Europe. That’s the mother of all troubles.” Bainville is voicing long-established foreign policy thinking in France: for centuries France had kept Germany divided into a myriad of micro entities.
As François Mauriac would write during the Cold War “I love Germany so much I’m glad there are 2 of them”. The 30 year war is a good example of this strategy. France joined the largely protestant anti-Habsburg coalition, limiting the Habsburg’s influence in Germany.
By the way I did a thread on the crazy logistics of this war that you should check out.
It took Germany a century to recover from the demographic disaster that was the 30 year war. In the mean time France was the clear demographic powerhouse of Europe with weak neighbors on its eastern border. Here’s the population map of Europe in 1789. But the French slipped up in the 1800s. Prussian chancellor Bismarck brilliantly managed to prey on an isolated Austria to take the south of Germany in 1866.
Napoleon the 3rd stood on the sidelines. Perhaps the most consequential foreign policy decision in french history… 4 years later the Prussian war machine turned its eyes on France. Bismarck brilliantly isolated France from the rest of Europe. Prussia crushed the French army, occupied Alsace-Lorraine occupied and crowned The Prussian king Kaiser of a united Germany in… Versailles!
So when Bainville is writing his book, Germany has only been united for 80 years. He argues that the humiliation of Versailles should have been shouldered by Prussia, not by the whole of Germany. Instead it will create finalise German unity through this shared humiliation.
Famously post 1918 Germany became a massively violent political battleground with communist and fascist militias battling it out in the streets. Aborted revolutions and failed coups nearly toppled the Weimar Republic. Here are some scarily accurate predictions from Bainville:
On the demobilized war veterans in a chaotic political context he says:
“Perhaps new forms of militarism are being born [in the debris of the imperial army]. The only thing missing is the opportunity and the man who will set this militarism in motion.”
Bainville fears that the Germans will be
“chained to the same ball, with only one government, perhaps tomorrow one leader, to train them to break their chain.”
He wanted instead a broken up Germany in regional entities, with their own armies and Princes. Something that was in the air until the communist threat waved it away. The allies, even the staunch anti-German Clemenceau, always treated German unity as a fait accompli. But what makes the treaty of Versailles especially stupid for Bainville, is the larger European geopolitical context in which a humiliated Germany finds itself:
Namely that Germany is surrounded by dwarves
Throughout the 19th century, great powers were constrained by a complex balance of power. Players of the diplomacy game know this tension well. But in the post-1918 world, and with the dismantling of Austria-Hungary, Germany had no one to check its ambitions in Central Europe. Germany is surrounded by weak new entities: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria. Many of whom have inherited chunks of Imperial Germany. Easy prey for German revanchism Reading these new maps, Bainville predicts everything: Anschluss, Sudetenland, Ribbentrop pact included.
The 1st humiliation? Separating East Prussia from the rest of Germany at the benefit of Poland, which has a 1/3 of Germany’s population. Bainville writes ‘Germany just has to stretch its claws to reunite this island. Herein are written the misfortunes of Poland and Europe'
Worse still, Bainville predicts that, as it has happen many times throughout history, Germany and Russia will « marry through Poland ». Germans and Russians are complementary he argues: « Poland seems to have been invented to hasten a rapprochement ». Bainville just casually predicted the invasion of Poland in 1939 and the Molotov Ribbentrop pact 20 years before they happened!
While he predicts that Poland would fight to the death with Germany, what about the new Czechoslovak state to its east? With 3 million Germans in Bohemia , war would be suicide. As a result he predicts its « submission » to Germany. In effect, the Czechoslovaks have little choice but to submit. Hitler gets the Sudetenland with its strong German contingent in 1936 at the Munich conference before annexing the whole of Czechia.
On Austria, let me quote him directly:
“Further south, it’s worse. Here is Austria, an authentic piece of Germany. It alone is detached from the German unity. As long as one wanted to create an independent Austria, there had to be other independent parts of Germany as well.
Too great a temptation for Germany to reincorporate the Austrian countries into the German homeland. Too great a temptation for the state of Vienna to join a vast and powerful community.”
The peaceful Anschluss proved him completely right. In conclusion:
“Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria assumed, in order to last, that there not be a great Germany next to them.”
“The authors of the peace treaty had never considered these questions of balance. The Treaty of Versailles is not a political treaty.”
What about France? Can it be the necessary counterweight? With a population of 40M it is well behind the 60M-strong Germany.
Worse still, France was left alone (with Belgium) to check Germany. The Anglo-Americans were wary of French revanchism and unwilling to escalate. The Keynesian narrative has made French demands for reparations sound like rabid anti-Germanism. But France’s northeast, the industrial heart of the country, had been ravaged by World War I. Germany’s industrial heartland in contrast had been relatively spared. The fundamental question is how can France alone check a Germany with a cause for revenge?
As Bainville writes « How can 40 million French people be creditors to a mass of 60 million Germans for over a generation? » To sum it up here is Bainville casually predicting 1939-1940:
“The example of August 1920 (when the USSR invaded Poland) shows us that Poland, attacked by Russia, with a hostile Germany at its back found no support among its neighbors. We had to come to its aid.” « It would be exactly the same exactly the same if Poland were one day attacked by the Germans, Russia being ready to take advantage of her disaster and stab her from behind. » « The march of Germany is indicated. It is through the East that she will begin its liberation and its revenge. If we do not deliberately intervene on the day she tries to reconstitute her eastern frontier, then, a year, 10 years or 20 years later, the danger will be ours. »
I’m only scratching the surface here, there is so much brilliant analysis on the contradictions of Versailles, on Scandinavia’s desire to exit history… He has exotic ideas too, like an alternative Austrian empire with Poland (an idea also defended by Emperor Charles). At times it feels like he time traveled to make his predictions.
It’s a model for any political analyst on the importance of history and geography in forecasting the future. He died in 1936 before he could see his fears become reality. Pdf of the book available here: pratclif.com .