WEBVTT NOTE Six Months that Changed the World 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 It's always a pleasure to be back at the Mises Institute. 2 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:14.000 Lew and I came together back in about 1982 to start this on a very small basis, 3 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:19.000 and it's grown and flourished and something I'm very proud to be a part of. 4 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:23.000 The talk today is Six Months that Changed the World, 5 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:40.000 And those six months are January 1919 to June 1919. And it was changed by three men, Woodrow Wilson, Cleminshaw of France, and Lloyd George of Great Britain. 6 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:48.000 It was actually a group to handle the peace conference after World War I. It was called the Council of Ten. 7 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:54.640 and the original idea was that there were going to be five nations that would be represented 8 00:00:54.640 --> 00:00:55.640 for the allies. 9 00:00:55.640 --> 00:01:03.700 That's Japan, Italy, America, France and America, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan. 10 00:01:03.700 --> 00:01:08.340 And each country would have two people at the table, so that was the council of ten. 11 00:01:08.340 --> 00:01:12.920 But it boiled down to really just three men, Wilson, Clemishow and Lloyd-George that did 12 00:01:12.920 --> 00:01:14.780 all of this. 13 00:01:14.780 --> 00:01:20.580 They made some of the most disastrous decisions that have ever been made and some of those 14 00:01:20.580 --> 00:01:27.020 decisions have resulted in what you read about today in your headlines in Iraq and China 15 00:01:27.020 --> 00:01:31.580 and you say, well, wait a minute, I thought the Versailles Peace Conference was about 16 00:01:31.580 --> 00:01:37.180 Germany. Well, it was. But there were a lot of treaties. There was a lot of negotiation 17 00:01:37.180 --> 00:01:43.700 that involved the whole world. And the Versailles Treaty is the most important because it was 18 00:01:43.700 --> 00:01:48.460 about Germany. But the other treaties were signed and they're given the names of where 19 00:01:48.460 --> 00:01:55.460 they were signed. So they signed the treaty in the Hall of Versailles Palace. And the 20 00:01:56.540 --> 00:02:03.540 result in my opinion and my argument is that it resulted in creating the platform for Hitler 21 00:02:05.920 --> 00:02:12.920 to arise in Germany and allowed him to create the most popular political party in Germany. 22 00:02:12.920 --> 00:02:16.920 and led to World War II. 23 00:02:16.920 --> 00:02:19.920 And it's always been my argument in looking back at that history 24 00:02:19.920 --> 00:02:23.920 that World War I and II were really one war 25 00:02:23.920 --> 00:02:27.920 with a 20-year recess from 1919 to 1939. 26 00:02:27.920 --> 00:02:30.920 And that makes a big difference in how you interpret 27 00:02:30.920 --> 00:02:33.920 the rest of history of the 20th century. 28 00:02:33.920 --> 00:02:37.920 I see the World War I and II as one war, 29 00:02:37.920 --> 00:02:45.600 and I see it as possibly as significant as the Peloponnesian war was to the Greek civilization. 30 00:02:45.600 --> 00:02:51.120 I think that western civilization went into a steep decline as a result of those two wars 31 00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:56.480 and collectivism became very dominant throughout the world. 32 00:02:56.480 --> 00:03:04.800 So those six months I think are a very important part to look at in history. 33 00:03:04.800 --> 00:03:09.480 The writer, William Faulkner, one time was asked, well, why don't you write about the 34 00:03:09.480 --> 00:03:13.920 current things, contemporary things? You're always writing about the past. And Faulkner's 35 00:03:13.920 --> 00:03:20.760 answer was, well, the past is not past. What we are today is what was done in the past. 36 00:03:20.760 --> 00:03:27.720 So we are living what was created in the past. And that same theme is part of the major premise 37 00:03:27.720 --> 00:03:36.080 of George Orwell's major book, 1984. And in that book he, as you will recall, has history 38 00:03:36.080 --> 00:03:44.240 rewritten so that he makes the point that you can determine the present and affect the 39 00:03:44.240 --> 00:03:51.200 future by how you rewrite history, how you interpret history. And so, I want to show 40 00:03:51.200 --> 00:04:01.200 I'm going to show you how that happens with this. I'm a believer in the American founder's policy of non-interventionism as a foreign policy. 41 00:04:01.200 --> 00:04:08.200 And whenever I discuss that or argue with somebody about it, they want to argue history with me. 42 00:04:08.200 --> 00:04:15.200 And they say this, look, the founder's ideas of non-interventionism are out of date. Why so, I say? 43 00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:23.400 Well, because World War II proves it. And then they used counterfactual history to state 44 00:04:23.400 --> 00:04:31.400 what is now today the mainstream idea, and that is that if America had joined the League 45 00:04:31.400 --> 00:04:37.440 of Nations by signing the Versailles Treaty, that would have prevented World War II. And 46 00:04:37.440 --> 00:04:42.280 if they had signed and the League of Nations had been created, it would have been strong 47 00:04:42.280 --> 00:04:50.280 to stand up to Hitler at Munich. And so they say that what caused World War II was isolationism 48 00:04:50.280 --> 00:04:58.280 and appeasement. So my answer to that is to go back and start with World War I and why 49 00:04:58.280 --> 00:05:03.280 it started and why America should not have intervened and even why Britain should not 50 00:05:03.280 --> 00:05:09.780 have intervened and point out that it was the disastrous Versailles Treaty that gave 51 00:05:09.780 --> 00:05:14.620 Hitler, all of the points for his platform that caused him to rise. 52 00:05:14.620 --> 00:05:21.340 And it was America's intervention and abandonment of its policy of non-interventionism that 53 00:05:21.340 --> 00:05:28.700 caused the disaster, which was the Versailles Conference in World War II. 54 00:05:28.700 --> 00:05:34.580 The point about standing up to Hitler at Munich is that Hitler was told, and it was well known 55 00:05:34.580 --> 00:05:40.100 by the delegates at the Versailles conference, and I'll read some of that to you, that the 56 00:05:40.100 --> 00:05:46.540 treaty itself was very unfair. Not only was it too harsh, but it was unfair. And that 57 00:05:46.540 --> 00:05:54.260 gave Hitler the confidence to know that many of the people he was dealing with realized 58 00:05:54.260 --> 00:05:59.900 that the Czechoslovakian situation was very unfair to the Sudeten Germans and very unfair 59 00:05:59.900 --> 00:06:04.220 to Germany, and that they were not willing to go to war over that. 60 00:06:04.220 --> 00:06:08.220 It was recognized at the time of the peace treaty also that the League of Nations was 61 00:06:08.220 --> 00:06:13.560 going to have to revise it significantly to avoid war and I'm going to give you some quotes 62 00:06:13.560 --> 00:06:23.660 on that about people that were there. 63 00:06:23.660 --> 00:06:28.980 One point I want to make about the beginning of World War I is that a lot of people see 64 00:06:28.980 --> 00:06:36.140 See it as a noble war and I think it's very false. I think that it was in effect a civil 65 00:06:36.140 --> 00:06:43.100 war of Europe and it was a battle between industrial powers. 66 00:06:43.100 --> 00:06:47.900 The only book I like about Niall Ferguson is his book Pity of War and he says that it 67 00:06:47.900 --> 00:06:51.640 was the greatest mistake Britain ever made was getting into World War I, that it was 68 00:06:51.640 --> 00:06:56.940 being plotted by its generals back in 1905 and that the problem was they were fearful 69 00:06:56.940 --> 00:07:02.940 of Germany, overtaking them economically. When Woodrow Wilson got back, of course you 70 00:07:02.940 --> 00:07:08.940 know he went to war to make the world safe for democracy, but when he got back and campaigned 71 00:07:08.940 --> 00:07:13.620 for the Versailles Treaty, here's what he said about World War I. 72 00:07:13.620 --> 00:07:19.000 Why, my fellow citizens, is there any man here or any woman, let me say is there any 73 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:25.180 child here who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and 74 00:07:25.180 --> 00:07:26.920 and Commercial Rivalry. 75 00:07:26.920 --> 00:07:32.580 This war in its inception was a commercial war, an industrial war. 76 00:07:32.580 --> 00:07:34.700 It was not a political war. 77 00:07:34.700 --> 00:07:38.340 He made that statement in St. Louis, Missouri while he was trying to campaign to make the 78 00:07:38.340 --> 00:07:43.580 Senate ratify the Versailles Treaty. 79 00:07:43.580 --> 00:07:49.040 To show you how it was recognized after the war that the Versailles Treaty was a great 80 00:07:49.040 --> 00:08:01.040 I want to call your attention to this book written by two people, William Bullitt who was a part of the delegation and of all things Sigmund Freud. 81 00:08:01.040 --> 00:08:08.040 If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it to you. 82 00:08:08.040 --> 00:08:16.040 William Bullitt was part of the delegation and he became so disillusioned with Wilson and the Versailles Treaty 83 00:08:16.040 --> 00:08:46.040 He resigned as soon as the terms of the treaty were announced and it was known that he had such a low opinion of Wilson that he was approached by Sigmund Freud in Paris one day and asked, and Bullitt said he was going to write a book and Freud said do you mind if I join with you and if I had been Bullitt I would have said yeah I do mind I don't want you but you can't you can't tell it doesn't say this is by Freud and this is by Bullitt it's mixed in it's a 84 00:08:46.040 --> 00:08:56.040 The great analysis by Freud of Wilson's psychology and his attempts to emulate and surpass his father that he admired. 85 00:08:56.040 --> 00:09:08.040 And in going to the Versailles Conference, his advisor, Colonel House, who Wilson said was his alter ego, played on that psychological thing 86 00:09:08.040 --> 00:09:15.040 and told Wilson he's going to be the greatest man in the world. He's going to save the world. He's going to make it safe for democracy. 87 00:09:15.040 --> 00:09:43.040 The League of Nations is the greatest idea that's ever been and Wilson ate all this up and so you'll see some of that in that book but in that book it has this letter that William Bullitt wrote to Woodrow Wilson in May 17, 1919 by resigning from the delegation in complete revulsion to what was being done and he says, this is part of the letter, he says, 88 00:09:43.040 --> 00:09:56.040 But our government has consented now to deliver the suffering people to the world, to new oppressions, subjections and dismemberments, a new century of war. 89 00:09:56.040 --> 00:10:01.040 It is my conviction that the present League of Nations will be powerless to prevent these wars. 90 00:10:01.040 --> 00:10:11.040 Therefore, the duty of the government of the United States and to its own people and to mankind is to refuse to sign or ratify this unjust treaty. 91 00:10:11.040 --> 00:10:18.040 That's by a man who's playing up to Wilson, who wants to be a friend of Wilson, and he's a very ambitious guy. 92 00:10:18.040 --> 00:10:21.040 He becomes very important to the Roosevelt administration in World War II. 93 00:10:21.040 --> 00:10:31.040 So Bullitt is an up-and-coming guy, and here he is jumping on the President of the United States and telling him he's an idiot and going to cause a century of war, which he did. 94 00:10:31.040 --> 00:11:01.040 He went on to state that Wilson in the book, he points out that Wilson had these lofty ideas about what the war was about when he came there and Bullitt told him look there are all kinds of secret aims of the British and the French to split up the world and what you're doing with this Versailles Treaty that you've done is that you've just allowed them to scramble and get loot and what the League of Nations is going to be is like the 95 00:11:01.040 --> 00:11:31.040 The British have achieved all of their aims by this peace conference, and these secret aims were the destruction of the German navy, the confiscation of German merchant marine, the elimination of Germany as an economic 96 00:11:31.040 --> 00:12:01.040 of the Islamic Rival, the extraction of all possible indemnities from Germany, the annexation of Germany and East Africa and the Cameroons, the annexation of all German colonies in the Pacific south of the equator, Palestine and as much of Syria as they might be able to get away from the French, the extension of their sphere of influence in Persia, the recognition of their protectorates in Cyprus and Egypt, and goes on. Albert J. Nock is one of my favorite writers. 97 00:12:01.040 --> 00:12:30.040 The War immensely fortified a universal faith in violence. It set in motion endless adventures and imperialism, endless nationalistic ambition. Every war does that to the degree roughly corresponding to its magnitude. 98 00:12:30.040 --> 00:12:37.040 The final settlement at Versailles, therefore, was a mere scramble for loot, end quote. 99 00:12:39.040 --> 00:12:59.040 Most everyone there in the American and the British delegations recognized that the treaty was so unjust that there were going to have to be drastic revisions made by the League of Nations in order to prevent war, and I'm going to read that to you in a minute. 100 00:12:59.040 --> 00:13:03.040 Let me just point out that I have brought, you have with you a handout. 101 00:13:03.040 --> 00:13:11.040 On the second page has a recommendation of the books, some of the books I read in order to do this. 102 00:13:21.040 --> 00:13:27.040 This is a book I want to point out and talk to you a good bit about because it's a fairly recent book. 103 00:13:27.040 --> 00:13:46.040 This is Margaret McMillan's book on Paris 1919 and it's a very good book because it's the only one I've read that covers the whole spectrum of the Paris Peace Talks. 104 00:13:46.040 --> 00:13:54.040 It's not limited to the Versailles Conference and there's a taped section that goes with it. 105 00:13:54.040 --> 00:14:24.040 not goes with it but you can buy it separately got the same code but these are CDs that she narrates it and get that from the modern scholar and both of these will be here for you to look at and I recommend it to you although I totally disagree with her conclusion which is this she says there are many people who claim that the Versailles Peace Treaty 106 00:14:24.040 --> 00:14:36.040 She says, I do not think that. She said, Hitler just came into the picture, and he was what caused World War II. 107 00:14:36.040 --> 00:14:43.040 And yet, there's nothing in the book to support her on that. But that is the conclusion of the mainstream today. 108 00:14:43.040 --> 00:15:04.040 And now the mainstream history interpreters of today can say, look, here's a book that is so thorough and so good, and her conclusion is that the Versailles Treaty didn't cause World War II, it was Hitler, as though Hitler just sort of sprung from the head of Satan like God used to do from Zeus. 109 00:15:04.040 --> 00:15:17.040 But it's a good book and I recommend it to you because it covers so many of the facts that are relevant and is such a broad coverage of events that go beyond Versailles. 110 00:15:17.040 --> 00:15:28.040 But reading her book to me is like reading a legal brief of an imposing lawyer in a case and reading history to some extent is that way for me. 111 00:15:28.040 --> 00:15:34.940 You get two lawyers that take opposite sides of a case. They're both writing about a murder. 112 00:15:34.940 --> 00:15:41.940 The event is the same, but one is arguing for conviction and one is arguing for acquittal. 113 00:15:41.940 --> 00:15:46.940 And what they do, and the way they argue that, is they leave out certain things. 114 00:15:46.940 --> 00:15:48.940 They emphasize things differently. 115 00:15:48.940 --> 00:15:52.940 And so you get a different interpretation of the same event and come to opposite conclusions. 116 00:15:52.940 --> 00:15:55.940 And much of history is that way. 117 00:15:55.940 --> 00:16:02.240 Now here's what Macmillan does, and I might add that she doesn't tell you this, but the publisher does. 118 00:16:02.240 --> 00:16:05.640 She happens to be the great granddaughter of Lloyd George. 119 00:16:05.640 --> 00:16:12.140 So she's got a little bit of a conflict of interest here, but she's a history professor in Toronto, Canada. 120 00:16:12.140 --> 00:16:18.540 But here's a statement that she makes that sort of hit me between the eyes. 121 00:16:18.540 --> 00:16:27.540 She says, the way the armistice was made left much room for later recrimination. 122 00:16:27.540 --> 00:16:34.540 The Germans were able to say that they had only accepted it on the basis of the original 14 points, 123 00:16:34.540 --> 00:16:39.540 and that the subsequent peace terms were therefore largely illegitimate. 124 00:16:39.540 --> 00:16:45.540 And she tells you, doesn't say anything, why the Germans had felt that way. 125 00:16:45.540 --> 00:16:52.900 She leaves that out and it leads a reader to believe, well, that's just something the Germans felt with no basis. 126 00:16:52.900 --> 00:17:08.460 One of the main things wrong with the Versailles Treaty that made it so unfair was that there was a pre-armistice agreement dated November 5, 1918, before the treaty was signed, before the armistice was signed on November 11. 127 00:17:08.460 --> 00:17:19.460 And that's the reason they thought that they surrendered based upon the fact that the 14 points was going to be the basis of the treaty because that's what the agreement said. 128 00:17:19.460 --> 00:17:24.460 And you can find out about that agreement in some other books. 129 00:17:24.460 --> 00:17:38.460 Here's one, Treaty of Versailles, reassessment after 75 years. It's a series of articles about it. 130 00:17:38.460 --> 00:17:52.340 Let's see if I can find it. The thing that they say in here is that they go through the 131 00:17:52.340 --> 00:18:06.100 various letters that were written. It starts off in September that the German Army had 132 00:18:06.100 --> 00:18:14.100 and made its last attempt to try to break through before the Americans got their full strength there. 133 00:18:14.100 --> 00:18:24.100 And when the Germans realized that they couldn't break the lines and that there was a stalemate, 134 00:18:24.100 --> 00:18:30.100 they had not been defeated, but they knew that they ultimately were going to be defeated completely 135 00:18:30.100 --> 00:18:32.100 with the Americans coming into the war. 136 00:18:32.100 --> 00:18:50.100 They have reached such a stalemate that if America had not intervened, there would have been a peace treaty, I think, at that point, between equals on a much more fair basis, an actual negotiated treaty. 137 00:18:50.100 --> 00:18:56.100 Let's see if I can find my quote here. 138 00:18:56.100 --> 00:19:02.860 Anyway, Max Baden was an official in the government of Germany. 139 00:19:02.860 --> 00:19:08.460 And so they knew that Wilson wanted the German government to get rid of the Kaiser. 140 00:19:08.460 --> 00:19:10.960 So they made the Kaiser resign. 141 00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:19.860 And Baden wrote a letter in September to Woodrow Wilson and told him that we would like to 142 00:19:19.860 --> 00:19:26.500 to talk about a peace treaty, and we would like for it to be based upon the 14 points 143 00:19:26.500 --> 00:19:30.020 that you talked about in January of 1918. 144 00:19:30.020 --> 00:19:38.820 So Secretary of State Lansing took that letter and began to talk with Lord George and Clemenshaw 145 00:19:38.820 --> 00:19:46.060 in September of 1918, before the war ended, to see if they would agree to negotiate a 146 00:19:46.060 --> 00:19:50.620 a Peace Treaty with Germany on the basis of the 14th Amendment. 147 00:19:50.620 --> 00:19:55.500 And they, at first, they couldn't agree with all the terms. 148 00:19:55.500 --> 00:20:00.180 And so Wilson threatened them that if they didn't agree to all the terms, that he would 149 00:20:00.180 --> 00:20:03.820 go public and say that they were not for the 14 points and they wanted to continue with 150 00:20:03.820 --> 00:20:04.820 the war. 151 00:20:04.820 --> 00:20:08.820 So they backed off and said, oh, well, okay, we'll agree to it. 152 00:20:08.820 --> 00:20:12.860 So then Wilson wrote back and said, well, is the Kaiser going to resign? 153 00:20:12.860 --> 00:20:13.860 Yes. 154 00:20:13.860 --> 00:20:14.860 Are you going to have a democratic government? 155 00:20:14.860 --> 00:20:15.860 Yes. 156 00:20:15.860 --> 00:20:26.700 And so finally, on November 5, 1918, Secretary of State Lansing wrote a letter back to Baden, 157 00:20:26.700 --> 00:20:31.460 representative of the new government, which was going to become the Weimar Republic, and 158 00:20:31.460 --> 00:20:39.860 said, okay, all of us, the Allies, all agree that we will negotiate a treaty based upon 159 00:20:39.860 --> 00:20:45.660 the 14 points, which would not have been a harsh treaty against Germany. 160 00:20:45.660 --> 00:20:55.660 And so the Germans have a reason to be upset that they put down their arms and walked away 161 00:20:55.660 --> 00:20:59.340 thinking they were going to have a, quote, negotiated treaty, and number two, that it 162 00:20:59.340 --> 00:21:01.580 was going to be based on the 14 points. 163 00:21:01.580 --> 00:21:10.620 Instead, what they got was a dictated treaty that they had no input into, and it had no 164 00:21:10.620 --> 00:21:13.100 relationship whatsoever to the 14 points. 165 00:21:13.100 --> 00:21:20.100 violated the 14 points in every way that it could. 166 00:21:20.100 --> 00:21:27.100 So that's the way Macmillan writes her book and tells you, well, the Germans felt like 167 00:21:27.100 --> 00:21:31.360 they hadn't been treated fairly, and then doesn't tell you why they felt that way. 168 00:21:31.360 --> 00:21:42.360 So that's, to me, one of the most unfair provisions of the treaty, and that's how she's able to 169 00:21:42.360 --> 00:22:02.360 The Germans felt that they were so unfairly treated, that they were looking for someone that would oppose the Weimar Republic, because the Weimar Republic was enforcing the treaty, and so someone had to take a stand against the government, someone had to take a stand against the Versailles Treaty, and so on, and so on, and so on. 170 00:22:02.360 --> 00:22:22.360 The Weimar Republic, because the Weimar Republic was enforcing the treaty, and so someone had to take a stand against the government, someone had to take a stand against the Versailles Treaty, and that's how Hitler became so popular, and became the leader of a political party that was the strongest party in Germany. 171 00:22:22.360 --> 00:22:33.480 Let's talk about some other mistakes that were made in the beginning stages of the case. 172 00:22:33.480 --> 00:22:38.840 The secret treaties were not known to many people until the Bolshevik Revolution came 173 00:22:38.840 --> 00:22:48.600 about and Russia was aware and part of a treaty of the Sykes-Picot Treaty which divided up 174 00:22:48.600 --> 00:22:56.240 at the Middle East between England and France, so it came public, but Wilson took the position 175 00:22:56.240 --> 00:23:00.120 that he didn't know there were any secret treaties made during the war. 176 00:23:00.120 --> 00:23:07.520 And he had the opportunity in order to arrive at the armistice to say there will be no recognition 177 00:23:07.520 --> 00:23:13.320 and carrying out of the secret treaties, but instead he just kept quiet. 178 00:23:13.320 --> 00:23:19.440 William Bullitt talks about, on the way over to Paris, that they talked about how we're 179 00:23:19.440 --> 00:23:21.480 going to negotiate this treaty. 180 00:23:21.480 --> 00:23:27.080 And all of them took as the American delegation outside the presence of Wilson said, we need 181 00:23:27.080 --> 00:23:32.280 to follow the model of the Congress of Vienna that settled the Napoleonic Wars in 1814. 182 00:23:32.280 --> 00:23:37.680 We need to have Germany at the table, and we need to negotiate a treaty that will cause 183 00:23:37.680 --> 00:23:40.080 a just peace. 184 00:23:40.080 --> 00:23:45.480 And that's one of the ingredients of a just war, is a just war is only just in the end 185 00:23:45.480 --> 00:23:50.720 if you also arrive at a just peace which creates a more durable peace than you had before the 186 00:23:50.720 --> 00:23:58.120 war. Instead, the Council of Ten met, they became to squabble and fight among each other, 187 00:23:58.120 --> 00:24:04.480 and they never got around to inviting Germany to the table. This went on from January 1919 188 00:24:04.480 --> 00:24:12.180 up until May of 1919, and they simply presented the treaty to Germany and said, you either 189 00:24:12.180 --> 00:24:18.960 sign it or else. Now, the or else was this. The British blockade that had taken place 190 00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:24.920 during the war was not stopped, and that was the force by which they made Germany sign 191 00:24:24.920 --> 00:24:33.720 the treaty. It's estimated that approximately 600,000 German civilians starved while the 192 00:24:33.720 --> 00:24:40.720 was being, quote, considered. And the Germans simply had no method by which to refuse to 193 00:24:40.720 --> 00:24:46.600 sign the treaty. They had to stop the British blockade to survive. And so they were forced 194 00:24:46.600 --> 00:24:54.920 into signing that. In looking at the motives of the three main people, Woodrow Wilson in 195 00:24:54.920 --> 00:25:01.520 going there had only one motive that he really was crucially interested in, and that was 196 00:25:01.520 --> 00:25:05.520 The League of Nations 197 00:25:05.520 --> 00:25:11.520 Lord George was looking for as much loot as he could get to stop the Germans 198 00:25:11.520 --> 00:25:13.520 and I've told you what their secret aims were. 199 00:25:13.520 --> 00:25:18.520 Clemenshaw, on the other hand, wanted to reduce Germany down to an agricultural state. 200 00:25:18.520 --> 00:25:22.520 He said, I'm tired of Germans invading France. 201 00:25:22.520 --> 00:25:24.520 This is the third time they've invaded. 202 00:25:24.520 --> 00:25:28.520 He didn't mention that France had declared war two of those times against Germany, 203 00:25:28.520 --> 00:25:37.420 He wanted to just make Germany into an agricultural state and never have any military power. 204 00:25:37.420 --> 00:25:42.320 So anytime the negotiations got rough and Wilson was pushing them for the 14 points, 205 00:25:42.320 --> 00:25:44.640 they would say, well, yeah, I don't know about that. 206 00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:53.880 We might take another look at the League of Nations, and Wilson said, oh, okay, okay. 207 00:25:53.880 --> 00:26:01.280 Now let me look at some of the reasons that the treaty was unfair. Another one is that 208 00:26:01.280 --> 00:26:07.400 Germany was blamed as the sole cause of the war. This is called the Guilt Clause, Section 209 00:26:07.400 --> 00:26:14.760 213 of the treaty, which was drafted, by the way, by a very young John Foster Dulles. And 210 00:26:14.760 --> 00:26:21.820 it claimed that Germany started World War I, and that was highly debated. Germany strongly 211 00:26:21.820 --> 00:26:29.580 and I think without me going into it I think you can recognize you can't blame Germany 212 00:26:29.580 --> 00:26:37.460 for starting World War I. The Russians mobilized as soon as Serbia was attacked and when Russia 213 00:26:37.460 --> 00:26:42.460 mobilized that meant war was taking place. So you can blame it on the Austrians or blame 214 00:26:42.460 --> 00:26:46.980 it on the Serbians or blame it on the Russians but it's hard to blame it on Germany because 215 00:26:46.980 --> 00:27:13.900 The first book written critical of the Treaty of Versailles was written by none other than 216 00:27:13.900 --> 00:27:20.700 and John Maynard Keynes, called The Economic Consequences of Peace. It's the only book 217 00:27:20.700 --> 00:27:29.380 he wrote that I agree with part of. He was part of the official delegation from England 218 00:27:29.380 --> 00:27:36.440 and the 14 points made the point that there was not going to be any reparations except 219 00:27:36.440 --> 00:27:40.920 to pay for the damage to civilians. And what it ended up being was to pay for the whole 220 00:27:40.920 --> 00:27:47.920 and the whole cost of the war for everybody. But they couldn't come to a figure. So they 221 00:27:48.480 --> 00:27:54.400 just told the Germans, you've got to pay reparations, so start sending money and after a while we'll 222 00:27:54.400 --> 00:28:01.400 tell you when to stop. They never told them the final amount of $32 billion until 1922. 223 00:28:03.040 --> 00:28:09.800 So what they were made to do at Versailles in May and June of 1919 was sign a blank check 224 00:28:09.800 --> 00:28:14.360 to the Allies saying, we'll pay for the war. 225 00:28:14.360 --> 00:28:19.040 Keynes wrote about what was being discussed as to the amount and said that this would 226 00:28:19.040 --> 00:28:23.480 be a horrendous burden. 227 00:28:23.480 --> 00:28:27.680 And a lot of people have taken issue with that and have fought it and tried to prove 228 00:28:27.680 --> 00:28:33.880 that it wasn't an impossible thing and therefore the Treaty of Versailles was okay. 229 00:28:33.880 --> 00:28:39.480 Whether you take the position that it was too harsh or not, it was unfair to make them 230 00:28:39.480 --> 00:28:45.800 Sign a Blank Check. 231 00:28:45.800 --> 00:28:55.040 On the fact that Germans, some people say were defeated in the field and that therefore 232 00:28:55.040 --> 00:28:58.600 they had no choice but to surrender, they did have a choice. 233 00:28:58.600 --> 00:29:01.000 They won the war in the east with Russia. 234 00:29:01.000 --> 00:29:07.920 As you remember the history of the Germans sending Lenin back to Russia to make them 235 00:29:07.920 --> 00:29:20.920 Germany stopped the war, and Lenin promised to enter into a peace treaty, which he did at Brest-Litovsk, and that gave Germany so much of the Russian countryside that it tripled the size of Germany. 236 00:29:20.920 --> 00:29:29.920 They won that portion of the war, and they took a large number of their troops and put them on the western front to try to finish the war. 237 00:29:29.920 --> 00:29:36.920 Germany was never invaded. The war was fought completely on French and Belgian soil. 238 00:29:36.920 --> 00:29:50.920 So, the Germans felt like, you know, what, we're winning the war and all of a sudden there's this, we're giving up and this horrendous treaty is enforced on us by a new government we never voted for. 239 00:29:50.920 --> 00:29:58.920 So, you can see how the German people were upset and how they might elect a person like Hitler. 240 00:29:58.920 --> 00:30:01.920 Here's some of the other provisions that were harsh. 241 00:30:01.920 --> 00:30:10.920 The army was limited to 100,000 people. There was to be no navy and no merchant marine fleet. 242 00:30:10.920 --> 00:30:17.920 The high seas fleet that the Germans had was taken to England at a place called Scapa Flow 243 00:30:17.920 --> 00:30:21.920 and was being held there until the end of the negotiations. 244 00:30:21.920 --> 00:30:27.920 And when the treaty was announced and the terms were announced, the German sailors pulled the plugs on the ships 245 00:30:57.920 --> 00:31:07.800 I don't want you to take my statements about explaining Hitler as a defense of Hitler. 246 00:31:07.800 --> 00:31:12.440 Hitler was a horrible guy, but he was the third worst murderer in history, Stalin and 247 00:31:12.440 --> 00:31:14.880 Mayo being ahead of him. 248 00:31:14.880 --> 00:31:21.240 But yet, it's important to understand how somebody like that can come to be elected 249 00:31:21.240 --> 00:31:26.960 in a democratic process and use the Constitution to become a dictator, and that's what he did. 250 00:31:26.960 --> 00:31:33.080 He could never have done it without the unfaithness and the harshness of the Versailles Treaty. 251 00:31:33.080 --> 00:31:38.460 One of his main supporters in coming to power was General Ludwig Beck, who eventually became 252 00:31:38.460 --> 00:31:39.460 his chief of staff. 253 00:31:39.460 --> 00:31:47.620 He was a professional army guy and he was to become the head of the German government 254 00:31:47.620 --> 00:31:50.080 once Hitler was assassinated. 255 00:31:50.080 --> 00:31:57.640 He joined the underground movement to assassinate Hitler, and he eventually was, when they made 256 00:31:57.640 --> 00:32:00.440 the attempt on Hitler, he lost his life. 257 00:32:00.440 --> 00:32:08.520 But people like that were for Hitler because he was against the Versailles Treaty. 258 00:32:08.520 --> 00:32:13.440 Here's an interesting statement by Harold Nicholson. 259 00:32:13.440 --> 00:32:23.440 He is one of the key people in the delegation from England. 260 00:32:23.440 --> 00:32:29.440 And he says this in his book called Peacemaking. 261 00:32:29.440 --> 00:32:33.440 I think I have that here if I can put my hand on it. 262 00:32:33.440 --> 00:32:36.440 Peacemaking right here. 263 00:32:36.440 --> 00:32:39.440 He wrote this a short time after the war. 264 00:32:39.440 --> 00:32:53.520 The leading statesmen in Paris, not excluding President Wilson, were vividly aware that 265 00:32:53.520 --> 00:32:59.080 the treaty which was being drafted would require revision at a more distant epoch when the 266 00:32:59.080 --> 00:33:04.960 hysteria of the war had subsided. They provided for that revision. They inserted it into the 267 00:33:04.960 --> 00:33:10.840 Covenant of the League of Nations, an article which is too little quoted and too often forgotten, 268 00:33:10.840 --> 00:33:18.160 which is Article 19, and it says this, the assembly, and that means the League of Nations, 269 00:33:18.160 --> 00:33:22.480 this is out of the Treaty of Versailles, creating the League of Nations, the assembly may from 270 00:33:22.480 --> 00:33:27.900 time to time advise reconsideration by members of the League of Treaties which have become 271 00:33:27.900 --> 00:33:34.800 ineffable and the consideration of the international condition whose continuance might endanger 272 00:33:34.800 --> 00:33:39.780 of the Peace of the World. In other words, inserted into the Treaty of Versailles was 273 00:33:39.780 --> 00:33:45.080 recognition that it needed to be revised because if it wasn't, there would be a danger of peace 274 00:33:45.080 --> 00:33:52.720 in the world. He goes on to say this, Nicholson does, We arrived determined that a peace of 275 00:33:52.720 --> 00:33:58.000 justice and wisdom should be negotiated. He's talking about when they first got there. We 276 00:33:58.000 --> 00:34:04.680 left Paris conscious that the treaties imposed upon our enemies were neither just nor wise. 277 00:34:04.680 --> 00:34:10.640 It is impossible to read the German criticism without deriving the impression that the Paris 278 00:34:10.640 --> 00:34:16.080 Peace Conference was guilty of disguising an imperialistic peace under the surplus of 279 00:34:16.080 --> 00:34:22.160 Wilsonianism that seldom in the history of man has such vindictiveness cloaked in such 280 00:34:22.160 --> 00:34:25.320 unctuous sophistry been practiced. 281 00:34:25.320 --> 00:34:26.920 It was hypocrisy. 282 00:34:26.920 --> 00:34:30.680 It was a predominant part of the treaty. 283 00:34:30.680 --> 00:34:35.820 And war would be the inescapable result. 284 00:34:35.820 --> 00:34:41.360 So one other point I want to make before leaving the treaty with Germany. 285 00:34:41.360 --> 00:34:49.200 Another bad result of the Versailles Treaty was there was a meeting on May 1919 at the 286 00:34:49.200 --> 00:34:55.760 Majestic Hotel in Paris between various delegates from America and the British. 287 00:34:55.760 --> 00:35:01.120 And they decided that in the future America and Britain were going to have to join together 288 00:35:01.120 --> 00:35:06.360 in foreign policy in order to proceed and to win. 289 00:35:06.360 --> 00:35:12.920 The British realized that their empire was in great jeopardy without American firepower. 290 00:35:12.920 --> 00:35:18.460 So they agreed to form organizations for the future Anglo-American cooperation. 291 00:35:18.460 --> 00:35:22.600 The British formed an organization called the Royal Institute of International Affairs 292 00:35:22.600 --> 00:35:29.480 was in 1919 and Americans came back and formed the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921. 293 00:35:29.480 --> 00:35:34.600 Those two organizations are now in effect and the Council on Foreign Relations is the 294 00:35:34.600 --> 00:35:41.020 main establishment organization for the foreign policy of America and one of the reasons for 295 00:35:41.020 --> 00:35:46.380 that founding was to prevent future presidents from being criticized like Woodrow Wilson 296 00:35:46.380 --> 00:35:48.580 was. 297 00:35:48.580 --> 00:35:53.780 So those two organizations are very important to bringing America into World War II. 298 00:35:53.780 --> 00:35:59.100 And if you'll read my chapter in Reassessing the Presidency, the title of it, and it's 299 00:35:59.100 --> 00:36:05.820 in your handout, the reference to it, is Roosevelt and the First Shot. 300 00:36:05.820 --> 00:36:13.380 But what I do is go through and talk about how World War I and II are the same and how 301 00:36:13.380 --> 00:36:20.380 Anglo-American cooperation was in effect right up to America getting into World War II. There's 302 00:36:20.900 --> 00:36:26.380 an excellent book I want to recommend to you that's in your outline by Jim Powell. It's 303 00:36:26.380 --> 00:36:33.380 a very new book called Wilson's War. And he talks a little bit about the peace conference, 304 00:36:33.380 --> 00:36:39.380 but it's mainly about this idea that it's one war, World War I and II, and that World 305 00:36:39.380 --> 00:36:47.540 World War I and the peace treaty, World War I and the way it was dragged out by England 306 00:36:47.540 --> 00:36:51.500 and America trying first to keep the czar in the war and then trying to keep Kerensky 307 00:36:51.500 --> 00:36:56.080 in the war was to drag it out and cause the Russian government to be overthrown by the 308 00:36:56.080 --> 00:36:57.700 Bolsheviks. 309 00:36:57.700 --> 00:37:04.060 So World War I and American intervention helped bring about communism and then by the peace 310 00:37:04.060 --> 00:37:06.820 treaty we brought about Nazism. 311 00:37:06.820 --> 00:37:18.820 So, Wilson's War, How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and World War II is a good book and I highly recommend it to you. 312 00:37:18.820 --> 00:37:26.820 Alright, let me switch gears now and go to what happened in Italy. 313 00:37:26.820 --> 00:37:32.820 Italy had shopped around before the war to see which side to get on and they simply said, what are you going to give us if we join? 314 00:37:32.820 --> 00:37:37.820 The Germans promised us something, the British and French promised us something. 315 00:37:37.820 --> 00:37:40.820 So they entered into a secret treaty as to what they were to get. 316 00:37:40.820 --> 00:37:44.820 So they came to the peace conference and asked for their spoils. 317 00:37:44.820 --> 00:37:50.820 And the main thing they wanted was a port named Fume. 318 00:37:50.820 --> 00:37:57.820 It's F-U-I-M-E, which is right on the, I guess that's the Adriatic Sea, right on the back of the boot, up at the top. 319 00:37:57.820 --> 00:38:03.820 And Wilson took a strong stand and just said, no, you're not going to get it. 320 00:38:03.820 --> 00:38:07.820 And so Clement Show and Lord George agreed with that. 321 00:38:07.820 --> 00:38:12.820 And that Italian delegate got up crying and stormed out and left. 322 00:38:12.820 --> 00:38:22.820 And when Wilson had been campaigning before the conference, they changed street names for him in Italy. 323 00:38:22.820 --> 00:38:26.820 They said people put up, in addition to the Madonna and Jesus, they had Wilson on the wall. 324 00:38:26.820 --> 00:38:27.820 Law. 325 00:38:27.820 --> 00:38:33.160 He was just worshipped in Italy, and when he didn't give him fumet, all the pictures 326 00:38:33.160 --> 00:38:37.700 came down, the streets got renamed, and all of that was undone. 327 00:38:37.700 --> 00:38:47.260 And the treaty became a cause in Italy, and became the main thing that Mussolini began 328 00:38:47.260 --> 00:38:53.300 to campaign against, and he called it the mutilated treaty, whereas Hitler came to power 329 00:38:53.300 --> 00:38:57.300 Criticizing it as the Dictated Treaty or the Dictat. 330 00:38:57.300 --> 00:39:04.540 Mussolini created fascism for the purpose of fighting communism. 331 00:39:04.540 --> 00:39:11.420 He said it, we are a party of the left, we are socialist, but we are national socialist. 332 00:39:11.420 --> 00:39:16.020 And there was no anti-Semitism to fascism in Italy. 333 00:39:16.020 --> 00:39:22.660 It was the idea is nationalism had been growing for the whole 19th century, but it was Italy 334 00:39:22.660 --> 00:39:28.380 There were only in Germany who came to a nationalistic status late in the 19th century and nationalism 335 00:39:28.380 --> 00:39:32.980 was the main thing they wanted and they were not about to let some international socialism 336 00:39:32.980 --> 00:39:36.820 come in and undo what they had done nationally. 337 00:39:36.820 --> 00:39:41.940 So fascism was a national, socialistic movement on the left. 338 00:39:41.940 --> 00:39:47.100 It was not until Hitler came to power and copied Mussolini with fascistic ideas that 339 00:39:47.100 --> 00:39:55.060 He brought in anti-Semitism and at that point the intellectuals and the idea of communication 340 00:39:55.060 --> 00:39:59.900 people began to switch fascism to the extreme right. 341 00:39:59.900 --> 00:40:06.860 So you can see that it had a similar effect in Italy as it did in Germany. 342 00:40:06.860 --> 00:40:09.660 Now let's look at mistakes as to China. 343 00:40:09.660 --> 00:40:16.180 Frankly, I did not realize until I read Macmillan's book what had happened in regard to China. 344 00:40:16.180 --> 00:40:21.140 I didn't realize that China declared war on Germany. 345 00:40:21.140 --> 00:40:27.420 China had, as you know, been jumped on pretty well by Western powers throughout the 19th 346 00:40:27.420 --> 00:40:28.420 century. 347 00:40:28.420 --> 00:40:29.660 Everybody was chopping them up. 348 00:40:29.660 --> 00:40:34.460 They were the victims of maybe the most unjust war of all history, the Opium War. 349 00:40:34.460 --> 00:40:39.020 Britain forced them to take in opium and they got Hong Kong. 350 00:40:39.020 --> 00:40:40.700 And the Japanese had been ferocious. 351 00:40:40.700 --> 00:40:45.700 They, as you know, Japanese had industrialized, the only Asian country to do that. 352 00:40:45.700 --> 00:40:56.460 invaded China and they had taken Taiwan and Korea and then Japan took a big chunk of Manchuria 353 00:40:56.460 --> 00:41:05.020 by beating the Russians in 1905. But China saw an opportunity now with this war to get 354 00:41:05.020 --> 00:41:10.020 back the main thing that they had lost that they felt strongly about and that was called 355 00:41:10.020 --> 00:41:17.300 The Peninsula of Shantung, Shantung is almost directly crossed from Korea and it's shaped 356 00:41:17.300 --> 00:41:24.460 in almost two peninsulas. It is the homeland of Confucius. It has great sentimental and 357 00:41:24.460 --> 00:41:31.180 cultural value to the Chinese. And the Germans had what were called concessions there before 358 00:41:31.180 --> 00:41:35.700 World War I. That means you could come in and build a railroad and you could do all 359 00:42:05.700 --> 00:42:14.700 in that war. So they they came to the conference and asked for Shantung and 360 00:42:14.700 --> 00:42:20.500 they decided that they would take it away from Germany, but the treaty said it 361 00:42:20.500 --> 00:42:28.300 goes to the worst enemy China has Japan. It was the worst possible result. They'd 362 00:42:28.300 --> 00:42:34.300 rather have Germany have it than Japan. So there was a protest in Tiananmen 363 00:42:34.300 --> 00:42:43.060 in Beijing in May of 1919, protesting the Versailles Treaty of Negotiations in Paris. 364 00:42:43.060 --> 00:42:48.580 And it was at that point that many of the intellectuals in China decided that they could 365 00:42:48.580 --> 00:42:53.060 no longer trust the West, that there was no way to deal with them. 366 00:42:53.060 --> 00:43:00.700 And so what we need to do is to go to the new country that seems to have so much promise, 367 00:43:00.700 --> 00:43:03.800 and that's the Soviet Union. 368 00:43:03.800 --> 00:43:10.000 So the communist movement was born in China in May of 1919 as a protest against the Paris 369 00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:11.000 Treaties. 370 00:43:11.000 --> 00:43:19.840 Some of you may have read about the big movement in America in 1949 when the civil war in China 371 00:43:19.840 --> 00:43:25.120 resulted in the Chinese communist in May defeating Chiang Kai-shek and sending him. 372 00:43:25.120 --> 00:43:26.960 He goes off to Taiwan. 373 00:43:26.960 --> 00:43:28.800 Many people say, how did we lose China? 374 00:43:28.800 --> 00:43:29.800 Where did we go wrong? 375 00:43:29.800 --> 00:43:33.560 You know, Roosevelt made Chiang Kai-shek take communists into his government. 376 00:43:33.560 --> 00:43:51.560 The Paris Peace Talks is where China went to the Communist Party and here we are in the 21st century with China becoming, I think, will become the industrial giant of the world and leave us far behind by the end of the 21st century. 377 00:43:51.560 --> 00:43:55.560 And what a shame it is that they are a communist country. We think that communism is dead. 378 00:43:55.560 --> 00:44:13.560 and here maybe the most fearful thing in the world is for this great industrial country which I think it will become is a great communist power and it starts in May of 1919 at Tenement Square as a result of giving Shantung to the Japanese. 379 00:44:13.560 --> 00:44:25.760 Look at Japan. Japan, as you know, industrialized, the only industrial nation in Asia, and shocked 380 00:44:25.760 --> 00:44:34.280 the world by beating Russia in 1904 and 1905. But they had entered into a naval treaty with 381 00:44:34.280 --> 00:44:41.280 The British Empire in 1902. So when the war came, Britain called on Japan to help, and 382 00:44:43.480 --> 00:44:49.280 they sent a large number of destroyers to encircle the British Isles to help fight the 383 00:44:49.280 --> 00:44:56.280 submarine blockade of the Germans. They lost only 300 people in the war. But as a favor 384 00:44:56.320 --> 00:44:59.760 to Lloyd George, they were allowed to sit at the table and be part of the Council of 385 00:44:59.760 --> 00:45:06.680 and be one of the five countries represented. They came wanting three things. Mainly they 386 00:45:06.680 --> 00:45:12.520 wanted Shenzhen. Second, they wanted all the German possessions of the islands in the Pacific, 387 00:45:12.520 --> 00:45:16.880 which they got. And as you know, in World War II, we began to take those islands back. 388 00:45:16.880 --> 00:45:21.880 Those had been mainly German islands. But they went away completely embittered toward 389 00:45:21.880 --> 00:45:26.600 the conference because they didn't get number three. And number three was they wanted a 390 00:45:26.600 --> 00:45:35.960 clause in the treaty that says that Asians are equal racial quality as Caucasians. It 391 00:45:35.960 --> 00:45:41.520 was a racial inferiority thing that they had endured and their people had suffered from 392 00:45:41.520 --> 00:45:46.580 in England and America and they wanted what they called the racial equality clause and 393 00:45:46.580 --> 00:45:52.920 Lord George just had a fit and Woodrow Wilson did too and they just politically they couldn't 394 00:45:52.920 --> 00:45:57.420 come back and say that they had done this. 395 00:45:57.420 --> 00:46:02.560 Racism was very prevalent in England and America back then, and they were not going to let 396 00:46:02.560 --> 00:46:04.320 Japan have that clause. 397 00:46:04.320 --> 00:46:08.720 They gave them Shantung and the German Islands, but not a racial equality clause. 398 00:46:08.720 --> 00:46:14.160 So Japan went away very embittered toward the West. 399 00:46:14.160 --> 00:46:17.760 Let's look at what happened about Vietnam. 400 00:46:17.760 --> 00:46:25.240 The French, of course, had already conquered Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia, so they had 401 00:46:25.240 --> 00:46:27.080 those as colonies. 402 00:46:27.080 --> 00:46:33.640 And there was a young 19-year-old man that came to the conference and asked to speak 403 00:46:33.640 --> 00:46:37.240 to the Council of Ten, and they said, what do you want to speak on? 404 00:46:37.240 --> 00:46:45.660 He said, I'm a delegate from Vietnam, I want to read to the people the Rights of Man document 405 00:46:45.660 --> 00:46:51.660 The 14 Points of the French Revolution 406 00:47:15.660 --> 00:47:26.660 She said, paraphrasing the communist slogan that religion is the opiate of mankind, she said that communism is the opiate of the intellectuals. 407 00:47:26.660 --> 00:47:38.660 The Mayo, being an intellectual, turned to communism, but he was very embittered by the promises that were made in the 14 points and then completely abandoned them. 408 00:47:38.660 --> 00:47:46.940 Now let's get to the real bad part. You think you've heard bad things so far. Here's a book 409 00:47:46.940 --> 00:47:55.940 I strongly recommend to you, A Peace to End All Peace. This is about the mid-east. I sort 410 00:47:55.940 --> 00:48:00.660 of stumbled into this book. I had never heard of it before and I got another book by David 411 00:48:00.660 --> 00:48:07.740 Fromkin, didn't like it, but when I saw the title of this, I said that's got to be good. 412 00:48:07.740 --> 00:48:15.260 This goes into the secret treaty that had been entered into between France and England during 413 00:48:15.260 --> 00:48:19.900 the war that at the end of the war they were going to divide up the Ottoman Empire. 414 00:48:19.900 --> 00:48:24.780 The fact before World War I everyone realized the Ottoman Empire was sort of the sick man 415 00:48:24.780 --> 00:48:30.180 of Europe. 416 00:48:30.180 --> 00:48:34.740 Everybody saw it sort of like jackals coming around so they decided we're going to split 417 00:48:34.740 --> 00:48:40.180 And that's what we want out of this war, one of the main things we want. 418 00:48:40.180 --> 00:48:47.060 But the problem was also that Britain made three very contradictory promises. 419 00:48:47.060 --> 00:48:55.180 They also made a promise to what they thought was the leader of the Arabs, Hussain, who 420 00:48:55.180 --> 00:48:59.080 was the sheriff of Mecca. 421 00:48:59.080 --> 00:49:02.280 They considered him sort of the leader of the Arab world. 422 00:49:02.280 --> 00:49:08.160 And they promised that if the Arabs would join in the war with Great Britain and France, 423 00:49:08.160 --> 00:49:15.820 that there would be an independent Arab nation, and the Arabs would have complete independence. 424 00:49:15.820 --> 00:49:21.160 And then they made another contradictory promise to the Zionists, and that is that if you will 425 00:49:21.160 --> 00:49:29.600 join with us and give us your support, we will promise you a homeland in Palestine. 426 00:49:29.600 --> 00:49:36.080 So you've got these three contradictory promises that are made. 427 00:49:36.080 --> 00:49:42.360 In regard to that, I recommend a movie to you. 428 00:49:42.360 --> 00:49:47.440 This is a dangerous man about Lawrence of Arabia. 429 00:49:47.440 --> 00:49:53.080 This is only about the Paris Peace Conference, where he comes to the Paris Peace Conference 430 00:49:53.080 --> 00:49:57.840 with the son of Hussein who is Faisal, Prince Faisal. 431 00:49:57.840 --> 00:50:05.780 And they began to try to negotiate and it's very interesting to me in the movie as well 432 00:50:05.780 --> 00:50:11.760 as the book I just pointed out that Justice, the man who became Justice Frankfurter, but 433 00:50:11.760 --> 00:50:18.560 Felix Frankfurter negotiated and got Prince Faisal to say that he had no real objection 434 00:50:18.560 --> 00:50:24.760 and there's Arabs having a homeland for the Zionists in Palestine and that's in the movie 435 00:50:24.760 --> 00:50:27.840 and in the book. 436 00:50:27.840 --> 00:50:38.840 But the Zionist movement put pressure on Germany and on the British, they were playing both 437 00:50:38.840 --> 00:50:44.940 sides, and the rumor came out that Germany was going to have a declaration that if they 438 00:50:44.940 --> 00:50:51.060 1, that the Ottoman Empire was going to promise a homeland to the Zionists. 439 00:50:51.060 --> 00:50:59.180 And so Justice Brandeis was asked to go to Wilson and ask him if he would approve of 440 00:50:59.180 --> 00:51:04.940 the Balfour Declaration being given, that England would make that declaration. 441 00:51:04.940 --> 00:51:07.740 That was before America was in it and he gave approval to it. 442 00:51:07.740 --> 00:51:11.340 So he approved that before America was even in the war. 443 00:51:11.340 --> 00:51:20.140 But what's interesting to me in this book is that it shows that Lord George brought Winston 444 00:51:20.140 --> 00:51:26.660 Churchill back in to his post-war government to handle the Mideast. 445 00:51:26.660 --> 00:51:40.700 So Churchill was in charge of Palestine, Syria, and Iraq, and the Iraq situation is very interesting. 446 00:51:40.700 --> 00:52:01.700 They brought in a woman by the name of Gertrude Bell, who was a mid-east specialist, and she drew up a constitution for Iraq, and they held an election, and they put in a government, and then all hell broke loose, just like we're going through now. 447 00:52:01.700 --> 00:52:23.700 This was tried in 1921 and it was pointed out that a man named Henry Wilson says that putting those three Ottoman provinces together is like creating a nation and putting the three worst enemies together and calling them a nation. 448 00:52:23.700 --> 00:52:30.700 They simply drew a circle around the Kurds and the Shiites and the Sunnis and called them a nation. 449 00:52:30.700 --> 00:52:37.500 Well, what the British had done is that they had discovered oil in Mosul, which was a town 450 00:52:37.500 --> 00:52:42.460 they included in Iraq, and the British seemed to have recognized earlier than anyone else 451 00:52:42.460 --> 00:52:45.060 about the significance of oil for war. 452 00:52:45.060 --> 00:52:50.580 They had changed over the whole British fleet to be run by oil before World War I. 453 00:52:50.580 --> 00:52:58.580 The French were not as aware of the discovery of oil, and so they didn't fight back the 454 00:52:58.580 --> 00:53:03.860 the British getting all the oil at Mosul. 455 00:53:03.860 --> 00:53:12.540 In regard to Palestine, Churchill started running the Palestinian situation with the 456 00:53:12.540 --> 00:53:17.660 homeland and finally the British were getting, just like Americans in Iraq now, they were 457 00:53:17.660 --> 00:53:21.840 shooting them, they were bombing them, the British were taking it on the chin and so 458 00:53:21.840 --> 00:53:29.840 So Churchill goes to Lord George and he talks about it in this book and says we are suffering 459 00:53:29.840 --> 00:53:38.040 tremendously here in Palestine and I really fail to see what this really does for England. 460 00:53:38.040 --> 00:53:43.240 They're talking now that they want a state and we never promised them a state and Lord 461 00:53:43.240 --> 00:53:45.760 George says yes we have. 462 00:53:45.760 --> 00:53:51.760 He said we put homeland in there just to sell it at the time but we promised them a state 463 00:53:51.760 --> 00:53:55.840 and we're going to stick with it no matter what happens. 464 00:53:55.840 --> 00:54:01.600 And it turns out that Lord George, before being in politics, was the lawyer for Herzl, 465 00:54:01.600 --> 00:54:04.360 the founder of Zionism, and represented him. 466 00:54:04.360 --> 00:54:07.000 And he was more of a Zionist than Churchill. 467 00:54:07.000 --> 00:54:13.680 And so the commitment was made and the British didn't give up until 1947. 468 00:54:13.680 --> 00:54:17.040 And there was an interesting, this is not in any of these books, but there's an interesting 469 00:54:17.040 --> 00:54:22.800 meeting in the White House in 1948 leading up to the election. 470 00:54:22.800 --> 00:54:27.320 And it was called in George Marshall, who is Secretary of State to Handle Foreign Affairs 471 00:54:27.320 --> 00:54:34.760 and Clark Clifford, who is simply an advisor to Truman on domestic policy. 472 00:54:34.760 --> 00:54:39.480 And George Marshall objects to Clifford being there and says, I thought this was a foreign 473 00:54:39.480 --> 00:54:40.480 policy meeting. 474 00:54:40.480 --> 00:54:47.800 is, want to know whether we should endorse the creation of the State of Israel, and Marshall 475 00:54:47.800 --> 00:54:53.720 says absolutely not. That will be trouble from now on. It's the worst possible decision 476 00:54:53.720 --> 00:54:58.340 we can make, and Claude Clifford says, well, if you want to win the election, you've got 477 00:54:58.340 --> 00:55:03.760 to do it. So the decision was made, and that's one of the few times I admire George Marshall 478 00:55:03.760 --> 00:55:12.200 for Courage. He was such a sycophant during the Second World War with Roosevelt. But it 479 00:55:12.200 --> 00:55:17.740 turns out that the only treaty that was actually negotiated was the treaty with Turkey, which 480 00:55:17.740 --> 00:55:23.080 is what was left of the Ottoman Empire. They continued to fight to preserve that country, 481 00:55:23.080 --> 00:55:32.000 and that ended up being the only negotiated treaty of the whole Paris Peace Conference. 482 00:55:32.000 --> 00:55:41.880 I want to bring out something that you may not realize is a connection to Roosevelt here, 483 00:55:41.880 --> 00:55:50.940 but in the book by Macmillan, she points out the adulation that Wilson got in leading up 484 00:55:50.940 --> 00:55:52.660 to the Paris Peace Conference. 485 00:55:52.660 --> 00:55:59.820 He toured England, he toured Europe, he toured Italy, and there's no man who's ever been 486 00:56:29.820 --> 00:56:32.420 over this idea of the League of Nations. 487 00:56:32.420 --> 00:56:36.020 So he ran for Vice President in 1920 488 00:56:36.020 --> 00:56:41.580 and made 800 speeches in which every speech he proclaimed 489 00:56:41.580 --> 00:56:45.820 support for the League of Nations. 490 00:56:45.820 --> 00:56:46.660 Let me get this book. 491 00:56:59.820 --> 00:57:06.020 This book is FDR and the Creation of the UN. It's a book fully supportive of Roosevelt 492 00:57:06.020 --> 00:57:12.740 and praises him and praises the UN. But what this points out is that he was so upset about 493 00:57:12.740 --> 00:57:18.900 the League of Nations not being endorsed by America that his psyche became that he wanted 494 00:57:18.900 --> 00:57:25.240 to create a world organization and have America in it. And a lot of people I've seen recently 495 00:57:25.240 --> 00:57:30.120 The way they've said that, well, poor Roosevelt, he was so sick and debilitated at the end 496 00:57:30.120 --> 00:57:36.520 of his life that a communist named Al Juhis came in and spoofed him by creating the UN 497 00:57:36.520 --> 00:57:37.520 that he didn't understand. 498 00:57:37.520 --> 00:57:43.160 Well, if anything, Roosevelt was using Al Juhis because Roosevelt wanted the UN long 499 00:57:43.160 --> 00:57:49.640 before ever since the League of Nations was turned down by America. 500 00:57:49.640 --> 00:57:57.440 And in the Atlantic Charter meeting, this goes into in detail, in August of 1941, Roosevelt 501 00:57:57.440 --> 00:58:04.120 met with Churchill and talked about America getting into the war, which occurred in Pearl 502 00:58:04.120 --> 00:58:09.720 Harbor a few months later. And he said that the main thing he wanted as a result was the 503 00:58:09.720 --> 00:58:16.640 creation of the United Nations, and he called it by that name. And he said it will be China, 504 00:58:16.640 --> 00:58:23.640 Russia, America, and the British Empire. 505 00:58:23.640 --> 00:58:26.400 And Churchill was very much against it. 506 00:58:26.400 --> 00:58:29.600 He said, no, I can't agree to losing sovereignty. 507 00:58:29.600 --> 00:58:32.880 I might agree to some sort of sphere of influence. 508 00:58:32.880 --> 00:58:41.280 But in January of 1942, one month after Pearl Harbor, an agreement to creating the UN was 509 00:58:41.280 --> 00:58:45.720 signed in New York, which included 22 nations. 510 00:58:45.720 --> 00:58:50.760 and it talked about how it was going to be set up after the war and Roosevelt negotiated 511 00:58:50.760 --> 00:58:58.160 all of this. Roosevelt spent the entire war asking Stalin for two things. He said, we're 512 00:58:58.160 --> 00:59:02.720 sending you all this land lease, I want two things. I want you to come in and support 513 00:59:02.720 --> 00:59:10.920 the UN and I want you to join with us against Japan. And it wasn't until Yalta that Stalin 514 00:59:10.920 --> 00:59:16.640 agreed, they came into the war for six days and got all kinds of concessions for that, 515 00:59:16.640 --> 00:59:19.320 and they agreed to the United Nations. 516 00:59:19.320 --> 00:59:26.760 So that's another consequence of the ill-fated Paris Peace Talk and Wilson is that this eventually 517 00:59:26.760 --> 00:59:34.280 led to Roosevelt's warning America into World War II and creating the United Nations. 518 00:59:34.280 --> 00:59:47.680 So let me just conclude by saying this, that the 20th century to me is a train wreck. It's 519 00:59:47.680 --> 00:59:54.560 all of the great promises of classical liberalism that we heard about in the 18th and 19th centuries 520 00:59:54.560 --> 01:00:03.320 went down the drain in the 20th century due to war and due to strong nationalistic ambitions. 521 01:00:03.320 --> 01:00:09.320 This is an interesting book that I'm very much against, but it's still interesting. 522 01:00:09.320 --> 01:00:16.320 I want to read a thing to you because he says his analysis of history. 523 01:00:16.320 --> 01:00:22.320 This is a book by John J. Mersheimer called The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. 524 01:00:22.320 --> 01:00:28.320 He says this, quote, The 20th century was a period of great international violence. 525 01:00:28.320 --> 01:00:33.320 In World War I, roughly 9 million people died on European battlefields. 526 01:00:33.320 --> 01:00:38.320 About 50 million were killed in World War II and well over half of them were civilians. 527 01:00:38.320 --> 01:00:45.320 This cycle of violence continued throughout the remainder of the 20th century and will continue far into the new millennium. 528 01:00:45.320 --> 01:00:54.320 Hopes for peace will probably not be realized because the great powers that shaped the international system create each other and compete for power. 529 01:00:54.320 --> 01:01:00.320 As a result, indeed, their ultimate aim is to gain positions of dominant power over others. 530 01:01:00.320 --> 01:01:04.320 This is a very tragic situation. I agree with all that. 531 01:01:04.320 --> 01:01:07.320 Then he says, so here's the solution. 532 01:01:07.320 --> 01:01:16.320 There's no escaping it, unless, there's no escaping a bad result, unless the states that make up the system agree to form a world government. 533 01:01:16.320 --> 01:01:24.320 So what we need is more collectivism, more centralization of power if we're going to stop this tragedy of the 20th century. 534 01:01:24.320 --> 01:01:34.320 So what I hope that I've been able to do in talking about the Treaty of Versailles is to show you the unintended consequences of people that, 535 01:01:34.320 --> 01:01:43.320 at least maybe Wilson, may have had some sort of a good motive, but behind the scene are people scrambling for loot. 536 01:01:43.320 --> 01:02:13.320 and what war does, even wars that you win, you lose much of your freedom because it centralizes power and it diminishes the freedom of individuals and that's the reason for the book, The Cost of War, America's Period Victories, is to show you even in a victory you lose your freedom as we are doing now with the Patriots Act and we may be losing that war but even if we win it, we are losing our freedom through things like the Patriots Act and the security that you have to go through at an airport 537 01:02:13.320 --> 01:02:30.320 and other things like that. So to me, there's not a better organization in the world that is advocating the intellectual renaissance and reformation that's needed in government and economics than the Mises Institute. 538 01:02:30.320 --> 01:02:41.320 Mises' answer to all of this was, we need a free market economy to separate government and the economy. And we need a non-interventionist foreign policy. 539 01:02:41.320 --> 01:02:44.320 And those are the ideas also of our founders. 540 01:02:44.320 --> 01:02:54.320 So I hope that this talk has brought some things to like to you to show that war, even those 541 01:02:54.320 --> 01:03:00.000 that you win, is a dangerous thing, and that unless you seek a just peace at the end of 542 01:03:00.000 --> 01:03:04.400 the war, then you're more likely to create more problems than you started off with. 543 01:03:04.400 --> 01:03:05.400 Thank you very much. 544 01:03:05.400 --> 01:03:14.400 I don't know if I want to do any, you want to do some questions? 545 01:03:14.400 --> 01:03:29.400 You all are welcome to come up and look at these books and thumb through them and see if there's any, I'm not selling them, but you may just want to look at them. 546 01:03:29.400 --> 01:03:33.400 But I'd be glad to talk to any of you afterwards. 547 01:03:33.400 --> 01:03:36.400 Thank you very much. Peter, how are you doing? 548 01:03:36.400 --> 01:03:52.400 I didn't read that book. I read the one on World War I and he was here. 549 01:03:52.400 --> 01:03:58.400 Oh, you're talking about Thomas Fleming, the one with the John Randolph Club? 550 01:03:58.400 --> 01:04:01.400 The other one? Yeah, the one that was here? I hadn't read it. 551 01:04:01.400 --> 01:04:03.400 The one on Roosevelt and then the one on Wilson. 552 01:04:03.400 --> 01:04:13.400 Yeah. Yeah, I didn't read that one. Sorry. Anything else? I think Fleming's done a good job though. 553 01:04:13.400 --> 01:04:24.400 He came here and spoke. Lew and I had dinner with him. And he's interesting. He's not as much of a libertarian as I had hoped. 554 01:04:24.400 --> 01:04:42.400 John, can you tell us a little bit about Colonel House? About all I know about him is he wasn't a Colonel. I think he was from Texas. But how did he come to have so much influence over you? 555 01:04:54.400 --> 01:05:05.400 and he wrote an interesting book that sort of sets out all of his ideas and that is to have a, Lew, what's the name of the book, do you remember? 556 01:05:05.400 --> 01:05:06.400 Philip Drew Administrator. 557 01:05:06.400 --> 01:05:15.400 Philip Drew Administrator and it's what he wanted out of Woodrow Wilson so that he sets up this government and has a dictator and so forth. 558 01:05:15.400 --> 01:05:45.400 But his parents were from England and his father came here and made a lot of money in Texas and so he never worked or had a job but he loved power politics so he became very active in Texas politics and began to manage people's races for governor and when one of the governors was elected he made him an honorary colonel he was never in the army 559 01:05:45.400 --> 01:05:55.400 It's just an honorary thing. And so he decided that he wanted to get larger than Texas. So he wanted to get into national politics. 560 01:05:55.400 --> 01:06:08.400 And while Wilson was governor of New Jersey, he asked for a meeting with Wilson and told him that he would like to help him become president. 561 01:06:08.400 --> 01:06:13.400 and so they formed a friendship that was absolutely amazing. 562 01:06:13.400 --> 01:06:19.200 Wilson said that, talking about how I said, he knows what I'm thinking before I say it. 563 01:06:19.200 --> 01:06:21.100 He said he's my alter ego. 564 01:06:21.100 --> 01:06:27.800 And he would allow him, Wilson would allow House to speak for him without any restraints. 565 01:06:27.800 --> 01:06:33.000 And all of that came to an end at the Paris Peace Talks. 566 01:06:33.000 --> 01:06:39.400 When Wilson came back to America to meet with Congress while they were in session, he left 567 01:06:39.400 --> 01:06:41.680 House in control. 568 01:06:41.680 --> 01:06:46.680 And House was a political compromiser. 569 01:06:46.680 --> 01:06:50.880 And so he started negotiating various parts of the Versailles Treaty. 570 01:06:50.880 --> 01:06:57.200 And when Wilson came back and he blamed House for doing away with many of the things that 571 01:06:57.200 --> 01:07:01.820 Wilson had wanted, and he quit speaking to House and they separated. 572 01:07:01.820 --> 01:07:08.740 But House had a tremendous influence, and there's a very close parallel way Wilson had sent 573 01:07:08.740 --> 01:07:16.740 House to England about how to get America into the war in about 1915. House was having 574 01:07:16.740 --> 01:07:23.960 meetings with the British about America getting into the war in 1915. And the same thing Harry 575 01:07:23.960 --> 01:07:29.820 Hopkins did with Roosevelt. Harry Hopkins went to England in 1940 and had many meetings 576 01:07:29.820 --> 01:07:33.940 with the British government on how to get America into the war with Britain. 577 01:07:33.940 --> 01:07:39.660 So Howson served sort of the same secretive thing that Harry Hopkins did for Roosevelt. 578 01:07:39.660 --> 01:07:45.260 He's a very dangerous man, a very dangerous type individual that Wilson offered to give 579 01:07:45.260 --> 01:07:47.940 him a cabinet position, offered to do all kinds of things. 580 01:07:47.940 --> 01:07:51.060 He said, no, I want to stay behind the scenes. 581 01:07:51.060 --> 01:07:56.060 And so he was a very, very powerful man and probably had the most influence on Wilson 582 01:07:56.060 --> 01:08:03.060 than any other person around, maybe other than, close would be Justice Brandeis, but 583 01:08:03.060 --> 01:08:10.500 House was a very bad influence on Wilson. That's sort of a quick thumbnail on him. Anything 584 01:08:10.500 --> 01:08:11.500 else? 585 01:08:11.500 --> 01:08:15.500 John, on behalf of the audience here and those who are watching on the World Wide Web, I'd 586 01:08:15.500 --> 01:08:16.500 like to thank you very much. 587 01:08:16.500 --> 01:08:17.500 All right. Thank you.