Debated by leaders as they tried to decide how to deal with destroyed economies, failed empires, and competing political ideologies. Jason i want to extend a welcome to all the viewers joining us. It is a great pleasure to talk to my friend and one time colleague mike neiberg, from the army war college. Mike and i were colleagues. This is going back a ways, so 2006, in the History Department of southern mississippi, we have stayed in touch quite a bit as we both moved on. We have always had shared interests. It is great to be here with you today and to have a conversation on a subject that is extremely timely, which is really responding to crisis. Obviously what needs to be said is the audience has seen all of the evidence they can of the current crisis, the economic downturn that will be the serious issue for leaders, for everyday people. It seems a good time to talk about two major 20thcentury crises. At the end of two world wars and how leaders responded, and to raise an issue about the light that might throw on the present, about the framework for comparison. Youre one of the people to talk to about this. There are too many of your books to list for the audience but i thought i would talk about the fight in the great war, world war i, the blood of free men, the book about the liberation of paris in 1944. Two books for the audience that will be of great interest is your concise history of the treaty of versailles. And your book about potsdam and the history of europe. I thought we will start with world war i and have a chronological approach. Withll have a conversation you about these two major crises, and if we have time at the end, we can raise issues about how that relates to the present. The place to begin is pretty straightforward, the world as it appeared to allied leaders in 1918 and 1919. At the end of world war i, some 10 Million People had perished in that conflict. As the american, french, british, italian leaders met, they are faced with their own pandemic, the great 1918 influenza. That world, and looking back on it, how did these leaders respond to these crises . How did they think about moving beyond the world work . Mike first of all, thank you, jason, thank you to the museum, and thank you to the viewers for signing in. I hope youre using this opportunity to use this time productively. For me it has been a time to reflect about the ways in which the days that you live in, the present time, changes the way about the past, and changes the way you think about these big questions, how you deal with a pandemic and how you deal with Great Power Competition in a crisis. That was happening at 1919. I dont think anybody thought that what happened at the conference was going to end Great Power Competition. The question was how to make sense of the new world you are living in and what kind of philosophies do you want Going Forward . One thing this crisis has done is made me realize how similar in broad respects they were thinking 100 years ago. What i mean by that, this is simplifying things, but there are at least two major groups of thinkers. One is represented by Woodrow Wilson who argues that the right solution is multilateral. Like problems like pandemics, Great Power Competition, those are International Problems that need international solutions. They are other folks who are not a composed 2 opposed to negotiating with other countries, but there are americans like Theodore Roosevelt making the same argument in the u. S. What do you think is causing the problem and what do you think is the appropriate solution . There are people who were thinking internationally 100 years ago and people thinking nationally. Those two would be very familiar to somebody looking at our world 100 years ago. They wouldve recognized a lot more about the situation that we would expect. Jason that leads me to my next question. You are talking about different visions that were there already from the very beginning. Of course these countries had fought together, britain and france had been in the fight since 1914. The u. S. Jumped in three years later. At what point did the tensions between wilson and the others begin to surface between an international and national framework, how to deal with germany. The fact that germany was defeated, but this is a different thing and we will get to this later, but germany is not occupied in 1918 and 1919. We will come back to the questions of the bolsheviks and the like, but there were already tensions about how to respond. Could you say a bit about that . Mike Woodrow Wilson very famously said that god himself was content to give us just 10 and david george was asked to evaluate his own performance after the paris peace conference. He said, i dont think i did too bad seeing that i had napoleon on one side and jesus christ himself on the other. There were tensions with the weight wilson was thinking about this, the First American president to go to europe in office. The First American president trying to take american ideals and apply them to the old world. So there is that problem. And i think it also depends on what you think fundamentally caused the war. If you are george, there is something inherent in the german character. He had argued for fighting on rather than giving up. In his mind, the problem there , is Something Different about germany that you have to deal with. In georges mind there is a balance of power problem. In wilsons mind, the problem is a lack of democracy, the lack of open markets, the lack of incentives for states to work together. Although they were allies during the war they had very different definitions of what they thought they were doing and very different definitions came out of that about how to solve it. We can talk about this for world war ii as well. What do you think is the fundamental cause of the problem and until you have answered that question, you really cannot look for solutions. The american approach looks way too idealistic, way too pieinthesky. Two wilson, it looks like more of the same. Part of it comes from an understanding of how you view the past. It is a different definition of what they see when they look backwards. Also, the differences about germany and how they understood the forces of the the frenchd how leader views wilsons idealism. Its what so many people bring up about that will sony and wilsonian perspective. The idealism, beyond wilson, is real sense that democracy in germany, the fact that the kaiser had been forced out, germany has become a republic or is in the process of becoming a republic. You think that might be a signal for wilson be a signal that the german people are trying to step up and move past authoritarianism. The british and the french side have been in the war much earlier, much of northern france is devastated, that the wariness and the suspicion would be deeper about germany, and not at all convinced, just because we have this man running germany, that they really has not been much change. That is one of the things that one to ask, on the british and french side, is there interest at all in the fact that germany seems to be transitioning to some type of democratic system . Where as for wilson, that may be confirmation that his point of view is correct. Mike i think you are right about both of those points. Not all frenchmen see the world the way clemenceau does. Germany will need time to figure out how it will work. It does not have the traditions that britain and france has paired you need to open the borders up. And are catholic movements youth movements and socialist Party Movements trying to build these bridges across the rhine river. Not to say lets just make up, but to say the fundamental problem of germany was kaiser, it wasnt germany. That comes up at the end of world war ii. The number of bavarians who were like, it was those guys. Something similar is happening in world war i as well and there are people who are sympathetic. It is what they call the two germanys argument. There was this germany of beethoven and others that was crushed. It doesnt mean that everybody in france and britain trusts that, but it means that if we are looking for a postwar strategy it is better to leverage that than it is to continue the hatred and the enmity. We know this works better in the end of the Second World War, until you are at a point where france and germany have no border, which is an expression that you can do this under different historical circumstances. To me, every time i cross that border with nobody checking, its been a wild now, but shared currency, consultation on foreign policy. This is what a lot of people are envisioning into the 1920s that you might get Something Like that. They are not all wildly optimistic or too idealistic, bu t they are hoping that if you can build bridges between them, you increas e that chance for cooperation rather than competition. That is similar to the debate we are having now, whats the best way to deal with this crisis . Is it to build those bridges between governments that do not trust each other or governments that know they have Different Things they are trying to accomplish, or do you wall yourself off and deal with it from a National Perspective . Theres no obvious answer, but to me it resonates with the kind of stuff i studied at the end of the two world wars. Those are important points. It leads to followups on that. Youre noting that we should not be monolithic in the way that we understand the responses of these three countries to how to build a new order after world war i. The first question would be what kind of popular pressures do you see like lloyd george had just had an election in 1918. Woodrow wilson had a Congressional Election and he now has republicans in congress who are not terribly excited about a lot of the internationalist side of this peacemaking process. Clemenceau does not have an election to deal with, but there are popular pressures that he has to respond to. For a lot of people, the sacrifice and casualties that france undergoes, the destruction in significant parts of the country that he has to listen to these pressures, he cannot just ignore them. We can get so focused on the big three and what is going on with them as they are trying to figure out a treaty that everyone can agree to, but as democracies, they are a republic, britain with its long tradition, they have to deal with pressures from below. Could you Say Something about that . The is just way to study treaty of verseilles is with those big three. With middleclass versus workingclass, all kinds of things will determine your response. Do you want to solve these problems at the National Level or the imperial level . If you are british do you want to open up to International Trade . Or do you want to do this by increasing those imperial ties . Increasing tariffs, keeping americans out of the markets and trying the best that you can to reinforce the strength of the empire . Both of those arguments are out there. The imperial argument wins at the end of world war i. It does not end at the end of world war ii. To meet the debate over the treaty is fascinating. There is a group of senators that say i dont care whats in it, im not signing it. There is another group that says there are ways in which this is unconstitutional. There is a way that the league of nations can turn the United States into a war. The obligation to declare war belongs to the senate. It is constitutional. You cannot do that. There are also people are going that the league of nations is one nation, one vote. Why would americans accept the same level of power in an International Organization that ecuador would have . Why would we do that on a pure power basis . It makes no sense. Which is why, in world war ii, the u. S. Comes with the Security Council and the veto. Otherwise it is not clear that the u. N. Wouldve gotten through. There are arguments that are perfectly legitimate. To think of opponents of the league as backward looking dinosaurs is unfair. They had legitimate grievances. There are things we still talk about today. The World Health Organization, do you want to be part of an organization where you pay money into the organization knowing you are not getting as much out of it as a smallish state would because you believe in helping International Organizations. If you accept that, the who makes perfect sense. The same thing was happening 100 years ago. The french case is more complicated because of the immediacy of the german threat. Maybe we do not want to run down that rabbit hole unless you want. The french situation is more complicated. Jason you already set me up for this second question which is the issue of democracy, and coming back to it for a second. You pointed out about popular pressures. There are a range of different views coming forward. We should take these different perspectives seriously about should there be a league of nations, what kind of authority should have, should it intervene in conflicts . Is it only there to arbitrate . There are a lot of perspectives in there and because of the 1930s, the league is so badly remembered, it is even difficult to have a serious conversation about what things looked like in 1918 when people were trying to envision it. On the side of democracy, the fact is the u. S. Is fighting world war i with a segregated military. American women at the National Level dont get the right to vote until 1920. And the whole issue of the colonies where the british and the french had used colonial troops and those respected countries part of the british and french empires were like, so much of this is being fought in the name of democracy and german militarism, and autocracy , what is this going to mean . In versailles, these become real issues about what do we do about opening things up . You mentioned the issue of trade. Just in the sense of what time should we grant more autonomy . These movements that are calling for independence. It becomes quite violent in 1919. The massacre in india. What should we do with bad about the issue of democracy and how that rhetoric had been there late in the war and how these big three then have to confront that . For our viewers that would be a segue into addressing the bolshevik revolution and challenge that had. These countries have real issues of democratization that they have to address. They have enormous issues. The imperial question is an enormous one. Its enormously complicated. The first time canada ever signed a document in its own right was the treaty of oversight, and the first one that they signed, they signed on the wrong line so they had to put an addendum on the treaty of versailles document. My canadian friends love to point that when out. India, when the First World War began, gandhi was a supporter of the war. He thought the british were doing the right thing but by the end he realized this is not a war about democracy at all. It a supremely talented historian at harvard wrote about in which he argues where they read of Woodrow Wilson and said the americans are going to fight for democracy. He is serious about this and the point that he makes is by the middle of the paris peace conference, wilson doesnt have that in mind at all. He doesnt have the end of the empires at all. What he has in mind is america ask about right to trade in those empires. His book is about the dissolution that people start to sense in american rhetoric. Going to roosevelt is try to bring that back in the Second World War and try to put more teeth behind it than wilson did. There are a couple of parts in the world, the checkoff controversy in china where these interests and values come in conflict with each other. Armenia is another example and the United States doesnt know what to do because we are still trying to figure this out. The end of the world war creates a lot of these conflicts like palestine it vietnam that will , come back and bite people by the time the 20th century is over. Arealk about the wars we fighting right now, we are still trying to figure out how you govern a complicated place like the middle east in the absence of a centralized Authority Like the ottoman empire. I will just end with this. We can talk about competing antiimperial visions but there is a wonderful quotation from David Lloyd George in the middle of passchendaele, he is talking about british operations in mesopotamia, iraq and palestine and it is mesopotamia and palestine that we will have to deal with. Those are two fundamental issues in u. S. Foreignpolicy. There is so much more that we can say about that, and up and uprising in presentday iraq and the issue of palestine , would be a whole other weapon. These are big ones. China, you mentioned the may 4 movement. This is a huge question, and it connects directly to the particular challenge that the bolshevik revolution posed to the big three. This is a subject im very interested in. Once lenin, trotsky, and the bolshevik seized power in 1917, they published all of the secret treaties that imperial russia had signed with britain and france, expecting a victory, and who would get what in terms of ottoman territory, they were very glad to show countries around the world that this is what this war is being fought over and lenin gives his overriding vision to revolutionaries, that the world war was not a tragedy, it was not an aberration, it wasnt that europe went crazy, this is a necessary outcome of imperialism. Imperialism is a worldwide system. There is no desire to go back to the status quo, which a lot of socialists during the war say, we should go back to what we had prior to june 28, 1914. Mike that is like now january 2020. Trying to turn the clock back. Jason and lenin says the only way to turn the clock back is revolution and he saw russia as the beginning of a worldwide revolution that would not only take place in the