Michael neiberg who is inaugural chair of world studies and professional history of Department National security and more strategy at the army war college. Mike and i were actually colleagues. Might this goes back a ways, about 2006 or so. In the history of department at the university of southern mississippi. Weve state untouched over the years and seen each other quite a bit as we have both moved on to other things. We have always had a set of shared interests. Mike, it is great to be here with you today and have a conversation on a subject that is extremelys timeless. Responding to crisis. Obviously, what needs to be said for our audience, and they have seen on the audience they can of a current crisis, the coronavirus crisis, economic downturn that is going to be a serious issue for leaders, for everyday people, for a while to come. It seems a good time to talk about two major 20th century crises at the end of two world wars and how leaders responded and to raise the issue about what light that light might throw on the president , about the framework for comparison and mike, obviously you are one of the people to talk to about. There are too many of your books to list for the audience, but i thought i would just mention you are fighting the great war. You are history world war one. Dance of the furys, europe and the outbreak of world war one. The blood of freemen. The liberation of paris in 1944. Two books for our audience will be of great and tourist to given our subject today which is, concise history of the treaty of versailles and the book about the end of the world war ii and the remaking of europe. I thought what i would just do is start with world war i and take a chronological approach and have a conversation with you about how leaders responded to these two major crises. I think we have a little time here at the end, we can raise some issues about how that relates to the present. Where to begin . Naturally, pretty straightforward, is the world as it appeared to allied leaders in 1918 and 1919. The end of world war one, some 10 Million People had perished in that conflict. As the american french, british, italian leaders met to talk about how to go forward, they had been faced with their own pandemic. The great 1918 influenza. What kind of looking back on it. How did these leaders respond to these crises . How did the world look to them and how did they think about moving beyond the world war. Thanks jason and thanks to the museum and chrissy and kate for all the work that we have done putting this together. Thank you to all of you for signing in. I hope you are safe. I hope youre using this as an opportunity. You obviously are if you are in this zoo meeting to use this time productively, hopefully. For me, it has been a time to reflect about the ways in which the days that you live in. The present time that you live in, changes the way you think about the past and changes the way you think about these Big Questions that jason has identified, both how you deal with pandemics and how you deal with Great Power Competition in the era of crisis, which is certainly what is going on in 1919. It nobody was under any illusions that when everything decided at the paris peace conference was going to end Great Power Competition, the question is how do you make sense of the new world you are living in and what kind of sets of ideas or philosophies do you want going over . One thing this crisis has done for me is it has made me realize just how similar and some broad respects they were thinking 100 years ago and what i mean by that is, this is simplifying things too much but there are at least two major groups of thinkers. One is represented by Woodrow Wilson who argues that the right solution is international and multi problems like pandemics, Great Power Competition, de colonization, dealing with communism, bolsheviks them, those are International Problems that need international solution. There are other folks, the french Prime Minister who are not opposed to negotiating but want to go through a national model. Theodore roosevelt who were making the same argument back in the u. S. The question comes to your perspective. What do you think is causing the problem and what do you think is the appropriate solution . There are people who are thinking internationally 100 years ago and people who are thinking nationally. In some ways, i think those two mind sets would be very familiar to people of 100 years ago looking at our world they would have in our present situation than maybe we would expect. That leads me to the next question. We are talking about the issue of frameworks and different visions that were there already from the very beginning. These countries had fought together. Britain and france had been in the fight since 1914 and then the u. S. Jumped in three years later. At what point did tensions between wilson and clemency so and lloyd george already begin to emerge about an international versus a National Framework . How to deal with germany. The fact that germany was defeated. Germany is not occupied in 18 1918 and 1919. And how to deal with that obviously we will come back with the question of the bolsheviks and the likes. In this case, there were already very early on, tensions about how to respond and what kind of vision would form a peace and could you say a bit about that . , the when george clemency so saw Woodrow Wilsons 14 points he very famously said got himself was content after the paris peace conference was asked to evaluate his own performance in the house of commons and he said i do not think i did too bad. It seemed i had napoleon on one side and jesus crisis himself on the other. There are tensions with the kind of the way that wilson is thinking about this. The First American president ever to go to europe while in office. The First American really to kind of try to take american ideals and apply them to the old world. There is that problem that is playing in. I think a lot of it also depends on what you think caused fundamentally caused the war. If you are george clemency so it is the question of something inherent and herons in the german character. It was clemency who had been a member he had argued for fighting on rather than giving over the reins theres Something Different about germany that you had to deal with. It is a balance of power problem. Germany group too quickly too fast. To wilsons mind it was a lack of democracy and open markets. A 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 there and very different definitions that came out of that and what they think the way to solve it is. We can talk about it about world war ii as well. Many of the same problems were there. What do you think is the fundamental cause of the problem . Until youve answered that question you really cannot lead to solutions. To someone like Georges Clemenceau the american approach looks way too idealistic. It looks way too high in the sky. Where as wilson looked more of the same. Part of it comes more of how you view the past two or the old phrase the further you look back the further you look forward. It is a different definition of what they see when they look back you know the difference is about germany and how they understood the conflict and how for example clemency so views idealism. One of the things people always brings up about of a will sony and perspective. Is its idealism beyond wilson is there any on the french of britain and british side, is there any real sense that democracy in germany, and the fact that the kaiser had been forced out, germany in 1918 and 1919 has become a republic, or is in the process i mean a republic. So that, you think that might for wilson, be a signal that yes the, the german people are trying to step up and move past an older authoritarianism, and the british and french side who had been in the war much earlier. Much of it is devastated in france. The weariness, the suspicion would be significantly deeper about germany. Not at all convinced that just because we have now running germany instead of loon and dwarf, it really has been much change. That is one of the things that i want to ask. On the british and french side, is there much interest at all in the fact that germany seems to be transitioning to some kind of democratic system, whereas for wilson that maybe some confirmation for him that his own point of view is correct . I think youre right about both of the points. Not all frenchman see the world in the way that clemenceau does. There are plenty of french intellectuals and politicians would argue that germany will need time to figure out what democracy is going to look like. It does not have democratic traditions that britain and france half. You need to open borders, build links between british and french. Catholic movements inside france, socialist Party Movements that are trying everything they can to build these bridges across the river, not to say lets just kiss and make up. But the fundamental problem of germany was the kaiser. It was not germany, essentially the professions headlight to the germans which also comes up at the end of world war ii. Americans are going through world war ii and saying hey wasnt us it was those guys. Similar things are happening in world war one. The two germanys argument. There was this kind of germany beetle van, Higher Learning that had somehow been germany has a chance to move forward. It doesnt necessarily mean that everybody in france and britain stress that, but it means theyre saying if we are looking for post or strategy, it is better to leverage that then trying to build that up then it is to continue to you all know this, this works better at the end of the Second World War, at least by the 19 sixties and seventies, until you write a point or france and germany had no order between them. It is an expression that you can do this under different historical circumstances. To me as a historian, every time i cross that border with nobody checking a passport i know what has been a while now, but shared currency. Consultation on foreign policy, this is what a lot of people were envisioning into the 1920s, that you might eventually get to Something Like that. Maybe not quite as indepth as we have it now. They are not all wildly optimistic or two idealistic i would say. But they are hoping that if you could build bridges between the two and some way, you increase the change for cooperation rather than competition. That to me is very similar to the debate where having right now. What is the best way to deal with this crisis . Is it to continue to build those bridges even between governments that dont necessarily trust each other or governments that know they have Different Things that they are trying to accomplish. Or is the best way to do it is to while yourself up there is no obvious answer to the question but to me, it resonates with the kind of stuff that i studied. Mike, those are very important points. It leads to to follow ups on that. One is that you are just knowing 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 one. The first question would be, what kinds of popular pressures do you see lloyd george just had an election by the end of 1918. Woodrow wilson had a Congressional Election and now has republicans and congress who are not terribly excited about a lot of the internationalist side of this whole peacemaking process. Clemenceau does not have an election so much to deal with but nonetheless as you point out, there are popular pressures that he does have to respond to as well. A lot of people sacrificed casualties that french undergoes, the destruction, significant parts of the country that he has to listen to these pressures. He cannot simply ignore them. I guess here we can often get so focused on the kind of big three and what is going on with them as they are trying to figure out a treaty that everyone can agree to, but they also have to democracies with or republic, britain with its long tradition, they all have to deal with pressures from below. Did you Say Something about that . The easiest way to study the treaty in versailles is to look at those big three. Looking around in our own country, there is no one american answer to the covid crisis, or british answer. These things are determined by where you live, whether you are middle class forces working class. All kinds of things are going to determine your response. To me, it is more interesting the ways in which the debates reach across national lines. The big winners do you want to solve these problems at the national or in 1918 or 1919 at the imperial level. If you are british do you want to do this by opening up the empire of International Trade which is an answer or do you want to do this by increasing those imperial ties, in other words increasing tariffs, keeping americans out of those markets and trying the best that you can to kind of reinforce the empire in the strength of the empire. Both of those arguments are out there. The imperial argument winds at the end of world world war one largely. Not at the end of world war ii. To completely different context where americans are able to force soap in the British Empire. The United States to me, the debate over the treaty of versailles is fascinating. A group of senators that just say i do not care what is in the thing, im not signing it. Another group says hey look, there are ways in which we think this unconstitutional and which the leak of nations could draw the United States into a war and the obligation to declare war belongs to the u. S. Senate. That is unconstitutional. You cannot do that. There are ways in which this ties us down. There are people who are making the argument, the league of nations as one nation one vote. Why would we as americans except 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 world war ii, the un comes with Security Council and the five vetoes, otherwise it is not clear that the un wouldve gotten through the u. S. Conference. There are arguments there that are perfectly legitimate to think opponents of the league is just these backward looking dinosaurs. It is unfair. They had legitimate grievances. There are things we still talk about today. World health organization. Do you want to be part of an organization in which youve seen some of your sovereignty and you pay money into the organization, knowing you are probably not getting much out of it as a small because you believe in the health of International Organizations. If you accept that principle, and w. H. O. Membership makes perfect sense. If you dont, you want to do that. The same exact thing was happening 100 years ago. The french case is more complicated because of the immediacy of the german threat. We do not want to run down that rat hole unless you want me to. The french situation is more complicated. You already sort of set me up for the second question, which is really the issue of democracy. Coming back to it just for second, that you pointed out about popular pressures and range of different views that are coming forward and that we should take this seriously and different perspectives about, should there be a league of nations and what kind of authority should have and should be able to intervene in conflict or arbitrate line there is a lot of different perspectives in their. I think because of the 1930s, the lead is still badly remembered for people that it is even difficult to have a serious conversation about what things look like in 1918, 1919 when people were just first trying to envision it. On the side of democracy, the fact is, the u. S. Is fighting, fought world war one with a segregated military. American women at the National Level did not get the right to vote until 1920 with the 19th amendment. British women, during the 1920s french women not until the end of world war ii. Fourth republic. Right. That is the whole issue of the colonies. Where the british and french had used colonial troops and those respective countries, part of the prudish and french umpires were like, what about democracy here . So much of this was being fought in the name of democracy and against german militarism, german autocracy. What is this really going to mean and honestly at the versailles, during the deliberations, hes become real issues about what do we do about opening things up. You mentioned the issue of trade. In a sense of what kind should we grant more autonomy . What do we do about these movements that are calling for independence and obviously those become quite violent in 1919. The massacre in india, that you have a 1919, its federal. What do we do with that . The issue of democracy and how that rhetoric had been there very late in the war and how indeed the big three did have to confront that . That would be also just for our viewers kind of segue into addressing the bolsheviks revolution and the particular challenge that has. These three countries had real issues about democratization they have to address. Enormous issues. There is a difference between the democracy and quality that the group had the right to vote. The imperial question is an enormous one. It is enormously complicated. My canadian friends the first time canada ever since a document in its own right is the treaty of versailles. The first when they signed a sign on the wrong line so they had to put an agenda on the original treaty of versailles. My canadian friends love to talk about that. How big of a leap it was on the stage for canada. You point out to india, when the First World War be gone, he was a supporter of the war because he thought the British Empire was doing the right thing by standing up to german by the end of the war he said its not about de