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WORLD WAR and REBELLION to 1919
The treaty was presented to the German government in May, 1919, with the threat that if Germany did not accept the treaty by June 23, hostilities would resume. Germans were outraged by the contents of the treaty, by the corridor at Danzig, by the reparations payments that they saw would be taken from the pockets of working people in the form of lower wages, and they were outraged over the clause describing Germany as guilty for having created the war.
Germany's Social Democrat president, Friedrich Ebert -- president since February 11 -- considered resuming the war by taking up defensive positions. He telephoned Hindenburg's assistant, General Groener, who spoke to Hindenburg, and Hindenburg is reported to have told Groener, "You know what must be done. I am going for a walk." And Groener told Ebert that the army was in no shape to fight.
Again, Germany's military had left the civilians in government with the onus of defeat. Because Social Democrats were in power, Social Democrats would be blamed for accepting the treaty. As soon as the treaty was presented to the Germans, tensions arose in Germany. Known pacifists, such as Albert Einstein, felt threatened -- Einstein withdrawing his support of a group that supported the League of Nations. The treaty signed at Versailles had begun to poison German society.
On June 21, Germans sank their warships rather than turn them over to the Allies. Then, on June 28, Germany signed the treaty. Austria signed in September, and Bulgaria in November. Hungary, which had driven Béla Kun from power and returned to right-wing rule, signed in June 1920. The Turks signed in August, 1920. The Dutch remained a little more objective about Wilhelm than those among the Allied powers: they refused to allow the Allies to take Wilhelm prisoner. And the Dutch thwarted an attempt by a cabal of United States military officers to kidnap him.
At the Paris Peace Conference, Japan had tried to include a clause on racial equality, but the leaders of the western powers at Paris, Wilson among them, were unwilling to support such a declaration. Colonialism was still dependent upon the notion of superiority of the white race, and rather than move to end imperialism, the creators of the peace treaty sought its perpetuation. They made Germany's colonies in Africa the common property of the League of Nations. Without consulting the local people concerned, the settlement gave Britain control of German East Africa and a part of the German Cameroon. It gave France control over Togoland. South Africa took control over another portion of Germany's African empire. And Germany's holdings in the Pacific were divided between Japan, New Zealand and Australia.
Arabic speaking peoples felt betrayed by the Peace Treaty. Arabs fighting with the Allied powers against rule by the Turks had been promised independence, and they had been looking forward to the independence called for in Wilson's Fourteen Points. A proclamation poster distributed in Baghdad when British troops passed through in 1917, spoke of Arabs managing their "civil affairs in collaboration with the Political Representative of Great Britain ... in realizing the aspirations of your Race." Britain occupied Bazra believing that the sacrifice of British blood "for the peace of the world" gave them the right to do so. It was an occupation designed to safeguard British oil interests in Persia. The Arabs found themselves without a voice at the Paris conference, and at Paris it was decided that Palestine and Mesopotamia (the latter to be called Iraq) would be administered by Britain, and it was decided that Syria and Lebanon would be administered by France -- all under mandates of the League of Nations.
In 1920 the British were fighting an insurrection in Iraq. Britain's prime minister, Lloyd-George, responded to complaints by asking what would happen if his forces withdrew and saying that he would not abandon Iraq to "anarchy and confusion."
Among those King George of Britain had wired congratulations to at the end of the war were the Chinese. China had joined the Allies during World War I, hoping to win some favor with them, especially control over Germany's holdings in China, and China had sent laborers to Europe as their contribution to the Allied war effort. The Chinese had been unaware that the Allies had promised the Japanese control of Germany's holdings in China (in Shandung Province, which protrudes into the Yellow Sea), and when this was disclosed during the Paris Conference student protests erupted in China. The students learned that the Japanese had paid a Chinese warlord in Beijing a huge sum of money to agree to Japan's taking over the German holdings. The student protests gave birth to the May 4th Movement, whose slogans were "struggle for sovereignty" and "throw out the warlord traitors." The Chinese viewed the peace treaty as a betrayal. And they saw the moralism in Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points as hypocritical. At the Paris Peace Conference, the delegation from Beijing's warlord government acceded to public opinion in China and refused to sign the peace treaty.
Koreans also felt betrayed by the Paris conference. Wilson’s talk of a just settlement to the war in 1918 had inspired wishful thinking among the Koreans, who yearned for freedom from Japanese rule, which they had been living under since 1910. The Koreans had suffered censorship by the Japanese. And, under the Japanese, education opportunities had been denied to all but a few. The Koreans had been denied the full benefits of their own rice crops. And business opportunities had been preserved for the Japanese.
With the beginning of the Paris Peace talks, the Koreans had planned a peaceful demonstration in their nation's capital, to be accompanied by a public pledge of support for Korean independence, a move made largely by Korea's teachers, Christian pastors and professional men. Participants in the day of demonstration were asked to carry homemade flags, to parade, wave flags and chant "may Korea live a thousand years." It was a day that was to become a great day of remembrance, and mourning. The march was about 500,000 strong and witnessed by some American citizens. Japan's agents in Korea labeled the demonstrations as riots. Troops fired into the demonstrators. Japanese forces attacked and burned Christian churches. 6,670 Koreans died, 14,611 were wounded, and 52,770 arrested. Across Korea, outrage against the Japanese intensified, and rebellion took the Japanese months to control. Many Koreans -- some armed -- fled into Manchuria and into Korea's mountains, while at Paris the Peace Conference refused to allow Koreans to plead their case.
Some Koreans tried assassinating Japanese officials in Korea. Koreans in Los Angeles began organizing a drive for Korea's independence. A new organization called the National Council of the Korean Provisional Republic appointed as its leader a Korean in exile in the United States, Syngman Rhee (Yi Sung-man), and Rhee established his headquarters in Honolulu.
Japanese authorities claimed that the trouble in Korea stemmed from their having been too lenient with the Koreans, but Japan did an about face in August 1919. It sent a new Governor General to Korea, Admiral Saito Makoko, who claimed to respect Korean culture and customs and announced his intention to work toward and promote the happiness and well being of the Korean people. The new Governor General kept police less visible. But force against Koreans remained, as did Japanese censorship. And 11,831 Korean dissidents remained in prison.
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Copyright © 2007 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.