6

can ever prove that a great opportunity has existed. Many people have been fired for not having foreseen risks. And the tendency of a bureaucracy almost inevitably to predict almost every conceivable horrible thing that might happen if only to protect themselves. On the other hand, we shall see next week, the statesman faces a dilemma. As I have said, bureaucracy is run by a standard of average performance and great things often have to be done against bureaucracies not with bureaucracies. On the other hand, whatever is done, has to be within a framework that can, within a finite time, be assimilated into a standard of average performance. If a policy is conducted in such a way that it requires a great man in every generation, the country that is attempting to do this is embarking on a tour de force beyond its resources. There is no historical record of great men succeeding each other in an unbroken line. In fact, great men have a tendency to blight their successors and to prevent other great men from emerging. So the problem of the statesmen is to be able to break out of the mold that is bureaucracies in a way im in prisonment but not so far that an orderly procedure becomes totally impossible.

Germany, after Bismarck, was saddled with a legacy which no German chancellor could possibly possibly carry out, France after de Gaulle may face precisely the same dilemma.

The second aspect of contemporary policy, in addition to getting the agreement of the bureaucracy, is the to get agreement of whatever body legitimizes the government which is usually, in the modern period, some sort of popular support. This form of popular support, incidentally, is also true in totalitarian states, though. Even the king, by divine right, in the 18th century may made no effort to get the approval of their people because the legitimacy of their rule did not depend on popular support, modern dictators go to enormous lengths through a combination of propaganda and oppression to gain popular support, and to some limited extent when

7

they cannot structure popular support through propaganda and repression may be even be responsible. Now the requirement of popular support contrary to what was expected by the democrat and liberal thinkers of the 18th and 19th century has not necessarily made for a more peaceful policy. On the contrary, it has led to an oversimplification of foreign policy issues, it has led to a very great amount of demegacy demagogy in foreign policy because every political leader wants to prove that he has a simple answer and the total answer which to existing problems. It has limited freedom of maneuver of the statesmen and not necessarily for the advantage of a peaceful, and certainly not for the advantage of a long-range policy. The peace settlement which was made in 1815 for example on which we will speak this time or next time could not have been made, for better or for worse, under contemporary conditions. Now these are the requirements of the statesmen.

Now let me make a few observations about the international system in which and he has to operate, and About the conditions which limite the- his scope and which affect his policy. Many of them I have talked about before so I will summarize them rather rapidly.

Among the factors to consider in determining the objective environment are three: 1) One is what are the units that are in potential conflict. Are they feudal states, national states, trans-national states? What is the notion of sovereignty that attaches to any particular to what particular unit does the notion of sovereignty attach? Great upheavals in history have occured and-there- when there have been changes in the notions of sovereignty. There have been changes from the city-state to the feudal state to the national state to states which went beyond the nation.

The Second question that the statesman has to be able to answer is what the units, however they are defined, are able to do to each other in terms of technology, strategy etc.

The third question is what the units want to do one to another? (And this

8

depends on its domestic policy. You have a stable world in-the-number-of-states in it is multiple because the greater the number of states, particularly if they have comparable domestic structures, the more combinations are possible. This is not true in the present period because there are only two major states, and then a few secondary states and then a host of smaller ones that have, whose shift of sides weally doesn't make any difference and moreover which had a high incentive which I pointed out not to shift sides because their bargaining position depends precisely on being able to find some position between the two contenders. The world is stable also if there is a relatively stable technology, that is if there is a similar outlook by political leaders, no--stable technology and if there is limited domestic claims, that is if there is a similar outlook by political leaders about the permissible aims and methods of foreign policy. And it has proved helpful in the past if there was a frontier that permitted compensation. It was not helpful to the people living on the frontier but it proved helpful to the people running the international system. In the 19th century European could be defeat compensated to some extent by colonial expansion. And it was a deliberate policy of Bismark after France had been defeated in 1871 to encourage France into colonial expansion partly because he wanted France to find an outlet for its national pride in areas other than in Europe and partly because he was hoping to employ France against Britain and to divert France's energy from Germany.

In a stable system, the main goal is to prevent a single actor from upsetting the equilibrium. The maintenance of the international system becomes more important than the achievement of any particular goal within it. Adjustements are possible, but they of occur within the framework of the existing structure rather than in an attempt to overthrow it. Again, periodically, there have been periods of stability which contributed some exhibited some or all of these features and they have been succeeded by periods of instability. Sometimes these periods of instability came about by accident. The European Civil War 1914

9

for example, which started in 1914, came at the end of a period of faith in
uninterrupted progress. None of the statesmen who went to war in August, 1914,
in Europe had any intention of overthrowing the European system. No one believed
that it was possible that a war like World War I could ever occur and the reason
they went to war so joyously was precisely because they thought it would be
a very quick war leading to some very marginal adjustments. The enormity of the
war efforts were added only as the casualties mounted but there had to be some
connection between the suffering and the waging. The overthrow of the international
equilibrium that existed throughout most of the 19th century came about as an
accident through incompetence, through lack of foresight, through lack of any
appreciation of technology or any relationship between the masses of manpower
which were being mobilized and the objectives which were initially being sought.
Initially the objectives which were being sought were, it would be very difficult
to state them. And on other occasions, the equilibrium had been overthrown as the
result of deliberate policy. Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini of Communist policy is
that deliberately aimed at upsetting the international system the exists. The reason for
this can be irrepresible ambition of an individual, I think this would be the case
of Napoleon or Hitler. The reason could as asem also be ideological conviction,
I think this would be the case with the French Revolution and with the Communist
system. Or it can be objective factors we know out of any ones control. When the frontiers
end, all the competitiveness of the units comprising the international system had to
be carried out within the international system. When there is an increase of state
control more resources become available for the conduct of foreign policy. When states
are consolidated the number of factors in the conduct of foreign policy diminish.
Now these are the major factors of the environment and the major considerations of
the statesmen.

And I would like to turn now to begin a consideration of the historical period
which will concern us for the next few lectures. The making of the peace settlement

in 1815 (which I think illustrates some of these observations. In the 18th century Europe was composed of a some 50 sovereign states, the majority of them being located in Germany and Italy which at that time were not considered nations but geographic entities comprising a number of different sovereign states. It would not have occurred to anybody in the 18th century, for example, that all people speaking the German language should have the same nation and even less all people having the same national background. It was certainly conceivable, indeed it happened all the time, that German states would make alliances against other German states or with Russia. The governments were in the hands of kings who ruled by divine right. They had no absolute power in a certain sense but they had no right to conscript their subjects, to levy tax-income taxes or to devote a very great percentage of international resources to the national effort. War was carried out by mercenaries and since mercenaries not easy to come by, casualties were very low. Every general had a high incentive to conserve his human resources. The war of peoples was not imagined at the time. As a result, even though wars occurred they were very limited wars. Adjustments did take place but they did not affect the basic equilibrium of Europe. It was, in short, a relative stable period. All of this was ended by the French Revolution.

In the 18th century no state made universal, ideological claims. No state insisted that its domestic structure had any particular validity outside of its own borders. After the French Revolution, as Burke said, considerations were introduced into the concerns of all countries which did not arise from their locality or their national circumstances. In short, was the French Revolution brought about first a domestic upheaval in France (and if the domestic upheaval which made it possible to increase the governmental controls over the population because now policy was justified not by the divine right of kings, but by popular legitimacy. And thirdly the French form of government was declared not to be something which was peculiarly applicable to France but something which was universally valid. This

11

is the enormous difference between the British and the French conception of parliamentary government.

Britain had a certain doctrine of popular sovereignty also at the end of the 18th century, but Britain always insisted that it grew out of peculiarly British circumstances and it had no applicability necessarily beyond the Channel. The British system was not a crusade system; The French was. The impact of the French Revolution on Europe therefore was that henceforth a what was the issue, was not longer the adjustment of differences within the international system but the international system itself. Every conflict with France was not only a diplomatic conflict but a form of civil war. The application of the traditional (maximums) of dipole diplomacy in a revolutionary situation led to the same demoralization that always occurs when status quo powers try to deal with revolutionary countries by policies which had been at various times, which in 1930 were called appeasement, which now had connation which the positions that a country takes are to be taken at face value, that the policies are assumed to be limited until they are proved to be otherwise. The great success of the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century, the foreign policy successes of the French Revolution, were, yes, entirely to the fact that their opponents simply could not conceive of a policy of unlimited objectives. When the army, yes, of its resources were, infinitely greater than those of France in actual resources, but whose mobilizable resources were much smaller, confronted the French Army they would invariably surrender after a long battle, which was what one did in the 18th century. Alliances against France never held together because France could always a split them by offering some limited settlement to one of the components of the alliances, which again was a perfectly natural method for conducting foreign policy in the 18th century. Even before the event suffered of Napoleon, the French almost shuttled from one victory to another, suffered because they didn't expect to be successful. They mobilized the people because

12

[Y]

they thought they were at an enormous disadvantage. Now when Napoleon appeared, he understood precisely what the situation was and he exploited it deliberately. Its probably true Marshall Foch that in World War I, that (ever since) he became commander in chief of a coalition his respect for Napoleon declined. One of the advantages Napoleoon had was that he represented a single state while all his allies were trying to serve different policies based on different objectives. But the issues were not really drawn until the opponents of France, and particularly the opponents of Napoleon themselves took a more or less ideological stand, and this is the dilemma with which any revolutionary foreign policy confronts the other countries. Even against their will they are often forced into, an essentially revolutionary foreign policy themselves. It was not until the other ęoutr countries of Europe began to organize their resources on something like the French model and of course, could until Napoleon over reach himself that they would begin to deal with the problem. The vicious circle of this revolutionary conflict is (shown) by the fact that in part what drove Napoleon onward was not only an appetite for conquest but his own sense that his own continual rule was incompatible with the existence of the prevalent domestic order in Europe, in the 18th century. He constantly said that other rulers in Europe could return to their capitals after a less lost battle. Other rulers in Europe could make limited settlements. He, who was an upstart, who represented an incompatible political system, could stay in power only by being strong enough so he could not be critically threatened. In short, what he was trying to achieve was what I have described in previous lectures absolute security. He could be secure only if everybody else was so insecure that they could no longer pose a physical threat. Therefore, he had to eliminate any source of independent action within Europe. Finally going as far as attacking Russia.

Now this was the situation that led to almost 20 years of war in Europe, of shifting alliances and at first enormous French victories until Napoleon overreached himself at and attacked Russia. But even after he was defeated in Russia, there

13

was still the problem of a
problem was not only how to defeat Napoleon but how to rescue some kind
been brought
of order out of the chaos that had come about. The international system
of the 18th century had been smashed, and the problem now was whether it was
even conceivable to create another inta international system which
would have some of the elements of stability which I have described previously.

Here
(And there a great deal depends on the different conceptions of the major powers
as to
of) what constituted a threat to their security, what positive goals they had
these needs.
to pursue and how to direct reconcile them. I will talk about these different
conceptions next time.

February-28

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February 28

Last time I began to talk about the problems of diplomacy in the early
19th century, particularly the problems of making peace after a long series of
wars. The reason that the international system had been upset at that time
was through a combination of ideology, and physical expansion. The ideology
of the French Revolution h threatened the domestic stability of every other
continental state at least but new-s not so much Great Britain and combined
with the physical expansion that Napoleon brought about it upset the European
equilibrium. This led to a series, a decade e and a half, of war which
then brought to a focus all the issues that are involved in reconstructing an
international system. Particularly it illustrated the inter-play between the
personalities and the views of the statesmen and the objective conditions
under which they had to operate. This is something I would like to talk about
today.

When Napoleon threatened, spread French influence over Europe and in fact defeated all the continental countries until he attacked Russia, the reason was initially that he- none of them could visualize a policy of unlimited objectives. After a defeat, coalitions were- would disintegrate as they always had in the 18th century. Napoleon could always present every claim as i his last claim, every strull struggle as h brought about by a specific reason to be rev removed by particular aggression. None of the coalitions managed to stay together, none of the countries at first were willing to fight popular wars because they believed that the legitimacy of their rulers w could not survive that-a (that degree of popular exertion.

Once they did realize that everyone was threatened, the differences in the European countries was determined in party part by the personalities of their statesmen, in part by the objectives, the conditions in which they found themselves. And there one can say perhaps as an example of contrast-

[Y]

15

the conditions of Great Britain as contrasted with, to, the positions of
say Austria or Prussia, particularly Austria. Great Britain was located then,
as it is today, at the periphery. It could be that its domestic structure
was justified internally as a peculiarly British creation; what happened on the
continent was not of domestic significance to Great Britain. Britain was
threatened only if the continent (was) organized as a great power
because then the resources of Europe would exceed those of Great Britain
and eventually it would be possible for the continent to threaten Great Britain.
For Britain, then, the issue was always a problem about the territorial balance
of Europe. And in attempting to achieve a European equilibrium, Britain had
the typical view of insular powers, the one it had had through the centuries,
the one we had had tend to have--that it saw its allies as factors in a security
arrangement, rather than an expression of a historical existence. To
Great Britain, the security problem of Europe was simple, if there was danger of
French aggression, then what had to be done was to organize the European
states into groups large enough to prevent the French from expanding. To the
Europeans, on the other hand, while of course they wanted security, security was
meaningless to them if it denied to them their own particular vision of their
own historical existence. A-S-European. The European were not only interested
in security in the abstract, but in security of the particular political entity
to which their whole historical loyalties attached. In this sense the misunderstanding
which occurred between Britain and the continent (were) very similar to the
misunderstanding that occur today between us and the Europeans. To us today,
the Europeans in a way are factors in a security arrangement. We talk of NATO
as if everything depended, as if the division of labors were an end in itself.

To the Europeans, the division of labor is useful but their own, the focus of
their traditional loyalties is also important, and this is why today we are
having most trouble with the countries that have retained their political
structure more or less in tact, like Britain and France, least trouble with the

16

countries which have always been protected by somebody else (and with Germany, which was completely smashed in World War II. But the British view in general was how to get the (necessary) coalition of powers to get great power to contain France. How they (were going to get that was of secondary importance to them, and the internal European squabble seemed to the British as produced largely by short-sightedness, pettiness and lack of understanding of the true issues.

The Second problem was one having to do with domestic policy. For Britain there was only one problem, mainly to defeat France. For the Europeans, for the continentals, the problem was not only to defeat France but how France was going to be defeated, in the name of what doctrine and what principles the war was going to be fought. In Europe it was impossible to have a revolution which did not affect every other state. Therefore, domestic upheavals were of enormous concern to other European countries, the cultures. In 1820s, after the Napoleonic wars, there was a revolution in Naples which, and the Austrians wanted to move against it. On that occasion, the British Foreign Secretary wrote to the Austrians as follows: "when the territorial balance of Europe is disturbed, Britain can interfere with effect, but she is the last country which can be expected, or venture to commit herself, on any question of a theoretical character. We shall be found in our place when an actual danger manages the system of Europe. But this country cannot and will not act upon an abstract principle of precaution. One problem for the Europeans was that to them domestic arrangements in Europe were not abstract principles. Another problem for the Europeans was that precaution was the essence of their international policy. States like Austria or Prussia, surrounded on all sides by potentially hostile countries, open to invasion was a very tenacious and complicated domestic arrangements could not be had, indifferent to the domestic policies of their nations. To them, what seems like an act of precaution to Great Britain, was a question of survival, and therefore, Britain could act cooperatively on the continent in the 19th century only when the threat was really overwhelming and even then its particular

17

approach was likely to be different than that of the Europeans.

Secondly, the Europeans had, in addition to the domestic problem, the European historical experience had been different from that of Great Britain. That is the European experience, even with the French, had been different. Britain had remained in tact throughout the Napoleonic period, had never been directly exposed to French attack or to domestic upheaval. The policies of the continental countries had been much more tenuous and much more complicated. All of them had been defeated at one stage or another and all of them had to conduct policy which placed an enormous strain on the domestic structure, namely policy policies of collaboration. A country that is defeated in war has two choices: it can either fight to the death or it can try to adapt itself somehow to the victor. And in adapting itself to the victor, it has to pursue a very fine line. If it collaborates too enthusiastically, it will lose its national substance and will gradually lose its cohesion. On the other hand, the effectiveness of the policy depends on what Metternick, who was then Austrian Prime Minister, once called the ability to appear a dupe without being one. If, in 1812, after Napoleonic defeated Russia, the policy had been conducted as it was 1945 after the defeat of Germany, probably every leader of every European country would have been executed for treason or for collaboration. And it wasn't easy to tell at any point whether these foreign ministers were collaborated with the French because they believed in the French in betraying their country or whether they were collaborating with the German French in order to preserve as much national substance as they could. The policy of collaboration tends to attract, can be carried out only by some of the strongest or some of the weakest people. And their effectiveness depends on not tipping their hand.

I think this was the experience of, for example, Vichy France. Some of the worst worst people in France collaborated and then a few who wanted to preserve

18

a what could be preserved and it wasn't easy to tell who belonged to the responsible ones and who belonged to the others. At any rate every European country had gone through this kind of a thing and particularly the Austrians had gone through this kind of a thing. So the defeat, when Napoleonic was finally defeated in Russia, all the statesmen of Europe were confronted with the problem of what to do and here their personalities were of some consequence. The British Foreign Secretary, Castlereagh, was an icy, aloof, pragmatist. He took literally the memorandum which I mentioned before which had been prepared by Pitt early in the wars with France which in effect said that there had to be great matters to contain France to which there was only one answer and this was France. The fact that the Napoleonic wars might be succeeded by another threat was as inconceivable to Castlereagh as it was inconceivable to Roosevelt in 1945 that the defeat of Hitler might lead to a vacuum which would encourage Russian expansion. And the issue was much the same. Again between Castlereagh and the continental. The issue for the continentals was not only to defeat Napoleonic but how to prevent Russia from expanding so far that it would, that a Russian threat would be substituted for a French threat. The problem for them was also as they thought, I'm not saying they were right, the problem was not to fight the war against the French in the name of the same principles as the French had spread across Europe, for them it was desperately important, if they wanted to as kings popular stay on this-kiek, not to fight a war of national liberation. The

The Austrian Prime Minister at this time was Metternich, who was a man of the 18th century, a rationalist, a calculator, facile, skillful, a great practitioner of the art of cabinet diplomacy, not a great statesman but a very great practitioner. And he had the additional problem that he was Foreign Secretary of a state with an almost impossible domestic structure. Later on in lib life he said once that he had several times governed Europe but never Austria.

19

The problem was that the Austrian Empire was composed of a variety of nationalist nationalities, held together by the personality of the King and that it suddenly found itself in a world in which what had been very modern 20 years previously was becoming anachronistic. Around 1790 a German nationalist, or who later became an advocate of German national unity, wrote a phamphlet about Austria in which Austria was described as the most modern state in Europe and in many ways it was very modern, it had solved the problem of feudalism by relating various feudal units together into a larger entity. In 1790, it would have occurred to no one in Europe that the Austrian Empire was ruled by a foreigner because their Emperor spoke German. Twenty years later the notion that people of the smaße sma- same cultural background, or that people speak speaking the same language, should be grouped in the same political unit was the most modern expression of policy. The result was that for the Austrians to win a war that was fought in the name of national and particularly linguistic unity was to destroy themselves.

For the Austrians, or the Prussians or for any of the smaller European states, to fight a war which opened the door of Europe to Russia was to substitute one menace for another menace. The attitude of the British and of Castlereagh was very similar to the attitude of the United States in World War II.

That is, they constantly, if you read their dispatches, they were constantly spurring urging the European on to defeat the French, everything else could be settled everything else but the one thing about which they were obsessed which happened to be who controlled the Mouth of the Rhine?

but every other issue
which a country believes its own

and this again proves that on the issues

[Y]

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survival is immediately threatened it will make meet immediate conditions. On
any otherissue they felt that they could wait until the war was over. For the
Europeans the problem was how they could prevent both dangers. The danger of
France and the danger of Russia, and the problem was all the more difficult because
they couldn't s- not admit that there was a danger from Russia since they
needed Russia's assistance to defeat France. In other words it was almost the
same problem as the problem of World War II with one important
difference. In World War II the United States, because of the collapse of
the European countries had become the dominant power and it could therefore
impose its vision, or its notion, of how the war should be fought and how the
peace should be made on its allies. You read the memoiries of American
generals during World War II you will see that they pride themselves on the
fact constantly on having kept the British out of the Balkans. These short-
sighted British who wanted to fight a war for political objectives had
to be thwarted so that a war could be fought for purely military objectives.
In the Napoleonic wars this could not happen because while the British were
strong they were not so powerful as to impose their own mode of conducting the
war and above all they couldn't do it because the Austrians under Metternich
were not prepared to go along with it. And there started a process which
illustrates one of the real issues of policy making to which there was no issue
at the time because policy was not made democratically. It is an issue today
of how you can conduct foreign policy when everything depends on your
not revealing your objective; how you can justify foreign policy in a situation
in which you have to move extremely cautiously and with deliberate ambiguity
where the skill of your move and the dexterity of your policy depends to a
considerable extent on your own knowledge of where you are going but it is
very difficult to justify this publicly. If the Austrians had announced on the
day that Napoleon was defeated in Russia or when it became apparent that he was

21

defeated in Russia, of what they were up to they would have been smashed.
If they had told their (later) allies how they were maneuvering, they would
have lost their bargaining position. On the other hand it is obviously
highly undemocratic to conduct foreign policy on this basis. I am not saying
that foreign policy ought to be conducted with the deviousness with which
the Austrians conducted their foreign policy in 1812 and 1815; all I am
saying is that if you cannot conduct foreign policy this way there are
many options you lose, there may be some advantages you gain in greater
popular standing but this is an imperativeness important difference between the
way foreign policy was conducted then and the way foreign policy is conducted
now and therefore it isn't clear what that one can draw absolute conclusions
from what had happened.

The problem the Austrians faced was three fold. They were afraid of nationalists. That is they were afraid if France collapsed, that would lead to a national revolution. They were afraid of Russian inconstancy. For a decade before Russia had committed herself to ally in two wars and had quit as soon as the allies were defeated so Austria was afraid of two contradicting things of alliances today. She was always afraid of that they would be jeopardized by their allies bellicosity or either they would be jeopardized by their allies lack of bellicosity. In this case they were worried both by the Russians stopping at the Russian border, stopping their pursuit at the Russian border, they were even afraid of Russia pouring in Europe in such a way as dominating all of Europe which later happened in 1945. Certainly they were afraid of becoming the focal point of the war, of becoming the theater of operations. For them the issue of the war was extremely crucial and the question of legitimacy was even more so. Nevertheless, they therefore did a number of things to set the stage for later intervention. One complicating feature was that when France invaded Russia, the Austrians were still allies of the French were

22.

still technically allies of the French and they even sent a corps
to aid France in the invasion.
They mitigated the effect
of this somewhat by always notifying the Russians ahead of time of what
as to the movements of their corps was making and advising them to move out of the way.
or telling them which way they were going to move out of the way so there
weren't any battles between the Austrians and the Russians. It wasn't
but it protected them against any outcome. they
a very heroic policy, they ended the war, if Napoleon had won would have
had some sort of claim to participate in the peace settlement but by keeping
the Russians informed of their movements they protected themselves in case
should Napoleon would loose. The first problem was how to be relieved from the
French alliance. This they did by announcing that they wanted to make
themselves mediators; that they would (would) offer the conditions
of a general European settlement. Now this was terribly important to them.
Throughout, at least Metternick's tenure as foreign secretary which lasted
about (40) years, they always strove to define, for Austria to be the country,
to define the issues of any alliance in which they participated. For the Austrians
legitimacy was as important as power. Once they were accepted by both France
and France's enemies as leading, they were the ones that could define the
conditions of the settlement and they were therefore insufficient to make sure
that it would not turn into a war of national liberation. Secondly, they
were getting a position from which they could later on turn against France,
because if France rejected the conditions they would propose they would then
be fighting in the name of a European settlement and they would not have
overturned an alliance simply on the basis of expediency. As soon as Napoleon
had accepted them as mediators, he had really, in a way, moved into a trap
from which it was very difficult to escape, because by the very terms
of the reference rejecting the ultimate Austrian offer meant he was rejecting
their notion of what would achieve peace. (Second attempt they made) was to

23

make it sure the Russians were really going into Europe and not stopping at accomplished, or at least thought they could test, the frontier. This they did by arranging with the Russians a number of number of theoretical battles with their auxiliaries, telling the Russians that they should move their Army in such a way that their auxiliary eep corps would be cut off unless it withdrew into Austria and when the Russians were a little hesitant about moving, they sent an outraged note saying where is this Russian attack which would enable us to get out our troops back into Austria. At any rate the Russians did move in that way which meant that they had to move into Europe, into Prussia. The Austrians withdrew into Austria and when they then sat on the flank of the Russian army and then on the flank of the French army and gradually moved their armies west so they sat on the flank of the French army. The major point was what the As-Austrians were trying to do was to get everybody else committed first so that they couldbarter, their participation for the objectives which interested them most, which were a territorial balance in Europe which would prevent eventual domination from (both) East and West. It isn't fruitful to go through all the maneuvers which were all extremely complicated by which this was achieved and throughout this period if you read the dispatches that the British sent to the Austrians, they dealt with the Austrians as if they were cowards, weaklings, didn't understand what the issue was, constantly told the Austrians that it was senseless to let Napoleon get away again, that no settlement was possible with Napoleon, offering them economic assistance, none of which was relevant. And in fact, Austria did not enter the war until it had been guaranteed by Russia that the two central powers, that is Prussia and Austria, would be strong enough to provide a barrier between East and West. And even after they entered the war. When they entered the war they had been guaranteed that first of all it would be a war of states and not of nations, and, secondly, the commander in chief of the allies was an Austrian field marshall.

[Y]

24.

The result was that throughout the subsequent war with the French after every victorious battle the army stopped. The Austrians would not advance after (any) victorious battle without (having offered) these terms to the French, on the theory that it was not in Europe's interest to smash the French completely.

The assumptions of the Austrians was, of Metternick, was, that there are some realities that are greater than the wishes of independent statesmen. The assumption of the British was that anything can be settled by the will of the political leaders that are involved. (The British view was) lets smash the French first and worry about a settlement afterward. We must show confidence in the Russians and on that basis we can then build an international

system. The notion of the Austrians and to a lesser extent the Prussians who were really on most of these issues following the Austrian lead, such as the Austrians was that there are certain realities which have nothing to do with the wishes of statesmen. That if France was smashed, one of the major elements in the security of Europe was eliminated. Henceforth some of the factors that had balanced off Russia previously would be eliminated and could be substituted only by the central powers, where is meant the Germany countries, or by them in conjunction with the-British- Britain. Now Britain's record was absolutely clear.

Britain would not engage itself until the balance of Europe was (already) on the verge of being overturned; Britain would not commit itself to the defense of Europe on a theoretical basis. Therefore, politically France was eliminated, Austria and Prussia would either have to gain in strength or would be forced into a kind of policy that might be attempted. Therefore, throughout the war with Napoleon the Austrians always stopped after a battle in order to bring the French back into the community of neighbors. (It didn't succeed, because Napoleon did not believe that he could survive a defeat. There were various offers that the Austrians made to him or that the allies made to him under Austrian pressure, every one of which lent France more territory than it finally

25.

completely had after it was defeated, but he was of the view that it was easier for him that he could not make a peace until he had scored a victory. In other words as he that he was not secure as long as one was strong enough to resist him and continued for the war. It turned out that it would be easier to accept him to accept total defeat than a negotiated settlement. But he rejected conditions not because they were particularly ungenerous conditions but because they were a limitation of his strength. But the Austrians did achieve, due to the constant peace offers, every peace feasible offer reflected some kind of commitment to a European equilibrium and even though eventually Russian, too, together with Austrian and Prussian armies, took Paris, there wasn't a crucial difference between the situation in 1814 and the situation in 1945. In 1945 all the factors, not all but some of the key factors, that had provided for a world balance of power were completely smashed. In World War II created a vacuum both in Europe and in Asia which had to be built by somebody and it wasn't only Soviet ill will that built it, it was the necessity of the situation that provided an opportunity to ask a country not to take advantage of an opportunity which may come along unsympathetically its really to place a certain amount of self restraint for which history offers very few examples, in fact, I can think of no example. In 1814 such a vacuum was avoided. Austria and Prussia were still relatively strong, and were growing stronger as the war continued. France, while it was completely defeated, was defeated in a way which enabled it to participate in the peace settlement which was drawn up right after it afterwards and when it wasn't wasn't possible to save Napoleon which had been the first choice of the Austrians they were very active in bringing back the traditional kings of France. Then in World War II one of the themes that runs through World War II, through the diplomacy of World War II is the American conviction that peace should be made after the enemy was defeated. The only threat to peace was the aggressor and the elimination of the aggressor would automatically restore the essential harmony which is typical of international relations. Every international conference which took place during

26.

the war the American instructions were to defer the particular issues which then arose until after Germany was defeated. There was the fear that any attempt to settle the outstanding issues would be divisive and would undermine the war effort. I have never understood why if it was divisive when the Germans were still in the field, no one asked the question why it wouldn't be even more divisive if there was no longer a common enemy. But at any rate, World War II was characterized by an absolute avoidance of political settlements and again if you read any of the memoirs of the time times you will find that we took popular pride in the fact that of not permitting the short-sighted British who again were worried about the balance of power to impose their considerations on us. In 1814 And again I think it is always true, at least I don't know when it hasn't been true, that the time for the status quo countries to make their peace terms is during a war, because during a war they can add, in effect, the pressure of the enemy to their own concerns as a bargaining weapon. After the war, when the enemy has disappeared, nothing restrains, or one of the key restraints of the aggressor big country is removed. What brings an alliance together is an overwhelming threat,

To the degree that a threat diminishes, its coherence diminishes too. And if harmony is going to be the mode of course of international real relations, one should look into the question as to what produced the harmony in the first place.

Now during World War II it was perfectly plain that as the German threat diminished the Soviet incentive to make any political settlement diminished too. In 1814 the status quo countries which were essentially Britain, Austria and Prussia had achieved their special requirement, certainly Britain and Austria had, Prussia was in a special position, but the two big ones, Austria and Britain had achieved their special settlement requirements while the war was still going on. Britain had guaranteed for itself that the mouth of the River would be held by a small country and it had gotten a settlement on maritime rights. Austria had been guaranteed its territorial

[Y]

27.

extent of 1814 which meant that it would be strong enough to be some
important area to the Russians and it had a Russian commitment that Prussia
would get something that would restore its territorial extent although the
Russians there were not because the Prussian diplomacy was not as skillful
And finally, 1 in 1814 contrary to 1905, it was not permitted that a vacuum
arise. There was a moderate peace treaty that was made with France, real
relatively quickly and this made France again available as a factor in the
international arrangements. And this accounted for the fact that when the
general European equilibrium was reconstructed it lead to a settlement
which in its main argument lasted for about 100 years. I'll go into that
next time.

March 3, 1964-1

Last time I began to speak about the peace settlement of 1815, about the
difference between the pre conditions to the settlement in 1815 and the settlement
in 1945 and how they affected the different international structure that emerged.
Briefly the difference was that at the time, that in 1815, the status quo countries,
particularly Austria and Great Britain entered the peace conference already having
had their major aims guaranteed by the expansionist country which was Russia.
In 1945 the status quo countries entered the post war period with none of their
war aims guaranteed and with a vacuum created into which the expansionist countries
could move. In 1815 an attempt was made to keep the former enemy in being as a
balance in the diplomatic equation. Throughout the war the Austrians made very
great efforts to make sure that France would not be too severely damaged as a
result of the war. In 1815 there was not the notion that there was only one cause
of war, only one peculiarly aggressive country while all the others were peace loving.
On the contrary all the statesmen in the period of 1815 were convinced that every country was a progressive aggressor, war was
considered an inseparable part of diplomatic relations and anybody schooled in
the maxims of cabinet diplomacy took for granted, rightly or wrongly, that if you
created a vacuum somebody would fill it. Therefore, during the war the preceded
the settlement of 1815 the only country that really was interested, there were
two countries that were interested in unconditional surrender, Russia for obvious
reasons for any weaking of central Europe, French and Russia relative positions,
and Great Britain, as all imperial powers, was conscious of the threat which preceded
the war and which saw with the destruction of France the end of all their international
problems. However, Britain came around and the result was that France to a greater
or lesser degree, was preserved as a factor in the balance. Therefore the
chief countries in 1815 could turn to the question of drawing up a final settlement
having already agreed on the main outline of the general settlement. The fact
that there would be some kind of equilibrium of power, that the legitimizing

3/3/64--2

principle of the international settlement would be on the basis of relations of states, of the traditional historical states, rather than of the doctrines which were then occurring of liberalism and nationalism, these objectives had already been agreed to chief negotiators before the negotiators ever sat down at what was better known as the Congress of Vienna. What remained to be settled at the Congress of Vienna was not so much the of general equilibrium but another problem. This is what I want to speak about today.

And in any international order to be vital and to be secure has to have two kinds of balance. It has to have a general balance in which the interests of the power of the aggressive state are more or less balanced by the power of the status quo. It is the general equilibrium which guarantees protection against world domination. It prevents aggressors from pursuing policies of unlimited objectives. It requires, as I pointed out before, that all countries are more or less satisfied with a relative security. It is in the nature of an equilibrium that it does not guarantee total security to anybody, but it also is in the nature of an equilibrium that nobody feels totally insecure. The result of this balance or the effectiveness of this balance is that the disatisfactions or depends on the disatisfactions are more or less evenly distributed and also the power to make the dissatisfaction effective is more or less evenly balanced. This is the case, none of the countries that are dissatisfied are sufficiently dissatisfied in order to seek a remedy by overthrowing the existing systems. They will strive for adjustments within the system rather than in overturning. But in addition to the general equilibrium there is a particular equilibrium which adjusts the historical relations of nations to each other. If one could construct an international order with the certainty of a mathematical equation, all countries would agree to that distribution of power which would bring about the maximum degree of physical balance. But to themselves, in a security arrangement, they are expressions of a historical existence. A nation doesn't think of itself and isn't held together by the

3/3/64--3

idea that it would be desirable to have nicely distributed friends in the world.
To itself, a nation is whatever its domestic values and history dictates. It is
as I have pointed out before, in our debate today in NATO for example, it is
very easy for us to talk about NATO as if it were one unit as if everything
depended on our getting the maximum division of labor within NATO. The trouble
is that FRAnce, Italy, Germany, Britain do not think of themselves only as
existing in order to bring about a division of labor. They may be shortshig
shortsighted, their analysis is not up to our as is well known but still, on
this particular psychological point there problem is that the technical
requirements of security may clash to some extent with the psychological requirements
of historical identity. The same problem existed in a different sense in 1815.
For Britain the problem of a European settlement was to get, as was provided in
the Pitt plan, great matters to contain France. They wanted large German
states while Germany being at that time fragmented into some 33 political units;
they wanted large units to contain the possible expansion of France and,
to a lesser extent, the possible expansion of Russia. And they didn't
much care how they were going to get these units. One proposal which was made
at the time was to abolish the kingdom of Saxony, which was in fact a key issue,
and incorporate it into Prussia. Now the problem for Prussia and Austria,
however, was quite different. Austria was not satisfied with a European settlement
which generally guaranteed the peace of Europe if it had, in the process, it
undermined its relative position within Germany, since Germany was the force of its
historical strength. The Austrian Emperor had been Holy Roman Emperor until
1805. Austria was governed, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was governed,
in effect, by a German minority. Austria always thought of itself as the German power
which had broke relationships to all the other German powers. Its relative position,
vis a vis Prussia, was of absolutely crucial significance. No settlement, no matter
how well balanced, no matter how reasonable, would be meaningful to Austria or to

3/3/64--4

how-well Prussia if it affected their relative positions towards each other.
And if those two states were not satisfied with the arrangement then the great
matter which the British wanted also were not attainable because if Austria
and Prussia were not allied then France could pursue of- its traditional policy,
of playing off the German states against each other, traditional since the 17th
century, of playing off the German states against each other and allying themselves
with one or the other or the smaller states in order to project its influence
into central Europe. Now the issue therefore at the Congress of Vienna was how
to relate the requirements of general equilibrium with the requirements of the
special equilibrium that had been maintained. And most of the controversy
at the Congress of Vienna had to do with the relative distribution of power
in central Europe. The Czar wanted to incorporate all of Poland into Russia, which
That, would give the general peace of Europe been as because it would have given
a dispep disproportionate influence in all of Europe to Russia, and that, the British
were willing to contest. The Prussians wanted to annex Sameniy Saxony. That would
only have gained them a relative advang advantage vis a vis Austria, (It did not
eventually increase their position in Germany Europe and therefore the British were not
willing to contest it. One result was that the Congress of Vienna took a very
long time, at least by standards of Congresses of that period, It took a very
long time because the Austrian foreign minister deliberately procrastinated. He
said on a number of occasions that I hide myself behind time and make patience my
weapon. He wanted to wait long enough until he could tie together the issue of
Saxony with the issue of Poland and get a settlement favorable, or at least, did not
upset the balance within Europe. Now the means by which he did this are complicated
and indeed, tricky and there is not much point in reviewing the methods that he used
except to point out that he had one inestimable advang advantage. He had the
advantage that Russia had in the post-war period; Austria had already gained
most of her objectives, while Russia needed the agreement of Austria to gain

3/3/64--5

its edge ends. Metternich could afford to wait. The Prussians could not afford to wait and, therefore, the longer we, he, procrastinated the stronger his position became.

Well, finally it turned out, as again it often happens at the end of a war, that the issue couldn't really be solved within the Alliance that had won the war, and It was not possible the victorious nations to agree among each other and the only way the deadlock was finally broken was by bringing France back into the European concert, and France joined up with Austria and Britain in order to bring about a betterment-in settlement in central Europe which took into account not only the general equilibrium but also the specific agreements of Austria and Prussia. Now the outlines of the settlement are important to keep in mind for it shaped Europe for the next 100 years and in its outline for the next 50 and 100 years, and in its reaction to it for the next 50 more.

The outlines of that settlement were as follows: France kept herMaintained the frontiers that she had occupied when the French Revolution broke out. The peace that was made was not a punitive peace in that sense, although even though France had to pay an indemnity, that was paid off in three years, and after that France was a full fledged member of the international council. Prussia was increased in strength but its territories were scattered across Northern Germany into the Rhinelands so that Prussia could be one, barrier, against France and so that France was no longer confronted on its borders with only small countries. In that respect the idea of the great matters of the Pitt plan was carried out. Austria was the dominant power in both Germany and Italy. In Germany, in Italy because Italy remained divided into some 17 smaller states and principalities and because Austria dominated northern Italy, at that time the notion that there was an Italian nation would have seemed preposterous. Germany, and this was of great importance, it was one of the reasons that the Austrians became so sensitive at the time of the outbreak of World War I, to them Italy of the 19th century had been no more a nation than the Balkans were in the 20th century and while the Austrians took a long time to learn a lesson they never forgot one once they learned it and the lessons

3/3/64--6

they thought they learned were as much their own undoing as the time it took them to learn it so they were not going to get into the same position in 1914 as they thought they had been in 1815. At any rate, in Germany Austria was the dominant country because of its peculiar combination of circumstances which I will explain in a minute.

Russia got 2/3 of Poland, not all of it, and Prussia got most of the remainder, a few territories went to Austria, so that the frontiers of Russia bordered primarily on Austria and Prussia, so that both Russia and France were contained by the great matters which the British had in mind.

That still left the problem of how to prevent the Franco-Russian alliance, which had been one of the reasons for the disintegration of central Europe on many previous occasions, and that made it absolutely imperative that Prussia and Austria remain closely allied and could count on the help of Great Britain.

Important to remember that until about 1904 the natural allies of Britain on the continent were generally the German states, not France. It was only in 1904 that its relations with France became more密切 (Now why was it that Austria could retain dominance in Germany? One reason was that Prussia possessed Polish territory and therefore they were afraid of possible Russian designs on Prussia. The second reason has to do with the way Germany was organized at the time at and this is worth talking about for a bit for it affects later European developments.

At the Congress of Vienna there was created something called the German confederation. It was an institution composed of some 33 sovereign countries, It was a United Nations in miniture. 33 sovereign countries in which 33 31 minor states were grouped together into one so that they had 17 votes. But the 31 minor states had 17 votes and Austria and Prussia had 1 vote each. Moreover, the German confederation was a very curious system. Austria and Prussia were part of the German confederation, but only with a portion of their territory. Prussia's Polish provinces were not part of the German confederation nor were Austria's

3/3/64--7

non-German territory which meant that 2/3 of Austria was not part of the German confederation. The German confederation took votes again by a system of various majorities usually by 2/3. It could go to war and there was the curious situation that it was possible for a state to be at war as a member of the German confederation, theoretically go to war as a member of a German confederation being voted to war by members but not go to war in its own sovereign capacity. and I urge some of the people in Washington who are promoting the multilateral fleet to study the arrangements of the German confederation because if they did have a multilateral fleet which they finally had to sell because the Russians wouldn't give any more money to it and they also owned the fortresses in . Now the interesting thing was, about the German confederation and not its constitutional arrangement, the interesting thing was that first of all because of the, Prussia was the largest German state which meant that all the smaller states would generally vote with Austria in order to protect themselves. And Austria was the natural leader of the smaller German states. And since the Austrian foreign policy was generally peaceful, since they were the status quo countries par excellence in Europe, the German confederation pursued, on the whole, a very measured policy. (Moreover, having so many sovereign countries voting in a body, there was a guarantee that it would pursue a measured policy. Now, in many ways, the German confederation which has gone into the history books, which has gone down in history as an example of everything that was wrong in the 19th century, really performed one function very well which was the function of producing the peace. It went down in the history books as an example of everything that went wrong because it did not provided, obviously, for national self-determination in Germany and it did not give an outlet to the ideals of liberalism and nationalism which were dominant early in the 19th century. This is something which has to be said against the German confederation. On the other hand it had one asset which

3/3/64--8

has never been solved in Europe ever since and that was the following: If the problem in Europe is or was up to 1940, if the problem was to organize central Europe so that it eu-woi would be strong enough to resist both France and Russia together, then how could one organize it so that it wouldn't threaten them separately.

Any country in the center of Europe which was strong enough to resist the simultaneous attack by both France and Russia would by definition be strong enough to defeat each of them in isolation. Any attempt to create a state that could conduct a completely sovereign foreign policy was bound to create a sense of insecurity in all its neighbors quite p-apare apart from any specific mistake that they may have made. The dilemma of European policy from 1871 on after Germany became a unitary state was precisely this, and I will go into greater detail later. German foreign policy after 1871, particularly as long as Bismark was chancellor but probably throughout this period was probably generally peaceful.

The Germans

They didn't really want anything in Europe and, as long as Bismark was chancellor they deliberately attempted to conduct a very moderate foreign policy. On the other hand, they did want to be strong enough to resist a historical nightmare, namely a simultaneous attack both from the East and the West. They were so afraid of this simultaneous coalition that they conducted a military policy which made a simultaneous coalition inevitable. They created an army that was strong enough to defeat both France and Russia should they attack together which meant obviously they were able to defeat them if they were both attacked separately.

The advantage of the German confederation was that when you were dealing with 33 sovereign states it was obvious that the only thing that they could ever agree on was an attack that was so overwhelming that the survival of all of them was simultaneously in jeopardy. But that they would never be able to agree on any positive policy to project German power beyond Germany's frontier. It was an arrangement according to which central Europe had a very great defensive

3/3/64--9

capability but next to no offensive capability. As the Austrians found out when they tried to get the German confederation to support them against Russia during the Crimean War, simply proved impossible to (get any) formula on which these 33 states could agree, and indeed, anyone who thinks that what happens today at the United Nations is unique should study the debates that went on at the Assembly of Confederations at Frankfurt. The contribution therefore, to the European settlement was unintentional, but the contribution to European of stability at the Congress of Vienna was that the general equilibrium (came about) through a process (by which) those countries which were supposed to contain the aggressor countries were so organized that they were incapable of conducting themselves an offensive foreign policy, and they were forced by the nature of their constitutional arrangement to conduct an eventually status quo policy, given the that set of circumstances, they could be certain that Britain would support them. Any attack on central Europe that was capable of threatening both Austria and Prussia and the other German states was going to be an overwhelming enough threat to the equilibrium to bring Britain into the contest.

And finally, in addition to the technical arrangement there was an arrangement having to do with the domestic structures. Again, one has to say in all fairness, one has to say that these arrangements did not take into account the liberal doctrine which was becoming more and more dominant; The ideas of democracy and nationalism were thwarted. On the other hand, the result was that every European country, with the exception of Great Britain, had more or less comparable domestic institutions at least until 1830. And each European country had a stake in maintaining these comparable institutions. And very often the common interest they had in maintaining the unity of what were then the conservative interests the common interest that they had in this overcame interest, based on a pure calculation of national interest. Time and again for example, particularly as long as Metternick was foreign minister,

3/3/64--10

which was until 1848, he managed to remove Russian temptations to expand into
the Balkans by appealing to the general disequilibrium which would be created
if the wave of revolution swept Europe based on the principle of national
self-determination. On a calculation of pure national interest, which later
became dominant, the logical field of expansion for Russia was into Poland.
On a similar calculation of a community of interest of a the conservative rulers,
Austria, Prussia and Russia had to stay united. Again, in order to unify
Germany, some state had to appeal to doctrines of nationalism and to doctrines
of liberalism, or at least it was thought that nationalism and liberalism belonged
together. At the same time, the Prussian king was as afraid of the liberal
revolution as he was desirous of expanding Russia's power. And again, by properly
balancing considerations of legitimacy it was shown that the policies
were kept in check. Now such a promise could obviously not continue indefinitely.
Until about 1855 French expansion was contained by the fact that the two central
powers were strong enough to defend themselves but not strong enough to attack
and that they were generally backed by Russia on the basis of the community of
conservative interests. Russian expansion was contained by the fear of the Russian
rulers that this would bring a wave of revolution all over Europe and Britain
performed the role of a balancer whenever its weight was essential. This situation
was maintained until Crimean War after Metternick had been thrown out after the
Revolution of 1848 as Austrian foreign minister and after the Austrians had forgotten
that for a status quo country it isn't important to gain its own objectives, it
is much more important to prevent others from pushing theirs. One of Metternick's
diplomatic instructions had been to his ambassador to the German confederation
was that we will gain much in relation to our asking little. It is more important
to eliminate the strength of others than to press our own. Well, during the
Crimean War, the Austrians forgot this and began to pick up little advantages in
the Balkans while Russia was in difficulties with the result that Russia began to

3/3/64--11

turn against Austria and that the political situation in Europe became more
fluent. The most serious challenge that occurred was as a result of quite,
quite unintended result of the Congress of Vienna. When the Prussians were
prevented from annexing Saxony which was to Prussia, it was thought that
their power was weakened and to some extent this was true. They, as
enclaves
compensation, received possessions which were scattered all across
Northern Germany, with no connection between the various parts of the country.
grounds
This forced the problem, simply on terms of military security, to try to
connect these various enclaves and considerations of military security much
more than a sense of national mission drove the Prussians into getting some
more rational organization of German defense. But even that wouldn't have
victor
been enough if there hadn't emerged a Hitler who set the syt style for Eire
European diplomacy for the next 40 years and whose style of diplomacy was one
of the major reasons for the outbreak of World War I, though nothing was further
from its mind- his mind, and that was the man who smashed the Vienna settlement,
at least in part the first Prussian Prime Minister and then German Chancellor,
Bismark.

Here it is important to make a few general reflections again about
the nature of statesmanship. In our textbooks, we always think of revolutionaries
as being wild eyed reformers on the Left, and conservatives as being men from
aristocratic background who are on the Right. This illusion that revolutions
always have to take the form of an explicit attack on the status quo and that
it comes in the guise of social revolution has been one of the difficulties
in coming to grips with the phenomenon of revolution. It certainly was one
of the obstacles that other European countries had in coming to grips with
Bismarck. When he appeared on the scene he was thought to be an arch reactionary.
He came into the Prussian parliament during the Revolution of 1848 as a defender

3/3/64--12

of the Prussian kings against the national revolution that then was sweeping Germany.
The reason he did so, however, was an extremely complicated one. Until
1848, until much later, until 1862, the constitutional evolution of Prussia
and indeed of Germany, was not radically different from the constitutional revolution
of other European countries: That is the powers of the aristocracy had been
generally abused, the role of parliament was generally increasing, it was taken
for granted that if a unified Germany should ever emerge it would come by way of
a combination of liberal elements in Germany and the national elements in Germany.
It was always taken for granted that nationalism and liberalism were inseparable
nationalism
and
democracy and liberalism were inseparable, that the doctrines of the French
Revolution were accepted by everyone. Therefore, everybody everybody who was
against liberalism was also against nationalism and conversely anyone who was
for national unity felt he also had to be for liberalism too. Now the
contribution that Bismark made to the evolution of European diplomacy, his
contribution was to separate nationalism and liberalism. He entered parliament
as a defender of the Prussian king not because he happened to like the Prussian
constitution, but because he did not want Germany unified on the basis of the
liberal doctrine. He wanted Germany unified on the basis of raison d'etat;
he wanted Prussia to unify Germany as an act of national Prussian policy. His
policy in Germany actually was very similar to President de Gaulle's policy in
Europe. Until de Gaulle came along it was taken absolutely for granted that if
Europe was going to be unified at all, it was going to be unified on the basis
of federal institutions, direct elections to parliament, the road outlined by
Jean Monnet was considered to be the only way by which European unity could
be achieved. De Gaulle has taken the same position with respect to European
unity, as Bismark took with respect to German unity. He wants Germany to be unified
as an act of sovereign states. He wants to preserve the historic identity of
the European nations and one of the reasons Bismark had for wanting Germany to be

3/3/64--13

unified in that manner was that he felt, all the historic loyalties of the Germans were in relation to the historic units of which they belonged. One of the reasons de Gaulle has of wanting Europe to be unified is also that he believes that the vitality of the European components derives from their historic association. And whatever else you can say about the domestic institutions and what damage national Germany did afterwards, lack of German cohesion did not happen to be one of the problems so that it isn't correct to say that European unity, achieved by de Gaulle's method is necessarily going to be loose. There may be a lot of other things wrong with it but it is not to be taken axiomatic that it isn't a possible way to approach it. But the major problem that Bismark brought to European policy, there were two: 1. the separation of nationalism and liberalism which meant that in more and more country countries, extreme nationalism could be separated from the democratic evolution and indeed, that the democratic evolution could be turned away and channeled into the direction of nationalism. This is one of the factors which led to the kind of pei-i policy of the later 2. 19th century. The second contribution, or the second innovation, was, that where a great deal of the Metternick business depended on a consensus of the moral values, whether or not you like these moral values, where up to the emergence of Bismark the majority of European states believed that they had a stake in the maintenance of certain social systems and political institutions. Bismark began to conduct policy according to the maxim that Hans Morgenthau preaches, on a pure evaluation of national interest, completely indifferent to values which might relate the European states to each other. He believed that the evaluation of the national interest would both determine the extent of power as well as furnish a motive for the moderation which was necessary. He said that mental policy knows no reciprocity. Every country-must government must seek the criteria for its actions solely in its own interests (however it may wish to cloak them in legal and moral deductions. Now, in his conduct of policy, this led to a very moderate

3/3/64--14

foreign policy. But, as we shall see later, it requires that in every generation
there would be a great man and that everybody would calculate national interest
in the same way that he does. He was a revolutionary even though he appeared
as a reactionary because the scale of his conceptions was disolving all k the
institutions of his time, and quite apart from wak what he intended, his impact
on the national system as well as on the domestic situation was disolving and
punitive war
led to the two-World-Wars-which finally culminated in World War I.

3/4/64--1

Last time I began to speak about the disintegration of the Vienna Settlement and of the impact of a revolutionary foreign policy on a more or less status quo policy. Chief point I wanted to make there was that in order to be a revolutionary one does not have to begin with an explicit program of overthrowing existing institutions. Sometimes a man or a state can perform a revolutionary function simply because the scale of their conception cannot be assimilated in orderly procedures. Any institution had to be run by some routing routine. Any equilibrium depends on some particular balance of force, to the degree that calculation becomes too difficult, too the degree that the policy required to maintain any gets to be too complicated. There is an inherently unsettling impact on that system. Its impossible to have a great man in every generation and it is certainly impossible to have a great man in every generation in every country. For fourty years after the Congress of Vienna a specific period of time, for forty years a European equilibrium, a European peace was maintained through a subtle interplay of a balance of power plus a consensus on the legitimacy. There was, as I pointed out last time, a general equilibrium which depended on the Austro Prussian alliance again both Russia and France. This alliance in turn was butressed by the German confederation, a grouping of 33 states, strong enough for defensive war but not strong enough for offensive war so that central Europe could resist an overwhelming attack but could not pose an offensive threat to its neighbors. There was in addition a special equilibrium within Germany as between Austria and Prussia. Both Prussia was physically more powerful, but not by very much, Austria was morally more powerful in the sense that the smallest German states had to look to Austria for its protection and in the Assembly of the German Confederation Austria usually had a majority. Thirdly there was an agreement on what constituted legitimate domestic arrangement. No state

3/4/64--2

in Europe, at least until 1830 or so, or probably until 1848, no state in Europe considered its domestic structure incompatible with the domestic structure of other states. No state in Europe felt threatened by the domestic structure in another state. Many of the European states, particularly Austria, Prussia and Russia, which were allied to the Holy Alliance, believed that the maintenance of their domestic institutions was more important than any national game one might score over the other and therefore, Russia was allied with Prussia and Austria, countries which it later fought because it was convinced that its national interest conceived in narrow the terms, *conceived in territorial terms*, was not as important as its national interest conceived in moral or legitimate terms namely in terms of the preservation of its domestic institutions. France was somewhat out of that particular concert but that was, if anything, an advantage to the stability of the system because after the Revolution of 1848 when France was first a Republic and then an Empire this provided an additional motive for the cohesion of the three central European and east European countries. It was a rather subtle structure depending on the interplay of moral and physical factors, standing armies had never been lower than they were at that time, there were no major wars, in fact there were no minor wars except really *unimperative* unimportant ones and it was a period of 40 years of tranquility. Now this was smashed under the impact of Bismarck. It is On the other hand, it was always *easier* to assume that one man can wreck an international system and it sometimes happens. But usually, *however*, there have to be factors that make it possible for him to operate. This was true, I would say, even of Hitler in the 1930's. If the international system had not already been burned, if the western democracies in the 1930's had not suffered from a lack of will which had its origins in World War I, not even a maniac like Hitler could have done the damage that he did. Now in the 19th century the system that had been created at the Congress of Vienna began to disintegrate because one of the hardest things for

any policy maker is to know when to exercise self-restraint. One of the great achievements of Austrian foreign policy under Metternich was that they were always satisfied with the substance of the treatment and let the credit for the achievement go to someone else. Austria went out of its way at that time to appear in the background of international settlements. The assumption was that if Austria became too active and tried to play for too many advantages, if it tried to employ a central geographic position to gain little ends, it would also in time become the focus of all intentions. On the other hand, one doesn't generally become foreign minister of any country unless there is a great desire or a considerable desire to exercise power. Foreign ministers and prime ministers find it generally difficult to conduct policy which throws no visible gain, indeed, in which the gain results in the intangibles of confidence, stability and balance, on which it so happened the European peace depended. So after Metternich was overthrown in 1848 in Austrian policy became more short sighted. They then began to conduct policy which their own rule was more vigorously . The skill of Austria under Metternich to exalt legitimacy rather than power, to operate with the consent of the other countries. After Metternich, Austria first humiliated Prussia and got away with it on the issue of the organization of Germany but thereby creating deep antagonisms in Prussia and then during the Crimean War they conducted a policy according to which they tried to gain little advantages at the expense of Russia, thereby breaking the unity of the central European eastern countries, and getting the situation somewhat . This, would not, by itself, have been disastrous had it not coincided with the emergence in Prussia of a Prime Minister who was, who while he appeared in the guise of conservatism, was in fact a revolutionary. (And this is what always happens, or almost invariably happens, in the case of great transformations. Today, for example, most of our policy makers are convinced that all our troubles in Europe stem from President de Gaulle. That if de Gaulle didn't exist everything would be easy. I don't know what consolation they derive from that fact because de Gaulle does

3/4/64--4

exist. But still I think it is true that without de Gaulle allied relationships would not be nearly so strained as they are today. At the same time, de Gaulle could not be so effective if there were not certain objective conditions for them to exploit and it is always the coincidence of statesmanship plus objective factors that create patterns of new international relations. Now the impact of Bismarck on the international system was this-- he came to power in 1862, he came to power at a time when the evolution in Germany was roughly the same with a forty year time lag and in as most other European countries. The parliament in the various states, even in Russia, were gaining in power. It was assumed that if Germany would be unified, as was the trend of the 19th century, as a national state there would be a coincidence of national and liberal forces. That popular representation and national unity would go hand in hand. Indeed Bismarck was brought in as Prime Minister even though, again in the situation that was not too dissimilar to the one that brought de Gaulle to power in 1958 as the last gasp of the conservative element within Prussia in the conflict between the Parliament and the king. Even though he made even the conservatives somewhat uneasy. Now what was it that made him such an upsetting phenomenon? make a contribution to international thought during that time. His major contribution was that he swept away all the moral considerations on which the international system had been built. When the Congress of Vienna was thinking of the international structure somewhat in terms of the great clock work of the 18th century philosophers as a mechanical balance of fixed forces how where great stress in politics was laid on a certain unity or coincidence of moral concern, that they had more or less the same moral values, Bismarck thought in more modern terms. To him, an equilibrium was not a mechanical balance but a balance brought about through forces in flux, constantly changing, constantly in need of readjustment. Moral concerns to him were valid simply because people believed this, not because one had any particular preference

3/4/64--5

over an-ether another. It was the belief of people in moral eee concerns that was important. He was not interested in having a unity of moral values, He was distrustful of any attempt to get a consensus of on legitimizing principles. To him, belief, values, were forces to be manipulated, not something to be held. Values, he said on one eeeasnie occasion, count only against never for, and there was something to that. For the reason that a status quo country is always inhibited by a moral contender. It is all very well to say, as is often said today, that international change ought to occur only peacefully, and that international change should come about through the process of negotiations. Now the dilemma of foreign policy is that there is no particular reason why any country should give up a significant interest simply because some other countries present a very powerfully reasoned argument. All the changes, ef-th or the major changes that have occurred in history have occurred because the existing consensus have- has to some extent been smashed and some other set of values, has become to appear more signifiena- significant and even then it requires an additional application of force. Now Bismark attacked all the principles of the . As for legitimacy, he said the only dangers for the policy of a great power is egotism and not romanticism. Prussia's greatness does not consist in playing up to parliamentary celebrities. I see our greatness in keeping apart any connection with liberalism and, above all, never admitting that anything could happen in Europe without our permission. He attacked the notion e that there had to be a special relationship between Austria and Prussia. He said we must not let ourselves be caught by . He said they count ale only against, never for us. Instead, we should seek our policy through the interest and fears of others, not thou through sentiments which everyone professes and which no one possesses. He argued that self-restrain was a poor policy for a country, that had unsatisfied claims. On the contrary, he said a great crisis provides the climate conducive to our growth, if we use them without fear perhaps even with great ruthlessness.

3/4/64--6

[Y]

mentors

He attacked the notion of legitimacy. One of the old men who had brought him into power on the theory that he thought Bismark was a conservative was horrified on one occasion when Bismark wrote him a letter in which he said the following: "WE have three alternatives. (1) an alliance with Russia (2) an alliance with Austria in which we throw ourselves into Austria's arms and compensate ourselves at the expense of the smaller German states (3) a change of Cabinet to the Left whereby we would soon become so Western and so liberal that Austria would loose in any struggle for national unity."

In other words, he considered it perfectly possible and in a subsequent letter he also outlined a possible alliance with France. Now, in other words, he considered it perfectly feasible to have either an alliance with France, which would have been anti-Austrian or an alliance with Austria which would have been at the expense of the smaller German states, or an alliance with Russia which would have been at the expense of Austria, and none of this would have been even conceivable eight years previously and there was no other Prussian statesman who had such an idea to which his mentor replied " only he is reliable who acts according to principle and not according to changing conceptions of national interest." to which Bismark then replied with reference to the French situation "as a romantic I can shed a tear for the French fate of the Bourbons. As a diplomat I would be their servant if I were French, but as things France, irrespective of the accident who leads it is for me a pawn and an unavoidable one on the chess board of diplomacy, a game in which I have no other duty but to serve my country. I can not reconcile personal sympathies- sympathies and antipathies or the presumption of higher values with my sense of duty in foreign affairs. Indeed, I see in them the beginning of disloyalty to the sovereign country which I serve. If one attempts to

3/4/64--7

adjust diplomatic relations to such feelings then policy ceases and personal
arbitrariness reigns supreme, and he said "sentimental policy knows no
reciprocity. It is an exclusive Prussian peculiarity [which is a curious
notion]. Every other government seeks the criteria for its action solely in
its more interest however it may cloak them in legal deductions."

Finally, he insisted that the notion (of) nationalism and liberalism were (the same)
was utterly wrong. He was convinced that the Russian domestic structure was
so firm that Prussia could conduct any domestic policy, any foreign policy,
without suffering domestic difficulties. Indeed, he developed
a revolutionary notion that Prussia could use its domestic policies in order to
affect the international situation. On one eeeashie occasion he
other
threatened some Germans states with an alliance with France, and he pointed out
to them as he wrote in a report, such a shift can win the confidence of Britain
and France
only if he carried out by a more liberal government. I trace this development
in the tone of someone who is unhappy about events outside of his control and
everyone of my colleagues becomes profoundly upset at this prospect. In other
words, for the first time in almost a century, in modern European history, domestic
policy was used as a deliberate tool to affect international affairs. In the
1860's there was a convention that was signed by Austria and Prussia called
the Convention of Castan which on the surface which on the base of it, on the
surface of it, is enormously disadvantageous to all-the- Austria.
Then one asks oneself why would the Austrians sign it? Well, in the diplomatic
report that the Austrian minister printed, he said that Austria told him that
he\—if he didn't get this agreement, Austria would have to resign and if he resigned
he would have to recommend to the king that a more (diplomatic) government be
instituted in Prussia. Such a government would undoubtedly adopt universal

3/4/64--8

suffrage and the if universal suffrage were adopted then nationalism and liberalism
together would dominate Germany and expel Austria from Germany. So in order to
affect Prussian domestic policy, the Austrians signed an international agreement

Now if we, if one could draw parallels from history, but it
is interesting to note that in the contemporary period one of the arguments
today that one hears very often, is that we have an interest in strengthening Khrushchev
against the so-called bellicose faction in the Kremlin, no one ever identifies
the faction, but it is well known to exist. What they would do in the case of
pew power is also not clearly explained. At any rate, in order to keep
Khrushchev in office, we are often urged to make concessions to them because
what would follow them would be worse. Now apart from the fact that I have never
understood why we would make consessions to a liberal Russian which we wouldn't
make to an aggressive Russian, I think it is in any case extremely dangerous
so as to conduct foreign policy in order to affect domestic policy of other countries.

In our situation, from the little I have seen of our political leaders,
their ability to play domestic politics in the United States has not impressed me
overwhelmingly, and I would be a little bit suspicious of their ability to play
domestic policy in Russia or anywhere else. (And again history seems to indicate
that whenever a-country countries, or at least on this occasion, when a country
domestic tries to affect the (liberal) policy of others, they pay a heavy price, at the very
least they tell the other countries what it is they are most afraid of and therefore
the threat that they are intending to placate they can always be used, I am always
suspicious, I think again, based on history, one has to be somewhat suspicious,
always suspicious of statesmen who threaten that they may have to resign if they
don't get from other countries what they want because most people who are in
higher office have a very great desire to stay there and their problem, the problem
of how they stay in office seems to be their problem and not that of foreign countries.

3/1/64--9

I do not believe that Khrushchev for example that if he lost an internal struggle in the Soviet Union is so brilliant that he is not going to follow fight very hard to maintain his position. It was certainly true in the 19th century. Bismark would not have resigned no matter what would have happened in his negotiations with the Austrians. But at any rate if in modern European history foreign policy was ever conducted according to the maxims of pure national interest as described by Moregenthau, it was different different. He had the advantage, even in the 18th century, when foreign policy was conducted by maxims of cabinet diplomacy, even at the time that there was even a really a sufficient consensus on the maxims of the international government so that wars were kept very limited and also that certain kinds of threats were never made. It would have occured to no one in the seven war years war for example to try to prevent a domestic revolution in the participating countries. The solidity of the domestic institutions was taken for granted. The 18th - century the powers of the rulers to mobilize national resources were infinitely less. In the middle of the 19th century even the liberal conviction could be used to mobilize resources and as I pointed out the national feeling was separated from the democratic feeling about Bismark. From then on nationalism no longer had to go hand in hand with the extension of the us-ef suffrage and more liberal internal arrangements. On the one contrary it could be used by some of the conservative forces as a means to draw strength away from those favoring more constitutional processes. The particular method by which Bismark conducted foreign policy is more important than the thing which he actually did but the problem he faced was that on the one hand he wanted a unified Germany, On the other, he didn't want it to come about through a liberal revolution which abolished all of the German states, above all, abolished Prussia. He wanted to gain a cohesion of strength for Prussia (but he also wanted to do it in a way by which Prussia could eventually (become) the strongest power in Germany, and unify Germany, on the basis

3/4/64--10

of Prussian hegemony. Now I have to repeat what I said last time. In 1862 when he came to office the notion that there would be a unified Germany brought about as an assertion of Prussian national interest would have been just as mad as today the argument that you can unify Europe on the basis of national states. Until 1862, it was taken just as much for granted in Germany that German unity, if it were, would come about through a process that today we call integration as it was in Europe before the emergence of General De Gaulle. Until de Gaulle came along in Europe there were some people who thought there would never be German unity, but if there was to be European unity, the role sketched by Jean Monnet seemed to be the only way to achieve it. In Germany, there were many who thought that there would never be German unity. As late as 1862, it was not clear how unity was going to be achieved. But if it was going to be achieved, it was perfectly clear that it was going to be achieved through a central power, popularly elected abolishing more or less the existing states. This vision was smashed in Germany in the 19th century by Bismarck. Then the question was how could one achieve German unity. When there were two German states of approximately equal strength, Austria and Prussia, then France had a vested interest in keeping Germany divided because it didn't want a strong German state on its border. When Russia had a vested interest in preventing a liberal revolution in Germany (because of the fear that it would affect its own domestic institutions and when on top of it there were 31 little states all of which had a vested interest in keeping their independence). Now again, the methods which Bismarck used were extremely descent, the issue which he used to facilitate the unification of Germany had to do with the future of two territories in the north of Germany called Schleswig, Holstein whose fate had been occupied by the German confederation for 15 years. The issue itself was so complicated that Palmer once said of it that only three people had ever understood it; one was now in an insane asylum, the second was dead and he was the third and he had forgotten it.

3/4/64--11

Those two territories belonged to Denmark, on the one hand they belonged to Denmark through a personal union of their rulers, on the other they were part of the German confederation for certain purposes and when there was a succession to the Danish throne the question was, whether that personal union could continue or whether they should join the German confederation of independent states.

It would have been considered mad by anyone that this unlikely issue of who was the legitimate ruler of Schleswig Holstein and what particular constitutional arrangement it would have vis a vis Denmark and the German confederation would be the mechanism by which the unity of German which had occupied national and liberals for over a century and actively for fifty years would be solved. Moreover, Bismark did not want them to join the German confederation on the basis of the principle of self determination of people because that would have promoted the notion of liberalism which he was trying to fight. He also did not want them to join them as an independent state because he correctly calculated that any small state that had a common frontier with Russia was bound to vote with Austria in the Assembly of the German Confederation and therefore he did not want another German state that would simply add to the majority against Prussia. The Austrians also had an interest that whatever happened in Schleswig Holstein would not come about on the basis of nationalism and liberalism and therefore when an upheaval started in this area on the basis of nationalism and liberalism Bismark convinced them to the eternal sorrow of the Austrians that the unity of conservative interests was greater than any national differences that we might have with the Prussians convinced them that they should try to join forth in that area, opposing all the other smaller German states who wanted Schleswig Holstein, that they should try to join forth to preserve the integrity of the Danish succession. Now this had the great advantage first of all. Oh, another thing, the British also had an interest in Denmark in its integrity. By fighting a way to maintain the integrity of Denmark,

3/4/64--12

satisfied
the British were neutralized. By fighting it on the principle of
conservative interest, the Russians were satisfied; and, thirdly, by getting
Austria to separate itself from its German allies he prepared the grounds for
its eventual demise. The only protection that Austria ever had was Metternich
and
had pointed out previously in a wise measured policy which asked for
little. The only protection a status quo country had, not its only protection
but its most effective protection, is in the continuity of sound, legitimate
principles. If the revolutionary country can once succeed in getting the other
status quo country to separate itself from its potentialities, no matter how good
the immediate issue seems it has undermined its position. Once Austria had left
its German allies it was at the mercy of Prussia. Never again could the other
German allies of Austria conduct a policy which could count unreservedly on
Austrian support and in turn Austria, involved in any crisis was isolated
at least to the extent that its allies attempted to reassure themselves
against the possibility that there might be a separate deal between Austria
and Prussia so immediately, more and more bilateral negotiations began among
smaller German states. Again, this has a certain applicability to the present
situation. When you have one large protecting country and a group of smaller
protective states it is very dangerous to give the impression that the large
protecting power might make a deal with the other large antagonists who was
conceived or is conceived as the main threat against the protective countries.
For whether or not an actual deal is made, the fact that a deal might be made
is-due then generates in all the other countries an incentive to conduct
bilateral diplomacy on their own. In other words what Bismark was doing, and the
details are really unimportant, was to separate Austria from its conservative
connections, to appeal to Britain on the basis of integrity to Denmark and to
appeal to Russia on the basis of conservative interests and then he added a new
thing, which no one has dared to do before of appealing to the French on the basis

3/4/64--13

of national self interest and then he added a new thing that no one had dared to do before of appealing to the French on the basis of national self determination and hinting to them that they could compensate themselves in Belgium which would have had the great advantage of embroiling them with the British and sometimes hinting that they might get a piece of the Rhineland even though it was by populated with the Germans. At any rate, he kept promising Napoleon the third enough to keep him quiet while all of this was going on. After Denmark was defeated, then Austria and Prussia found themselves in occupation of Schleswig Holstein and Bismark used to squeeze Austria more and more out of their joint occupation and finally to provoke them to declare war. This was another great skill he had, that usually he got others to declare war on him. During this war with Austria, the fact that he was a conservative (does not keep him from promoting a revolution in Hungary, from allying himself with Italy which was governed by a liberal government and from instituting universal suffrage in Prussia even though he considered himself, even though he was considered an arch reactionary. In fact in the German confederation that he created because actually the Germany he created had universal suffrage before any other state had it and also had a constitution in which universal suffrage didn't mean anything but the ability to use liberal institutions was, to use liberalism as a tool of foreign policy was one of his revolutionary inventions. Having defeated As Austria he created first a north German confederation, he then provoked France, again through a diplomacy which it is not important to detail out, and to declare war in 1870, and this led to the unification of all of Germany all of it achieved by individual states and the Prussian leadership with no popular participation at all. Indeed the unification of Germany was proclaimed in Versailles by an assembly of German. Now this makes Bismark appear as a complete Machiavellian, and in a way he was. But I have to add that while he did conduct policy entirely on the principle of national interest he was not

3/4/64--14

only convinced of the extent that Prussia and Germany should have the power
to which they were entitled, he also showed enormous moderation in the way
the power was used. He conducted foreign policy purely according to the principles
of national interest.

That is, that a state should have the power
the influences which its power entitles it, but, it also had an obligation to use
its power wisely in order to maintain continuity. After every vietrei victorious
war he had to fight his generals and his rulers who at first had not wanted
to make wars, to have to fight this to complete it on the moderate terms.

that he indicated. -Gradually, what his foreign policy was The tragedy of his
foreign policy was that power far from being the easiest factor to calculate
is the most difficult, and that even though the foreign policies that he conducted
was very moderate, it led to immoderate consequences, and even though he wanted
peace very badly once he had achieved what once he had achieved what he had
fought for, for himself a the pattern of international relations he created was
largely responsible for the kind of compensation that led to World War I.
all of which proves statesman don't get what they want or they get it so completely
that they don't mean anything.

3/30/64--1

Last time I spoke about the Versailles Settlement and its instability.
To summarize what they were again because they are essential to an understanding
of the policy that Hitler was abbe to conduct, I believe that the Taylor thesis
is completely wrong.

The major weaknesses of the Versailles Settlement were the exclusion
of Germany, Russia didn't sign it at all, was called in at the last minute and
was handed a document and therefore had obviously no obligation towards the treaty.
Secondly, Versailles was too severe but not so severe as to weaken
the power of theBig Power that had status quo.
As a result, Germany was a permanently revolutionary country
which meant in turn the countries that had most to gain from peace were in a
position of having to conduct a policy which would prevent Germany from
regaining its strength. This in turn could be done only by adopting a deliberately
discriminatory policy for Germany. It was in other words, impossible to establish
a world organization on universal principles as had the treaty of Versailles.
The only way, under the treaty of Versailles, that the peace could be maintained
was to be willing to conduct a policy which kept Germany permanently weak
and in which Western policy would be directed against the potentiality of
Germany rather than against its actual policy. In other words, the west had
to be prepared to move against Germany regaining its strength. It could not wait
until it used that strength because it was too late by then to do something about it.
The reason for this was, contrary to the Congress of Vienna, the Treaty of Versailles
produced neither an agreed legitimacy, because of the exclusion of Germany and
a stable equilibrium.
Russia nor, By a stable equilibrium I mean that there are units of sufficient size
and sufficient self interest so that they protect the overall balance of power
by the normal exercise of a policy of national interest. Under the treaty of
Versailles the political situation of Germany, curiously enough, improved compared
to what it was in 1914. In 1914 Germany, bordered on all sides, was a powerful country.

3/30/64--2

It could change its, any alteration of German power therefore was certain to be resisted by some of these neighboring countries simply because no major country where its continued survival depends on the good will of another state, the good will which is subject to change.

Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was surrounded in the East by states which were intrinsically incomparably weaker than (Germany). There was nothing (they) could do by their own efforts to maintain a balance of power. Any (increase) of German strength could not be resisted any longer, from the east.

What it required was a guara guaranteed power that would bring this guarantee.

The position of the east European states, vis a vis Germany, was not as bad as but comparable to the position of the small south east Asian states vis a vis China.

There is nothing that these states can do by their own effort to maintain a balance of power against China.

They require a guaranteed power, such as and if you are protected by a guaranteed power, it is likely that your own policy is going to be irresponsible.

At any rate you have no high incentive to address yourself to the question of the equilibrium.

Therefore everything depended on the subtlety, the wisdom, and boldness of the French policy.

Now, in this respect, the only available guaranteed power in other words France was the only available guaranteed power because Britain, as soon as the war was over, (was in) the historical position of non-involvement in European affairs, insofar as British policy was directed against any European country, it was in part directed against France because France now was the strongest European state, and Britain, if it had a tendency it was to try to

3/30/64--3

On the other hand France was no longer morally and politically strong enough to
carry this burden. World War I had taught France more than any other society.
The percentage of casualties in France was greater, the overwhelming desire
of France after World War I was never to have a repition of World War I.

There is something upsetting about the French efforts in the 1920's, the German
army by treaty was limited to 100,000 and everybody in the Anglo Saxon world
was convinced of the discrimination that had been carried on against Germany--
something upsetting about the French efforts to guarantee their security
against the country that was

. The French were very
confident conscious of their inferiority militarily vis a vis the Germans,

On the other hand they didn't have to, willingness to conduct the only kind of
policy that might have saved them, well, there were two policies that might have
saved them. (One, a policy of conciliation with Germany in which case all the
discriminatory elements of the Treaty of Versailles would have to be eliminated.)

but that was unlikely to work because Germany had a permanent grievance in the east.
The second policy was one of brutally resisting any increase of German strength.

I am not asking whether the resistance was just, whether a particular cause was
asserting as
moral, but simply assuming that the basic principle of French policy that they would
not tolerate a strong Germany and that any efforts of Germany to strength itself
would be reisted by France. This, again, France had neither the moral stamina
to do nor the support, nor was it in conformity with the dominant conviction of the
period. And this indicated what happened when an international system relies too
much on the legitimizing principle on which it is organized. The Treaty of Versailles
for example, limited the German army to 100,000 men with the argument that this
was the first step toward universal disarmament. Also, the Treaty of Versailles

[x]

3/30/64--4

with the League of Nations according to which security was to be based on a collective international system. Well, Germany, therefore, constantly appealed to the legitimizing principle of the victor against the settlement on which their security was bound to depend. The military problem of the treaty was a security problem (were) absolutely inconsistent with the political and moral problems of the treaty. This was already apparent in the 1920's. The French were at one stage occupied the Ruhr, and from then on there was an attempt to get what can only be described as a paper guarantee when they made the Treaty of Locarno with Germany, in which Great Britain guaranteed both Germany and France against attack from the other and in which Germany accepted the French frontier. (As I pointed out last time, Germany would not accept the eastern frontier, only agreeing to accept any disputes with respect to them) to arbitration. The result was that two categories of frontier were established in Europe: The western frontier was guaranteed, but the eastern frontier which (were) to be settled later, in order to deal with this weakness, the French then made a series of pacts with (countries) that were much smaller than Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, in the hope of being able to face Germany again, in case of aggression, with a two front war, all of this at a time when the German (were) limited to 100,000 men, when the Rhineland was suppose to be demilitarized, and Germany was complaining bitterly about excessive (restoration). The Versailles settlement was structurally weak and in an (international) situation it is always important to understand what the structure of it is rather than what the various statesmen intend to do. The Versailles settlement was structurally weak because all it required upset in and once it had been (obeseed) then the security of Europe was bound to be greater than it had been in the (pre) period before 1914. There were no agreed

[N]
3/30/64--5

ideological principles.

This was the situation in the '20's. The Torn between excessive conciliation and on the one hand, relying on the League of Nations on the other what was still considered in the world at the time and the peace of Europe was further jeopardized by the fact that the system of collective security that the League of Nations established had the theoretical advantage that it would bring all countries into the battle against an aggressor. It had the practical disadvantage which gave every country a right to intervene in any dispute, and usually the pressures were against the victim of aggression because one way you can avoid your commitment to collective security is to define the issue in such a way that aggression isn't taking place. Every country has a theoretical interest in being protected against aggression, but every country also has a practical interest in having some aggression so defined that it is not engaged in a war which doesn't lead to it.

So by generalizing the difference one oftenGENERALI over generalizes diplomacy leading to the outbreak of the war and there was created a situation which could be exploited.

What then happened however was for the first time in modern European history a psychopath got into power in a major western country. Up to 1914 it would have been considered inconceivable that a man like Hitler could ever become the leader in any western country. Nothing in the political theory of the West prepared the people who represented the values of western society (that a criminal might be in charge of one of their countries. The problem incidentally is similar to some contemporary problems, all of which our political theory, all of our political strategy, today is addressed to the question of

3/30/64--6

communist subversion. To political theory to the questions of what may be called subversion where you have a head of a government who undermines all the others which happen to be the case in Brazil where the President of Brazil deliberately produces chaos in the hope of being appointed dictator. So that where most political theories attempt to protect the government against people who ring anayrch here you have a president who deliberately thwarts the institutions of the government. In any other country but Brazil this would quickly lead to revolution--Brazil is always a bit different. The more moral problem presented to the west is a very serious one. It is very easy when one reads books like *Focing* and * speak of how easy it would be to resist. This is usually said by people who have nervous attacks just thinking about McCarthy, who after all, was only a Senator, who didn't have the police force at his disposal, and yet nevertheless many people believe that there was a reign of terror under McCarthy. This to some extent was true but if McCarthy worries them, one should have some understanding of what happens in society when the whole apparatus of the state is suddenly put at the disposal of a criminal movement. All the more since nobody had ever seen anything like this before, so that one of the reasons that Hitler was of successful was that he could place the best values of the European system at his disposal. This is very hard for people who are dedicated to the status quo to believe that sound to them as upholding the status quo. The essence of what seems to them to be a reasonable order is that people mean what they say. When somebody extols the desirability of the peace to people who want peace it seems only natural to them that this man has either returned to reason or has always been reasonable and he-- therefore Hitler directed at the time against all the weak points of the Treaty of Versailles and managed to confuse not the worst people necessarily but the best. Reaction to him was always that every problem could be dealt with by the strenuous exercise of good will.

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The more intransient he was the more people believed that he showed understanding, patience, good will, etc. For example, in May 1933, he made a speech in which he said "it is in the interest of all that present day's problem should be solved in a reasonable and peaceful manner, the advocation of violence in any pale place in Europe will have no basis in basic effect on the political economic position of any country. The outbreak of such unlimited maddness would necessarily cause the collapse of the present." And from here he went on to offer the dispatch of all military, =the entire military establishment he had, to FRENCH renounce all offensive weapons, to agree to any pact of non-aggression the only thing he required was that every other country do the same.

Well this presented a terrible problem for France. Germany only had an army of 100,000 to begin with. If France agreed to what would be called today complete and general disarmament (it would put itself on exactly the same level as Germany). Since Germany's potential was greater and since France's security had depended on a greater mobilized strength, this was in a way a device to shift the military balance in favor of Germany. It would mean that France would have to give up its fortifications and it would have been a device to establish the kind of parity which was the French nightmare. On the other hand, not to do this was to appeal to undermine the principle of equal treatment of all nations, and to do so conduct a deliberately discriminatory policy against Germany. So, this went on for about six months, there were negotiations on this proposition.

Incidentally, the British ambassador, the British had an extraordinary collection of British ambassadors in Berlin, said said urging the British government to urge the French to sign a complete disarmament agreement. The British ambassador wrote "If this would be inclined, under any agreement, his signature would bind all of Germany like no other Germans have in all of German history." And just to make sure the French would get the point, the French British Prime Minister wrote a

3/30/64--8

letter again urging the French to agree to the German proposition of expanding all armies, for if Germany does not keep the agreement, the world will know what her real intentions are. I think incidentally it is important to keep in mind, as I pointed out last time, French attitudes today. For us and the British to keep assuring the French that the things they feel and not feel are not sensible has to be seen in the context of 20 years of reassurances of that nature in the 20's and 30's, at the end of which France collapsed and stood more or less alone. Now, after this speech, after about 6 months of negotiations, Hitler then withdrew from the disarmament conference and he withdrew from the League of Nations. The reaction of Americans and Britains was that Hitler had been outraged, that he was very interested to find a peaceful solution to Berlin to find out exactly what it was that Hitler might want. Hitler made a speech when Germany left the League of Nations and left the disarmament conference which again I will read a paragraph from. This-is It isn't true that he was mad? all the time. This is what posterity thinks of him. He said, no war can become humanit's permanent state. No peace can be the perpetuation of war. One day the conquerors and the conquered must find their way back into a community of mutual understanding. For a decade and a half the German people had hoped and had waited for the time when at last the end of the war would also become the end of hate and enmity. But the aim of the Treaty of Versailles leads not to peace in humanity but rather leaves humanity in a state of everlasting hatred, and therefore he gave an interview to the London Daily Mail in which he emphasized-that-nobody he said nobody here desires a repetition of war, almost all the leaders of the nationalist socialist movement, I have yet to meet a man who served in the war who desires a removal of the horrors

[N]

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of those particularly from Great Britain, and so on and so forth. The result of this approach was that overtures were made to find out what it was that the Germans might want, how they could be brought back into the community of nations without feeling discriminated against. Well, Hitler demanded that the way, he could not agree the way since the French would not agree he could not agree to an elimination of our armament but he would be ready to do two things: He would agree to an elimination of armaments, of the German army to 300,000 men, if it could be produced by (prescription) and he would be willing to limit (his) navy to 35% of the British navy. The British thought that this was an enormous achievement because they remembered a naval race with Germany (which was, one of the reasons) which led to World War I. The truth of the matter was that it would have taken the Germans ten years to build up to 35% of the British navy since they were starting from nothing, and to (get) an army of 300,000 men through conscription was a clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles. The French (didn't) agree to (that part of the proposition), the British agreed unilaterally to (an) limitation of German naval strength, 35% of British naval strength and again priding themselves on having brought about international understanding. Now again in retrospect it is very easy to say (they) were fools.

If you look at policies since the war you can see leaving aside the question that the Soviets are like Hitler if the Soviets proposed to us today that all armies be limited to a certain number how would that be interpreted. If there is a way of getting ap parity as a means of getting superiority or is there a real conviction that peace is the most desirable thing. This is the tragedy of statesmen. If Hitler had been a sincere nationalist, interested only in ending the discrimination against Germany, than everything he said was absolutely foreign and not to give him what he demanded

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was inevitably going to bring about what the western states were most eager to avoid, namely a dissatisfied Germany in the center of the communist continent.

It was inevitably going to bring about what the western states were most eager to avoid, namely a dissatisfied Germany in the center of the continent. If he had however Hitler's greater aims, then the policies of the west were disastrously foolish. One couldn't know if Hitler had greater intentions until he was strong enough to go carry them out. The dilemma of the western world was how best to limit Germany's potential

in which case all and all men of good will in the west

the the western government with discriminatory policies or to try to integrate Germany into the community of western European nations and thereby run the risk of

Well it is not sensible to go through every detail. The skill of Hitler was to rearm, to use the disinformation negotiations as an excuse to rearm, after having rearmed to a certain point he then was confronted with the problem that the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Peace, but prevented Germany from having any military forces in the Rhine. The Rhineland was demilitarized, for two reasons: it was that it enabled France, in case Germany attacked Eastern Europe--two things, if Germany meant to attack the West, it would give France the warning period of the length of time it would take the Germans to cross the Rhineland. The real importance of the demilitarized Rhineland was that since these European states were not very strong there had to be an immediate release from the West. If there was a German attack on either Poland or the Czechoslovakia, a demilitarized Rhineland would enable the French army to occupy a large part of Germany and, therefore, get a guarantee or produce pressure on the Germany(beliefs) to stop their aggression. The French had always been particular about their strategy throughout the 20's and 30's. In order to protect their allies they had to conduct the 20's strategy and the

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demilitarization of the Rhineland was based on the assumption that if Germany attacked the East ... ON the other hand, in the 1920's France began to create the Marginot Line. The French were building a defensive wall against a German attack

because if the Germans could be sure that in case of war they would not have to take an immediate French attack then they could use the weakness of the East European states ... and throw their whole army against France afterwards. In other words, the French military people in having in 1914 foolishly staked everything on the offensive

and thereby enable the Germans to carry out the original plan, mainly to defeat the East first and then go on to France. However, as long as the Rhineland was demilitarized the French at least had the technical possibility to move into it. In the spring of 1935, the Germans denounced it. Before the Germans moved into the Rhineland, they officially announced the limitation of armaments--that was in the Spring of '35. British reaction was again to send a foreign secretary to Berlin to see what kind of a settlement might be possible. Then in 1936 the German army moved into the Rhineland. During 1937 they sent only three battalions, and everybody became a prisoner of his preconceptions. As the German armies were moving into the Rhineland, Hitler gave another one of his specific speeches. "The bloodshed on the European continent in the course of the last 300 years bears no proportion to the national result of the war." In the end France remains France, Germany and Poland. Germany and Poland and Italy. What I am asking political passion in far reaching political changes by shedding blood has done no more than touched the skin of nations. Therefore, everybody a treaty of non aggression would be delighted with some of these things. And then, if at that time, if the French army had moved

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as much as one division the Germans would have withdrawn. However the French
were in the unfortunate position of [a] being (permitted) to defend this crisis,
The whole military theory was dependent on somebody attacking them. b) The French
had only one plan for military operations, namely one require<i> be</i>ing full and
complete mobilization. and the documents of the French military staff at this time
are very interesting reading proving the theory that was long held, namely
that intellegence estimates <u>never</u> guide national policy, they follow national policy.
You have a national policy your intelligence estimates almost inevitably confirm
what your policy is anyway. The French had a plan for full mobilization, obviously
you don't have full mobilization against an enemy who moves only one division.
Therefore the French army proved that the French intelligence estiamte spoke
of hordes of Germans moving into the Rhineland, requiring not only full French
mobilization but British support of French mobilization so they had required not
only the kind of action a government to take but a beautfful alibi
so the French wasted a week trying to (figure out) the <u>dk</u> kind of military operation
that a very small part of their forces (would) have handled in one afternoon.

To the British in turn and to much of the rest of Europe it didn't seem
sensible to have a World War (on the issue of) a European country, reoccuping part of
its own territory. For example, the deputy leader of the labor party made the
following statement about Hitler's speech: (He said, Herr Hitler's statement
ought to be accepted at its face value, Herr Hitler made a statement with
one hand and holding out an olive branch with the other which ought to be taken at
its face value. This may prove to be the most important gestures which have been
made. It is idle to pretend that these statements were insincere. The dominant
problem of the world is the problem of peace not the problem of defense. The issue
now is whether we should resort to increased arguments or whether we have a statesman
like quality of dealing with themost grievous problems

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Well, no one can accuse the Labor Party of having ideological weaknesses vis à vis the Nazis. The Conservative views were very similar. And as all-k always happens when one doesn't want to do something now, one gets a guarantee for what one may want to do later and therefore the French had not acted alone immediately waiting for British support were not given British support in the actual case that was before them but were promised British support in case of an actual German attack. The reoccupation of the Rhineland was accepted as fact from then on, what happened after this was simply a question of time because not only did they break the treaty, two treaties--the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Loraine-- it also structured a change in the equilibrium of Europe. After the Rhineland was occupied the East European states became, after the Rhineland was occupied it was simply a question of time until the Germans constructed fortifications of the Rhineland. With their frontier fortified and given the strategic doctrine to begin with, it was unlikely, indeed, that the French army would attack in case of an East European war. On the other hand, most-Eastern-countries-was-capable-of no East European country nor any grouping of East European countries was capable of resisting Germany alone. Henceforth, in 1914, an alliance between Eastern Europe and France against Germany made sense because whomever Germany attacked first had a chance of holding out until the pressure of the others could make itself effective. The Treaty of Versailles structure did not permit this. If Germany could hold off the French for as much as three weeks, it was certain to be able to smash all the surrounding countries in the East. What made the problem even more difficult was that they were not only worried about Germany but about the Soviet Union. Poland was as concerned about an attack from Russia as it was about an attack from Germany. Rumania was more afraid of an attack from Russia than of an attack from Germany so that the only

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power in eastern Europe which could have come to the assistance of these countries
was no longer available. In short, after 1936 the only thing that could have
preserved the peace, up until 1933 the peace was preserved by the predominance of
France, after 1936 the only thing that could have preserved the peace was the
self restrain if there was any in Germany and self restrain was certainly one
quality which Hitler did not possess. Now Taylor's theseis thesis is that once
the structural change had occured in Europe, the western countries
because all they had wanted to do was to get the fruits fruits of what had been
suggested to them; they didn't really want the war but rather that we had
engaged in a perfectly consistent national German policy of
Now of course, anybody who is the head of Germany had to use Germany as a base
of foreign policy. To prove that the Communist are pursuing traditional
Russian policy only proves that their capital happens to be in Moscow and if
Russia is going to expand it has to expand through traditional rules. The same
same is to some extent true in Germany. Obviously Hitler pursued some traditional
German policy. The only thing which could have restrained him would have been
what I call early precautionary policy, a policy which didn't let him get into
a position that he was strong enough to blackmail everybody, once he was that
strong, his personality, his mental unbalance all combined to make war
because he was one of the few national leaders who really wanted war
for its own sake.

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At the end of the last hour a number of you came up and asked a question which I think is important in the context of the 1930's and what followed after namely to what degree the kinds of policy I seem to imply would have been desirable were in fact possible given the domestic <u>stituate</u> situation of the countries concerned.

Now, there are two things to be said about this. First of all, when one describes a catastrophic policy the indication is <u>bbvious</u> that something else is possible. However, as we look at history the real tragedy it seems was when a catastrophic policy was in fact <u>carried out</u> but the chief actors did not have a very unlimited range of choice. The question of what a statesman can or cannot do, what range of actions are in fact open to him, is one that has troubled everybody who has ever <u>worried-about-the-x</u>- reflected upon history. In 1958 you had tried to predict whether France begins to play a worldwide role, whether a French president of Prime Minister could challenge the United States you would have said that public opinion, the domestic structure of France would never permit it. It has <u>ahpp</u>- happened. Moreover, if you look at history in that respect there is a certain inevitability about what has happened because you can never imagine how things might have been otherwise. And yet, making all these allowances, one has to say that British foreign policy has become democratic, the range of action of the statesman Frenchmen has become not wider but much more circumscribed and if you combine the democratic nature of foreign policy of 30's with the lack of confidence that World War I brought then I think it is possible to say that the statesman of the '30's certainly and not even particularly foolish one. They reflected very well the prevailing consensus within their society, in fact you can go further. In the 1930's the people who were considered wise and balanced and sane, the experts who <u>followed-changes-in-policy</u> were the ones who <u>followed</u> Chamerlains policy and not Churchill's policy. Today we think of Churchill as a great man but if you read what his contemporaries said about him in the 30's this is not

4/1/64--2

at all the case. In 1934 for example Churchill wrote an article in which he expressed the fear that President Roosevelt was losing his leadership and the *New York Times* said "Mr. Churchill is a strange instrument for offering such a warning. If anybody is an authority of losing both leadership and confidence Mr Churchill is. He is a brilliant writer .... Mr. Churchill is also a fine speaker but years ago he seems to be thought of as an impossible prime minister. More than once has been applied to him the part of the lost leader."

The *London Times* wrote in the same year that Mr. Churchill really means to persist in this general guerrilla warfare which has not on the whole gone very well for him has sometimes appeared to be in doubt. He has also played such a conspicuous part in the past that it is about time he found him himself a more constructive role. However that may be, let us hope that in both houses of Parliament the leaders will be to keep the debate on the level of temper higher than his." Then in 1935 he expressed the fear that Great Britain was falling behind in the armament race he constantly pointed out that there was a fundamental change in the balance of power occurring, that British policy seemed to be directed against its only ally on the continent, namely France and helping its potential enemy, namely Germany and he pointed out that once the German armament program was growing it would be next to impossible to prevent the inevitably consequences. Whereupon the *Sunday Cript* said that "I am sure that everybody in listening to the right honorable member

His contribution to these debates generally seem to have come from and do not seem to us to have national understanding in the slightest." And another MP--"I say deliberately the speech which the right honorable genetleman made this afternoon reminded me not of a speech of a statesman, but of a man who was willing to help his country but of a man who had some personal

87
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vendetta against the Prime Minister. It was in fact a speech

And at that time a man who was not an admirer of Churchill said that "the right honorable gentleman accused the Prime Minister being responsible for a deterioration in international policy during the past four years. I do not believe that anyone here who has examined the course of international affairs during that period could regard that absurdity as anything but a fantastic . I deeply regret it because it may have given a measure of authority abroad which I do not believe this House will ever give it."

Well, the point was that in the 1930's the general conviction of both Britain and France was that peace would be maintained through the exercise of good will, that armaments were not the result of tension but the cause of the tension. Anybody who warned about their danger was accused of wanting that danger. Anybody who offended against the prevailing consensus was criticized by the selfish personal motives. Why else would Churchill now dissent from what other reasonable men seem to accept unless it was a desire to stand out and therefore perhaps reach higher things. And in this respect, Baldwin Chamberlain were much more in tune with their time. Now, this illustrates the dilemma that any political leader has. How much does he want to gear his policy against the capability of another state, how much does he want to rely on the intentions of another state. If you say the only thing that matters are the personal intentions of the leaders then you can always substitute professions of good will for real power relationships and in certain circumstances if those intentions remain good peace can be maintained for a long time. On the other hand, the intentions of another sovereign state are such that they are outside the control of any state. Therefore to the degree that you make yourself dependent on the good will of another state there is involved an abdication of statesmanship. Sometimes we attempt to

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limit the capability of another country brings on what we are trying to avoid.
On another occasion the attempt to rely entirely on the intentions of another
is achieved
state also brings on what you are trying to avoid. Certainly it is only in
retrospect. If you want to be absolutely certain, then

as in fact happened in the 1930's. Now, as I pointed out last time
there was no question that Hitler was insisting assisted by the fact that the
Versailles settlement was structurally unsound. There were no automatic balances
in that settlement. There was no state except France by its own effort could
maintain the peace. There was no equilibrium which would produce certain
automatic adjustments. Everything depended on whether Germany, Great Britain
or France and it was precisely this quality which had been wrecked in World War I.
If peace was going to be maintained, an unjust settlement would have to be
vindicated against Germany or at least a discriminatory settlement would have to
be maintained against Germany. For this the western powers had no stomach
and therefore Hitler was enabled to alter all the terms of the settlement.
He reintroduced conscription in 1935, he reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936
and when that had been achieved the government of Eastern Europe became, almost
inevitably took the course that they finally did. And France was no longer able
to come to the aid of its allies, not that it had any intentions of doing so,
but once it was no longer physically able to launch an attack against Germany

the situation of the smaller states in eastern Europe was hopeless.
And finally since the Soviet Union was also not part of the Versailles settlement
so that the only large country that could have come to their assistance had
no interest in maintaining that particular settlement and since these states
feared the Soviet Union at least as much as they feared Germany the situation of

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the free countries in Eastern Europe was extremely precarious. In fact,
the Treaty of Versailles

had brought about a situation in which the countries which emerged from
the Austro-Hungarian Empire were in a more precarious position and in a way
more dependent on the good will of other states than they had been before.
Now, one other problem which was presented before I get to it

claims as was Hitler's enormous skill in presenting his alim-had legitimate grievances which meant, if met, would lead to European conciliation. If you read the accounts of people who saw Hitler, you will find that they had a very striking similarity to the accounts of travelers to Moscow. Now I am not saying that Khrushchev is the same type as Hitler, but there was, in the 1930's people who visited Hitler, almost invariably came away with the conviction either that the Fueer=had an inferiority complex or that he was sincerely interested in peace.

and if only his sense of inferiority was gratified and he could talk to
people it would soon appear that he would be a responsible member of the
international community. Or they were convinced that he was sincerely
leader interested in peace, either of the Labor Party said, after a visit

"I do not think Hitler will accuse me of betraying
his confidence when I say that almost the first words of our conversation
were on that particular point, and I have never heard it said to me more
emphatically or more movingly than by Hitler that another war would neither
mean the victor-c-victors or the vanquished but the ruin of everything.
Of course Hitler Hitler wants something for his country but don't our
statesmen. The fundamental thing is that he is as convinced as any other
man in the world that another war would mean the collapse and ruin for
everybody." (Now again, it is easy to ridicule this today when we know

[Y]

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what the outcome was. Still, the stability of a peaceful order depends on their being some relationship between appearances and reality. All the qualities which made life in Britain and France pleasant, the qualities on which people like Hallifax and Chamberlain had been raised, implied that people would prefer peace to victory. A British statesman couldn't imagine a type who had been a derelict in Vienna (30) years (before that and who had worked his way up, was completely uneducated on one level, and whose distinguishing characteristic was a quest for power. What Hitler Hitler wanted was not well being but power. When people spoke about his part in life they completely misunderstood what motivates this kind of a man. I once heard someone say that the way to deal with Mao Tse Tung was to give him a billion dollars. The quest is what would he do with a billion dollars. If that was what he wanted he might be running a bank in Shanghai today. People don't become revolutionaries, they don't lead long marches unless they believe in something. Now in our society, if someone believes something very deeply he is considered a little odd (and therefore if somebody makes some violent speeches as Hitler did, the comment is that this is only window dressing and deep down he is really just like (somebody else. This difficulty of understanding the revolutionary impact reflected not evil qualities, but very good qualities in many respects. We will see for example, that after the Easter recess when we discuss some of our negotiating habits we will see that in our negotiations with the Test Ban, that the Western statesman are always convinced that we discover the truth through the process of negotiation, so they will say we don't really mean this particular proposition never once in the whole (4) or 5) years of test ban negotiations did the Soviet admit that a proposal they put forward had any contingency. They sometimes changed their proposal but they were marching

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from one tune to another. When our people would put forward a proposal, they would say "of course I would not put it quite this way, you have to understand that the President is under great pressure, he has some so many other things to worry about, I myself would not have said it this way. Our negotiators are mediators between their government and the Russians. Again, the Russians don't operate this way. The Russians believe that they can be every truth have a completely different approach to the making of negotiations. Now it is very basic to make an equation between the communists and the Nazis. The communist believe that they reflect history; they are not in a hurry. They don't have to get everything settled within a short time period. The essence of Hitler was that he was convinced that he was the greatest German who had ever lived and that everything had to be done within his lifetime. He assembled the German generals in 1938 and as part of the strategic assessment of the situation he explained to them that since he was going to be in the prime of his powers over the next five years things were to be brought to a head in that time period. This to him was an absolutely conclusive argument. He didn't think anybody else would ever have his authority and therefore the almost maniacal quality of German policy in the 60's was quite different from that of the Soviet totalitarianism.

totalitarianism

Still the illusions of the west vis à vis German retaliation and Soviet retaliation, similar retaliation (was) very different. The kinds of reports that were written about visits to Germany, if you took out the top names of the towns and of its leaders, almost the same as the reports that are now written about visits to the Soviet Union; people look happy, things are getting better, everybody wants peace and therefore we know that the Soviets or the Nazis wanted peace. Now it was in this atmosphere that in 1938 in the final attack on the international settlement of 1938? took place. Now another characteristic of the western

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leaders during this period, since they felt guilty about balances of peer power, since they had been dedicated to the proposition that

they oscillated between their fears and their hopes, never being quite able to pursue a consistent policy in either direction. Vis à vis the Germans they were hoping for the best. On the other hand when the Italians invaded Ethiopia suddenly Britain insisted on sanctions.

But otherwise sanctions were applied to Italy. The result was that Italy, up to 1934 had been on the side of the western countries (and that Mussolini who had been enormous disdain fire for Hitler at that time began to draw closer to the Germans. When in 1935 tried to

this was rejected in Britain, after having first been accepted, and in fact the foreign minister who had wanted to negotiate was thrown out of office so that because this seemed to be yielding to aggression. The western countries could never decide whether to follow counsels of prudence or counsels of morality. Counsels of prudence in which a dictator is not would have dictated if not intervention against Germany at least to create the largest groupings of powers against them. It would have indicated that one could not tolerate Spain becoming Fascist, nor would that apart from any moral concerns that one simply could not commit France to be surrounded on three sides. On the other hand, considerations of balance of power were no longer considered adequate; Spain was in a civil war, non-intervention was the basic principle of policy; Italy had in fact been engaged in an act of aggression, there fore if the principle of aggression was so preached one place then the argument it would be preached everywhere, and the

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uncertainty of western policy brought about the coalition of Italy and Germany and completed the isolation of France on the continent. There were at least certain factors that step by step Hitler began to use against Austria. It was no accident that within a few weeks, within a few months after the Rhineland had been reoccupied the Austrians were compelled to make a treaty with the Germans in which they recognized that they were both German states and in which they promised to give some scope to the activity of the Nazi party (if office and) it was this treaty which (since 1938 was then used by Hitler to extort yet other) conceptions and when the Austrian chancellor in desperation tried to hold a plebiscite on the issue, whether Austria should be independent, Hitler used this pretext to march into Austria. Once Austria had been occupied the position in eastern Europe

Germany now had a common frontier with Italy and Yugoslavia and it outflanked the Czechoslovakia from the south. In fact Czechoslovakia was now surrounded by Germany on three sides so that the successor states (of) the Austro-Hungarian Empire were immediately exposed to German credit.

Now whether Hitler intended all along to occupy Czechoslovakia in 1938, I think a good case could be made for the proposition that if Hitler had not felt that he had been humiliated by the Czechs who had been mobilized in May to whom he had to give assurances that he wasn't going to do anything, that if he hadn't been humiliated by them he would not have moved that particular year. But this simply shows how precarious the peace had become when everything depended on the continued emotional stability of a single individual. But whether Hitler intended to move against Czechoslovakia that year or the next year was really not so important. What is important about Hitler is that once he was in a position of strength there was never any chance that he wouldn't use it, and this is how where Taylor is absolutely wrong. Taylor thinks that

4/1/64--10

Hitler was who was trying to drive the hardest bargain, encouraged by the western states and because of a misunderstanding in timing war broke out. Well, anybody who studies the documents of this time must come to the conclusion that Hitler was (solely) disappointed that there was no war in 1938. Hitler was really disappointed by the Munich settlement not because he didn't get what he wanted but because he wanted to smash the Czechs (through) military action.

To him who lived through a series of __________, marching into Prague at the head of the German army was more important than any long-range consideration of policy (and this) is why during the negotiations over the fate of Czechoslovakia what he was trying to arrange was not so much a British surrender but rather he was trying (tried) to get the British to help him formulate a plan which he thought the Czechs would never accept, and which would then give him an aee opportunity to use his army. As he said on numerous occasions between 1939 an-1 and 1940 he did not create that army in order for it not to be used. Well, the crisis-crisis in 1938 showed that it is sometimes extremely dangerous to accept mediation. The British constantly argue that they couldn't go to war unless they had clear demonstrable proof what Hitler really meant to the aggressor. They therefore sent a mission to Prague urging the Czechs to extend all reasonable concessions. (Well, once you have accepted the principles) that there are going to be major concessions, it is going to become harder and harder to return to the status quo. Once a country or an individual wants to change the status quo the status quo power to accept can get the principle accepted that there is to be a mediator who will come up with terms which are accepted for the settlement he (is) already won the battle. It becomes almost impossible for the defender then to return to the status quo and the only thing that prevents from that moment on is an issue is the extent of the concession that is exacted. The Czech crisis also showed that Russia was (to) all practical purposes not part of the European conscience. All

[N]

4/1/64--11

decisions were taken with no reference to the Soviet Union. Even if the Soviet Union had wanted to intervene, they would have had to cross Rumania and Hungary or Poland, neither of which, neither country was very eager to have them, and it is very dubious whether the Russian army which did not do so brilliantly in Finland the following year could have survived an offensive operation 100 of miles away from its frontier. The western statesmen then faced a very real dilemma. The French military doctrine as I pointed out was complete wrong and probably couldn't hold out for more than a few weeks. The Russians couldn't give any assistance. In other words, the Germans had been freed by the Versailles settlement of the fear of a two front war. (And therefore it is a very tough question to decide whether the Munich settlement was justified or unjustified.) In retrospect we know that had the British and French resisted the German army would probably have overthrown Italy. At that time the German army was still convinced that it was bound to lose the war and they had decided to overthrow Hitler if they became convinced that there would be a war.

The German army was in the same dilemma as the western statesmen. Whatever one can say about the German military staff, great political imagination was not their outstanding characteristic. Now many people say they should have revolted; these are the same people who protest against the military industrial complex in the United States and I don't know whether it is typical of an army that it should revolt when it disagrees with the political goals of its leadership. Now you can say that Hitler was a criminal. Well it is not easy for people to admit the fact that a criminal runs their country and they will attempt to make excuses. The history of the German German army is that they were always looking for one last proof that Hitler was in fact a criminal, or that he was in fact crazy and therefore they decided that they would not make a revolt until Hitler had given an irrevocable order to go to war and while they were making up their

[Y]

4/1/64--12

minds the Munich conference was arranged. An you can say that if Chamberlain had gone to Munich a day later, Hitler would have been overthrown. Yet, I must say I have some sympathy for Chamberlain. He did have some indication that the German army might revolt, on the other hand whatever good qualities the German army might have had, exercising a revolt was not one of the things they had practiced, and as it turns out whenever they did try to revolt they bundled this in the most ridiculous fashion and there is no guarantee that they might have bungled that one too. Then it is a fact that public opinion either through the interjection of their leaders or because they were sincerely convinced that Hitler was not prepared to go to war in 1938, When Chamberlain announced that he would go to Munich there was rejoicing in the House of Parliament on both sides. The British Commonwealth sent the following communication to Chamberlain when he returned from Munich, it came from Canada--"the heart of Canada is rejoicing tonight

may I convey to you the warmest congratulations of the Canadian people." The Austrians said "my colleagues and I desire to express our warmest congratulations at the outcome of the negotiations in Munich, Austrians owe a deep debt of gratitude to you for your unceasing efforts to preserve the peace."

The South Africans--"news of the Conference of Munich was greeted in the Union with immense relief ..."

The point I am making is not that Chamberlain was right, it is that he reflected the convictions of the moment and, perhaps, the realitids of the military situation had been developed through the omission of the preceding three years. I am much more critical about the policy which permitted

4/1/64--13

the Germans to get into a position where they could threaten him then I am
about what actually happened in 1938. If war had broken out in 1938
and if France collapsed as quickly as it did

its a very tough question to answer today. I think the great mistakes
sin of the sin of the sin of the
occurred in the years before, and the real GERMAN leadership was not the actual
settlement in Munich but not to have had the courage to tell the people what
the possibilities of danger were. The great mistake of all contemporary
foreign policy is that it is very easy to pretend that devotion to peace
and attainment of peace are one and the same thing. It is very easy to have
electoral campaigns on the pretense that their conciliatory tone in fact
guarantees a conciliatory policy and usually, in the '30's and since, both
parties compete with each other in trying to prove that what we might call
the conjecture ep policy is unnecessary. This was the mistake of the '30's
and it is a difficulty from which we have suffered ever since. In this sense
World War II was an unnecessary war. It was not produced by mobilization
plans; it was not produced by any particular tension which existed, it was
not produced because there were any great unsatisfied claims except the
unsatisfied claims of a single man. It is not easy to imagine that any other
single government would have pursued so reckless a policy. There was the
constant tendency to take refuge in the tensions intensions or the complained
intensions of the aggressor. There was the obsession with the memory of
World War I; there was the illusion that inaction is always the safest policy.
All of this contributed. By the time Hitler marched into Prague the whole
precariousness of the situation became apparent. On one hand it showed that
Hitler really was mad because once he had occupied

4/1/64--14

in the fall of 1938, predominance of eastern Europe was his if he would just wait a few years. No Czech government would have dared to resist him. The country was too small and (to) all practical purposes the position of Czechoslovakia was that of a German stetelite-satellite. (And) Hitler had to have his triumph of marching into Prague and for that he had given everything. If he had waited a couple of years Czechoslovakia would have fallen apart automatically. There was no possible way by which Czechoslovakia could have pursued anything but a satellite policy vis a vis Germany. (And) in turn all other eastern European countries would have gradually drift drifted into the German orbit. On the other hand the western countries, having relied on satisfying Hitler's legitimate plans but found that the occupation of Prague presented him with a challenge that proved that Hitler was not simply a misunderstood nationalist but, out for world domination.

without having any conceivable means and in their negotiations with the Soviets in which they finally attempted to line up became apparent in their attempt to maintain the Versailles settlement it was impossible to eliminate of the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union as a condition of existence of a war against Hitler demanded the Baltic states. From the Soviet point of view this was not unreasonable, it was a pure power proposal. From the western point of view, it was domestically impossible. Moreover the Soviet were convinced that there wasn't really any difference between the Nazis and the capitalist capitalists in the west. In 1933 Stalin said a great deal depends for us on deterring the inevitable capitalist war until the capitalists start fighting with each other. The Soviets were terrified that while the west was turn trying to deter the Nazis against the Russians. The west in turn believed that the ideological quarrel between the Soviets and the Nazis was

4/1/64--15

Stalin to prevent any reconciliation. Stalin not only didn't want to prevent the war since he was convinced that the war was inevitable, he tried to make sure that it would be a capitalist civil war (and therefore at the last moment he signed a treaty with the Nazis). He wanted to make sure that whenever a showdown (would) come between capitalist and communists, it would come (with a capitalism that would have been weakened by internal struggle).

So finally, the Treaty of Versailles did collapse and, collapse in a very short time, partly (due to the influence of a madman but a madman - above all the madman shouldn't have been so successful if the structure hadn't been so weak and if the conceptions of the statesmen had not been so uncertain.)

4/6/64--1

The last time I met with you was when we discussed the diplomacy prior to World War II. I discussed then the dilemma of the diplomats in the 1930's. Confronted with a structure that had no inherent equilibrium, by a totalitarian dictatorship which at that time was so novel, they didn't know whether to rely on precaution or on conciliation. If they had moved early they would have had to do so on the basis of a guess that could not be proved true. By waiting until later they were creating a situation in which events moved out of their control. The whole instability of the Versailles settlement which depended on one country that demoralized by war, namely France, maintained the peace of Europe became evident in the 1930's. It already became evident when France built the but then the Germans moved into the Rhineland the structure of the Versailles settlement was upset. From that moment on it was impossible for France, or so the French thought, to come to the assistance of the smaller countries in eastern Europe. In a way, in fact it became evident, that the Treaty of Versailles had been improved. Germany's strategic position, rather than being surrounded by major countries was now surrounded in the east by a group of smaller countries none of which were capable of resisting Germany and the nightmare of a two front war that had upset imperial Germany was not as acute for Hitler's Germany. From 1936 on, once the Germans had begun to fortify the Rhineland upsetting the European equilibrium really depended only on their self restrain and that was what no one ever accused Hitler of having. In every crisis the British and the French were confronted with the fact that they couldn't come physically to the assistance of their allies

4/6/64--2

that the Germans had a legitimate claim and the operation of the system of collective security which was developed had a tendency even to weaken resistance. It not only created an obligation for joint defense, it also created a legitimacy for constant intervention and it gave every country which might be obliged to defend its allies an excuse for trying to define the casus belli in such a way that its total obligation would be reduced.

The result was the collapse of Austria, the surrender of Czech-Czechoslovakia at Munich and finally the war that started on the Polish Corridor. Now, as I pointed out last time, I completely disagree with Taylor's thesis that Hitler was planning a series of blackmails, was not planning war.

Any study of Hitler would indicate that he was extremely disappointed by the Munich settlement, he was disappointed by the Munich settlement because he wanted to avoid that.

and he was not interested in making a series of adjustments in Europe, he really meant to carry out what he had set down in *Mein Kampf*. The fact that *given any* whether in any given crisis he meant to produce a World War is really relatively less *important* than the fact that he deliberately tried to use the German armies in order to conquer

and committed to rearm Germany he got a two or three year head start on the rearmament program, war was practically impossible. What one does not know about the Munich settlement is whether it in 1938 it might not have had much more unfortunate consequences. In 1938 the issue was not very popular in either Britain or France. Both Chamberlain and were greeted with enormous enthusiasm from Munich. The Commonwealth enthusiastically supported the

4/6/64--3

Munich settlement and it isn't clear whether the war had occurred and if then the Germans had attacked France as it did a few years later it might have led to a complete collapse of even the British Empire.

The counter argument to this is that it is known today, and the British were so informed, that the British were planning to overthrow Hitler. Once they knew that he had given an order to attack

and it is extremely risky for any government to plan on a coup d'état in another state and the revolution is not the thing that the German army now had had most practice with. So it is not a question of really really very difficult to say which would have been the wiser course. The British did gain a year to build up their air force on a purely military level. That year they gained may have been decisive. On the other hand the war may have been avoided all-togethertogether if they had returned. After they had surrendered to Munich it may have been very hard for the domestic opposition to Hitler, such as it was, to stand firm in 1939 because he had gotten away with a series of things where the military in Germany thought he couldn't; they had been proved wrong every time, and so in 1939 both the domestic opposition to Hitler and the foreign opposition were in-peril-really paralyzed. It is really difficult to say who was responsible for World War I. In the case of World War II, I think it is fairly clear that nobody really wanted World War II except the Nazis and it was the incompetence of the west together with the structural instability of the Versailles settlement, that produced World War II. It was simply impossible for the western countries, as they were, not interested in precautionary policies to maintain the peace of Europe against both the Germans and the Soviet Union in the event that

4/6/64--4

the Soviet Union did make a treaty with the Nazis. Now that too had been
the subject of endless speculation but I think to Stalin, throughout the
'30's and indeed throughout his life there wasn't any real difference
between Fascists and democrats. To him the interesting question was
which country might most threaten the Soviet Union at a given moment.

And he then tried to ally himself with other capitalist countries against
(that country which ever country might-most-threatening-the-Soviet-Union-at-a-given-moment
he thought threatened him the most. In 1933 he said a great deal depends
on (deterring the inevitable capitalist war until the capitalists start
fighting themselves. He, therefore, had no interest in creating a situation,
he had no interest in collective security as such. When the Nazis became
violently anit anti-communist and it appeared that the Soviet Union would
be the first target of their attack, the doctrine of se collective security
was of course an excellent way by which the Soviet Union might get the
support of other countries. He was not interested in peace as such
nor was he interested in collective security as such. He was interested
in making certain that if a war occurred it would (involve) a capitalist
civil war from which at a proper moment he might profit. To him making
an alliance with the Nazis was no more betraying Communist doctrine
than making an alliance with Britain and France, and the negotiations with
Britain and France broke down basically because he demanded the Baltic
states in order to get a buffer zone against Germany and also certain
guarantees against Poland. For the western countries it was impossible
to make an alliance which began (with) surrendering three sovereign countries,
and making alliances on the basis of pure security was no longer accepted.

4/6/64--5

So when the Germans offered him he accepted it. Now again the question is making the war inevitable

I think from the point of view of pure power calculation he probably improved the Soviet position. The additional territory he gained in the period of '39-'40, a third of Poland and the Baltic states, probably gave him just enough of a buffer to keep him the Germans from overrunning Russia. (Secondly the time he gained, the two years he gained probably saved the Soviet Union when the Germans attacked. What is not clear is (if the Germans had been confronted by a united opposition of the Soviets, French and the British, whether they would have gone to war. And if they had not gone to war, then of course his action was unfortunate for the cause of peace but even (then) it is not clear that it was unfortunate for the cause of communism for there was no way that the Soviet Union could have established itself in the center of Europe, by which China could have been communized other than through a major war. So I don't think that Stalin's major preoccupation was to hurt the war, his major preoccupation was to make sure that the war would not involve the Soviet Union and then to hope to-stay to stay out of it long enough until the Soviet Union could emerge. When one reached the negotiations between the Germans and the Russians, the Russians were always very concerned with getting spheres of influence which had to be directed against the Germans. In fact the Russians more of or less asked of the Germans what they finally took in World War II, a predominant position in the Balkans and a predominant position in the Middle East.

The curious thing of World War II was that with all the talk about

4/6/64--6

a total war, the Germans really didn't fight a total war until they began to lose. The Germans were much more mobilized in World War I then they were in World War II and while Hitler had good intuition he really had no real idea about never had any particular confidence of how to end the war. In fact, one could argue that if you read Hitler's speeches he was always saying what he would have done if he had lived in 1918. There was almost no speech in which he didn't describe how they would have resisted in 1918 if they only had the will to do so and in many ways one could argue that his ultimate fullfillment didn't come until they started losing and he could practice the things that he had been talking about, He certainly, after he was winning, never showed any particular of how to end the war. One interesting thing is that in World War II the nation

The French had been caught in World War I because their fortifications stopped at the Belgium border and then developed the elaborate fortification system of the Marginot Line and again stopped at the Belgium border even though the Germans had proved what could happen. However there emerged the possibility that a movement to Belgium was possible and therefore they had made their plans on the assumption that a German attack might come through Belgium. The Germans, on the other hand, started their attack as if it were the Schließener Plan but then instead of throwing everything on their right hand in 1940 they threw it at the center sa at the precise point where the French fortifications ended thereby trapping all of the British army and a good part of the French army in Belgium by coming in behind them, so the French in 1914 were unprepared for the

Plan, in 1940 they were prepared for the

Plan

4/6/64--7

but now the Germans weren't carrying it out and what makes matters even more difficult is that they felt fell into half the German plans because (the) German staff officer landed in the Belgium airfield by mistake which with the German operations plans, but nobody believed it which proves that the important thing of intelligence information is that it is never believed and most of the intelligence agencies spend most their time collecting the kind of information that isn't worth having. At any rate, on strictly military grounds many people today would say that one requires a (3 to 1) superiority in order to attack. In fact the Germans had military inferiority, the French had more tanks than the Allied powers had, while the Germans and the number of troops opposing the Germans was superior to that of the Germans but the Germans contemplated it more and by carrying out the modified Plan which they put their center of gravity not on the Rhineland but into the center and thereby instead of creating two gigantic pockets instead of one and one gigantic pocket thereby created two they defeated the French. Now the problem of the war then was that the Germans had succeeded in overcoming Europe, they had succeeded in doing what they had failed to do in 1914, mainly smash one of their opponents (and having) a neutral Russia on the other side, and yet, as I said, they didn't know how to bring the war to a conclusion. The British held out, by themselves the British had no conceivable way of winning the war, but the great achievement of Churchill was to create the impression that Britain by itself might somehow reverse the tided tide. But by itself Britain could not eke conceivably change the situation. The change It changed because Hitler had Russia and because the United States entered the war. Now the problem of graditude of and of war aims really only emerged after the United States entered the war. (with) Until that time the issue was Britain was one of naked survival. Now the

4/6/64--8

United States during the war was still suffere=- suffering or still
characterized by its legacy of its period of isolation. We thought of
war and peace as successive phases of foreign policy. For the United States
there was only one cause of the war and that was the wickedness of the
German and Japanese military leaders. There was no consideration of the
fact there (was) structural requirements for the peace and, one of the
purposes of an equilibrium might be to bring about a situation in
which ambitious men could not be tempted. On the contrary, it was assumed
that unity was an end in itself, that the peace loving nations which included
Great Britain, and the United States and the Soviet Union, above all, would
relieve the peace after the war against Germany, which was intrinsically
war, like, and Japan. (If you read the memoirs of American military commanders
or the newspapers of that time (you will) see that (we) prided ourselves
on the fact that (we) did not permit any political considerations to intrude
into questions of strategy. Bradley repeatedly points out that he was
delighted of how proud he was of the fact that he didn't let the British
put one over on him by going into the Balkans. The British, always
wanted to pursue political objectives and even in Murphy's recent book
there is some regret, his statement that the British managed to get
us involved in Italy where when really all our efforts had been thrown into
France. Well, to Stalin, the war was always a political war and not a purely
military war and to have it a political war, he took a very great interest
in the disposition of our forces. Stalin had a great interest in the second
front, partly because he wanted to take some pressures off Russia but, above
all, because he wanted the American/British armies as far west as he could
possibly get them.

he not only urged that there be
a second front in Northern France but he opposed any attempt to use the

4/6/64--9

Italian armies or the armies that were then fighting in Italy, he opposed using them in the Balkans but rather wished to use them in southern France. His constant concern was to get the American/British armies as far west as he could possibly get them. While Within the first two weeks of the war when the Germans were heading for Moscow and Leningrad, Hopkins was sent to Moscow in order to find out what the Russian requirements might be, and he was amazed to find that one of the great concerns of Stalin was to get a recognize recognition by the United States of Soviet interest in Poland and Soviet interest in the Balkan countries. In other words, even at a time that it seemed to the outside world that their survival was at stake the Soviets were primarily concerned, they were very deeply concerned about getting a political commitment to their major goals.

Now this notion that the war was essentially a military war and had to be brought to a military conclusion effected our attitude towards both Germany and Japan and it led to the doctrine of unconditional surrender.

Now it is, it has been debated whether unconditional surrender unnecessarily prolonged the war. I believe that as far as Germany is concerned, it probably did not. I believe that Hitler would have fought to the end regardless of what terms were offered and, considering the crimes that Hitler had committed, it was inconceivable millions of people in gas chambers and they had performed the autocrities that they did. In the case of Japan, I think a peace settlement was probably possible from 1933 to 1944 on and unconditional surrender probably prolonged the war. If the case of Germany, the feeling was that it was a government of criminals and maniacs. In the case of Japan, while they committed atrocities, they were permitted in the framework of Japanese tradition, very many of the Japanese atrocities have been by putting American prisoners

[N]

4/6/64--10

on Japanese rations. There was not a national policy of genocide on the part of the Japanese and the people who declared war on Japan were carrying out something that up to that time at least and probably today too was considered a permissible method of foreign policy. In other words we find it did not impose unconditional surrender on them anyway, and I think most of the conditions that were finally imposed on them might have been achieved about a year earlier, at least a month earlier, except for the unconditional surrender. Now while I do believe that unconditional surrender effected the war against Germany and in fact while it probably was necessary, the kind of world-that-emerged-allusion that developed during the war basically effected the kind of world that emerged afterwards. Partly the crime of the Nazis (makes) people believe that the only real obstacle (had been) the maniacal nature of the German leadership, (partly) there was a great deal of wishful thinking in the west in which the assertions of the war seemed to be so enormous that no one could face the fact that the post war period might bring with it new assertions. Throughout the war today we think of Stalin as (himself) a man who had certain criminal tendencies, but during the war this was not at all true. During the war people (eoman) compared Stalin to Trotsky in much the same terms that Khrushchev is (re-e) now compared to Stalin. (And) in fact one of the interesting (things) of western thinking is that it is always the previous communist leader who was impossible. The present one (see what we say ten years from now about Khrushchev.) In 1943, for example, to stop the Russians abolished the Comintern and then Connally (from) Texas, who was not (then) known for his pro-communist sympathies, commented

4/6/64--11

that Russia had been stedily approaching the abandonment of Communism
and the whole world should be gratified of the happy outcome.

The London Times commented on the fact that this was the most important
event of the war; it laid to charges rest all of the charges that might have
been made, that the Russians might be interested in the communization of
any part of Europe after the war and it showed that the communists were
as dedicated to peace as any other of the countries at war, of the Allied countries,
a war. Fortune magazine, also not known for its leftist tendencies,
published an editorial in which they said after the war
and they said Russia will prefer the peace of Europe to communization.
The arguments in favor of this contention are that Trotsky (is) dead and
that Russia (will) be too weak for aggression in Europe, even ideological
aggression, after the war. It is the essence of Stalinism to use communism
as an instrument of limited nationalist foreign policy and as an aid to, Russia,
though she (has) been gradually expanding for over a century, is not so much
land hungary as hungary for security on its national borders and given this
security she (is) likely to fix her attention on the development of
her enormous internal resources. Another expert wrote what will happen to
after victory? The (normal) thing for him to do (is) to return to the
vast program for home construction, so far only initiated, which he had
always considered the great task of his life. It is simple fantasy to imagine
that the man who drove out Trotsky on the issue of world revolution, will
deserve-the-program desert to the program of his enemy. (Now) this was the
prevailing view about Stalin in the middle 1940's. And Hopkins, in commenting
about the Yalta conference, said, we can rely on the words of Stalin. He is
sincerely dedicated to peace, but we can not be sure what sinister forces might
be behind him in the labyrinth of the Kremlin and therefore our part

4/6/64--12

at Yalta (was) to strengthen the peace loving side against the sinister forces of the Kremlin who might be interested in fuormenting tensions. Well, with this attitude the kind of world that emerged was bound to be different from the which emerged (say during the, at the end of the Napoleonic wars. During the Napoleonic wars, when (you) also had an expansionist though not ideological Russia, the status quo countries, particularly Austria, made their participation in the wars depend on getting their peace terms, early and they made the prosecution of the wars depend on a Russian self limitation at every (step) of the wars. As I pointed out a few weeks ago, the Austrian armies simply refused to move until the Russians would agree to our conditions according to which France would replace the Italians in the equk equilibrium and according to which the central powers would become a barrier to Russian expansion. This did not happen during World War II. During World War II, after trying early to get a regee recognition of the Battl Baltic states, once the battle turned in favor of the Russians, they simply (the Russians) resisted any attempt to come to peace conditions. Allied unity became an end in itself. There was an enormous reluctance to raise issues that might strain (allied) unity. Somebody asked the question that if allied unity was likely to be strained while there was an overwhelming enemy in the field, how much more would it be strained when the enemy had disappeared and the cohesion had disappeared with (them). At every conference there was a Soviet effort to try to deter a (settlement to a point where) the armies might be (the) possession of the proud, and the status quo powers, Great Britain and the United States, were (at the) position where their bargaining position constantly declined as the war continued. But not only did their bargaining position decline, they would not even admit that there was a bargaining position involved, particularly the United States which operated

4/6/64--13

on the assumption that the balance of power was inherently wicked and that
any attempt to construct a settlement which took into account some
equilibrium would undermine the climate of confidence on which the peace
of the world would <u>not</u> ultimately depend. When Great Britain intervened in
1944 to put down the <u>communist uprising</u> <u>there</u> in Greece, <u>there</u> (they) were
outraged editorials in all the leading American newspapers that the British
were again returning to the shortsighted balance of power politics
that <u>had</u> brought Europe to <u>a</u> disaster for centuries. <u>If</u> you read any
<u>of</u> the <u>discussions</u> in which <u>Resse-Roosevelt</u> participated, <u>there</u> was a very
great concern on the part of the United States to retain freedom of
action for the period <u>after</u> the war, meaning that we did not <u>only</u> tie
our hands during the war to any particular precept. Indeed we had the notion
during the war and for the immediate post-war period that we could play a
role in international affairs that India <u>finally</u> allocated to us.

During the war, Roosevelt always thought that he could be the honest broker between S Galin and Churchill, (both of whom) were considered about equally shortsighted. As late as 1945 after Roosevelt's death when Truman went to the Potsdam conference, the British wanted him to stop in London on the way. He refused on the advice of the state department that because this might give the Russians the impression that we were ganging up on them and this, of course, was something to be avoided. Also, in June, 1945, Truman (he) sent Ambassador Davis to London and Moscow to see if he could mediate the emergent dispute between Britain and the Soviet Union.

One was that the Soviet Union was an essentially peaceful country that would not take advantage of the vacuum that had been offered. The second was that Britain was a very strong country which could maintain the balance of power

4/6/640-14

against the Soviet Union and that we could mediate the tensions that were
likely to arise. The allusion about Great Britain was due to the fact
that Britain had stood heroically alone and, of course, Britain had shown
very great skill during the war of gaining a position of political influence
which was shown somehow out of proportion to its actual military contribution.
The idea that Britain would maintain the peace of the Germans, that Britain
would try to maintain the British-European equilibrium, that the Soviet
Union was

The result of some of these delusions of the war (time) period was that we
emerged into the post-war era with none of the issues settled and with our
negotiating position essentially weak.

Of course the concern of some people was that if we tried to get a settlement
the Soviet might make a separate peace. If they made a separate peace, then
of course the whole purpose of the war

I don't take this separate peace argument too seriously because the terror
they faced from the Nazis was really overwhelming but of course you never
know. Ante-Ante- Another argument was that by pressing for a political settlement
that they were in dire straits and needed our support.

we might disillusion them and therefore drive them into the position of
hostility which they finally adopted. Well, this is about the same dilemma
which existed in the 1930's. One couldn't know in 1944 whether, in fact,
Stalin would pursue an aggressive policy or not. He did. If we had insisted
on a different structure in eastern Europe and a commitment to some
kind of a settlement in the Balkans during the war, we wouldn't know today
whether the tensions of the Cold War as they existed in the '40's and '50's
were important. All I want to say about this is that this is the tragedy
of foreign policy. One cannot know at any given point what is in fact
necessary. And the kind of speech and the kind of attitude represented by

4/6/64--15

Fulbright's speech always sounds terribly attractive and enlightened and desirable at the time that it is made. Sometimes it is even right and then the people who advocate a course more in conformity with requirements of difficult powers

In retrospect we know today ______ projected us into
a post war situation in which the disequilibrium between the defending
forces, the forces of the status quo, and the aggressive forces was so
great that it took about ten years to restore this.

4/8/64--1

I wanted to make an additional comment about a question I was asked at the beginning of last hour about Fulbright's speech. I must confess that when I was asked I had to depend on newspaper accounts for intelligence, on California newspapers which are terrific on murders, and I hadn't read the speech. I think it is an important speech, it is an excellent speech; it is probably a higher level of any speech by a political figure that I have read recently. My disagreement with it concerns, well, I agree with many points he makes, I agree with what he says about Panama, probably what he said about China, the thing that bothers me about the speech is its tone of almost pedantic reasonableness and making it a test of enlightenment of whether one can interpret communist intentions in a reasonably favorable way. And this is the dilemma we have been discussing all term. Most No one can prove which interpretation of communist development is the correct one. I would not insist that a more cautious interpretation of communist strength is more nearly correct than Senator Fulbright's. I will point out that he held exactly the same views before the Cuban missile crisis as after it. It isn't that the Cuban missile crisis convinced him that the Soviets had suddenly become interested in economic reconstruction but rather he has always believed, if you look at his public statements in 1958 you will find that he generally believes, and again always at a very high level of intelligence that the Soviets were primarily interested in preserving their own society and primarily interested in economic developments. That view was held by him and people who share his view before the Cuban missile crisis and the Cuban missile crisis ef- simply proved to him that his original view was correct. Most people have learned from the Cuban missile crisis exactly what they believed before

1/6

[N]

4/8/64--2

so that I am not contrasting here people who had dramatic changes of
heart after the missile crisis. All I am saying is that there is a
certain consistency in his view. I am not as sure as he is, I am opposed
to trading, particularly with the satellites, in fact I think it is a good
policy but I am not sure that trading with the communists has a very
great impact on the kind of foreign policy that one can conduct. He
mentions for example that Germany had the biggest trade in eastern Europe
and that the Soviet Union or any west European country this happened to
be true. Also Germany happened to have the worst relations with them so
that there cannot be an exact correlation between trade and policy.

Also, we tend to overlook, look at the Nazi period for example. Germany
was an open country, any one could travel there, by any foreign newspaper
there, in terms of the general criterion that one generally applies
Nazi Germany was much more open to foreign contact than communist Russia

is today and no one so that all I can really say is
that we face here one of the usual dilemmas. Five years from now we will
know . I would regret it if we make the test of enlightenment
on foreign policy, whether one can interpret Soviet motivations in a
generous or a proper way but rather whether we can come up with some specific
measures which could be an objective test, if they-work-on specific proposals
on the negotiation negotiation table on disarmament, in central European
affairs, then we could see if there has been a real change. I don't desire
tough statements
subSCRIBE too much importance to by the Seiv Soviets or to
generous generous statements by the Soviets and I am-not-saying-that
must say that I don't believe that people whose whole form of experience
was with the communist movement can suddenly be, can suddenly at the age of

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70 have a dramatic change of heart. But I have no more reason for my belief than Senator Fulbright has for his and therefore I am not going to insist on it. So my quarrel with him insofar as I have one is that he simply may not give sufficient weight to that the fact that in a revolutionary period you cannot simply say that there is no ideological impact or that other states can be judged entirely on the basis of foreign policy or entirely on the basis of what they do in states when one of them biggest problems is the revolutionary wave which spreads across the world even if it isn't by any one incentive. But the point I wanted above all to make which I didn't make last time is that I think it is an important speech and infinetly better than anything that is being said by any of the candidates.

Q.

A. I think the last revolution in Brazil was heading towards a Peron type left wing dictatorship. I think was a case for which textbooks provide no prejudice. We usually assume that the revolutions are made by the masses or by some conspiratorial group against the status government. There are no textbooks for what happens when the government makes the revolution and deliberately promotes chaos in order to establish a presidential dictatorial move. Now what was trying to do was to paralyze the existing provisional government. There was a very bad inflation, he put all the conservative and moderate people he could find in as finance ministers because in order to deal with the inflation they had to start with an austerity program and he used up about five or six opponents this way. As soon as an austerity program was put in, labor would strike and he was head of the labor party

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He was trying to, he was encouraging the non commissioned officers

and he was infiltrating his supporters into key positions. Now one should

with the ease by which he was overthrown because Brazil is a
very inefficient and chaotic country and they don't kl like to shed blood
so whoever moves first is apt to find a tremendous amount of
weight on his side. I think what the revolution in Brazil did was give
a chance for a moderate revolution. Now this is no guarantee of what will
happen because the left wing is extremely strong, most intellectuals are
not communists, in a way they are worse than communists because they dream
of everything the communists want without being communists so that many of
the intellectuals, at least many of the students . On the
other hand many of the conservatives are reactionary and it is very difficult
to find a middle ground for a really democratic enlightened form of government.
But I think there are now, one can have two or three years in which a major
reform program can be put through if such a thing can be done. If it isn't
done I would expect that the 1965 election the candidates will start

support, not for his personal support but for the
support of the people who were behind him and if this should occur then
you are going to get a very drastic shift back into the preleftist kind of
orientation. In other words I think the revolution had gained time but
if it isn't used for a major reform program/it merely becomes a device
for the conservative element, then what the leftist element had planned to
do and should they get a right wing kind of dietate dictatorship rather
than a left wing kind of dictatorship then ultimate chaos in Brazil is still
the problem.

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Q.

A. I don't claim that I have an answer to all these problems.
I think the first thing we ought to do is keep quiet. And this is the hardest thing for the administration to do. I think it is very unwise to be so jubilant. The anti-American feeling in Brazil is very strong, there is nothing we can do to be popular in Brazil and anyone who can by typed, who can be described as an American puppet immediately is in very real difficulty so the best thing we can do immediately now is to exercise enourmous @strain . Secondly we should make clear whoever emerges there. I wouldn't be heartbroken if for a week or so they weed out the communists from key positions.

I think that this I would qualify to some extent. Usually when we talk about reform what we do is come up with some New Deal kind of program which are marvelous in the United States, that are developed by some bureaucrats in Washington

and I would think that one of the weaknesses in our alliance for progress is that we announce a program of reform and others have to sign on the dotted line if they want the money. I would think it essential that we let the Brazilians come up with a program of reform, that we might announce certain criteria but that we make very sure that it is a Brazilian program that we are supporting rather than an Avei-a American program that they are buying. And everything would seem to depend on our ability to make clear that this is Brazilian. The most effective

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foreign aid program that we have is the Marshall Plan and that is what we did there. We had the European come up . Otherwise, all the groups that are getting hurt by these reforms are going to turn against us. It isn't at all clear to me that you might not get in Brazil as *throughout* Latin America a combination of right wing nationalism and left wing on some kind of national socialism not of the German variety but of a combination of anti Americanism, nationalism and some kind of state direction. So a great deal would depend now to see whether behind the scenes we could create a structure by which they come up with a program and take responsibility and for that matter credit for it. There will be trouble for us to seem to be forcing a program down their throats.

Q.

A. Most dangers have occurred because of the impact of some *remarkable* remarkable personality who transcended the framework. The possibility however of absorbing the change in some kind of continuing pattern depends on whether the *great men* greatness of this individual can be institutionalized. If, the only way you can keep the system going is that a system has to be created by a remarkable man is very clear. But the difference it would seem to me between a stable system and one that had elements of instability is that in order to maintain this it requires a remarkable man. The trouble with the German situation after Bismarck was not, in order to bring about German unification you had to have some kind of extraordinary event of extraordinary personality. The trouble was that the way German unification was brought about and the kind of policy on which it was based *required* a great man in every generation and that was not part of it. The same is true, it would seem to me, with