“Neither Peace nor War”: the Strategy of the German Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference

Abstract

This article examines the strategy of the German diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference 1919, with new, unpublished sources, including the personal papers of German Minister of Foreign Affairs Count U. von Brockdorff-Rantzau. The author concludes that the strategy of German diplomacy in Versailles resembled the politics of Russian Foreign Minister (Narkom) Leo Trotsky during Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations. Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, like Trotsky, was not going to sign a peace treaty with the Allies, hoping to use the platform of the Paris Peace Conference to promote his ideas, in particular, to deny the thesis of Germany's primary responsibility for the outbreak of World War I. In addition, the leader of the German delegation placed great hopes on U.S. mediation and manipulation of the so called “Russian (Bolshevik) threat”. This strategy did not bring the desired results. Germany was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles. As an ambassador of Weimar Germany in Soviet Russia, Brockdorff-Rantzau believed that the recovery of Germany lies in cooperation with Russia, considering this rapprochement with Moscow necessary to counteract the pressure on Germany by the Entente powers.