fruitless negotiations over the terms of a
possible armistice. Unfortunately, after
Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated on November
9, it was not President Wilson who dictated
the terms of the agreement that stopped
the hostilities, but the Commander-in-
Chief of the Allied Armies, Field Marshall
Ferdinand Foch. Foch forced a weakened
German nation to avoid further destruc-
tion and sign the November 11 armistice
that included terms he knew were harsher
than those that would have been included
in a document drafted by the Allies’ politi-
cal leaders. Among other things, the armi-
stice called for an unspecified amount of
reparations, the continuation of a naval
blockade of Germany and the surrender of
hundreds of pieces of German war mate-
riel. President Wilson’s “Fourteen Points”
ideas of open diplomacy, freedom of the
seas, the removal of economic barriers and
impartial adjustments of colonial claims
did not appear in the text.
In January 1919, hundreds of diplomats,
politicians and advisers from more than
two dozen countries convened for the
Paris Peace Conference. While they were
there to craft peace treaties between all
the warring parties, their most impor-
tant task was to write the one ending the
war between Germany and the Allies. It
quickly became apparent that President
Wilson, British Prime Minister David
Lloyd George and French Prime Minister
George Clemenceau would be the domi-
nant figures in handling that challenge. It
also became apparent that the British and
French leaders did not share President
Wilson’s idea of a peace without victory.
Having witnessed unprecedented levels of
death and destruction to their economies
and their populations, they wanted to
punish Germany and reap the traditional
rewards of conquest.
Clemenceau pushed for reparations for
damages and wanted to weaken Germany
militarily, economically and territorially.
Lloyd George did not oppose reparations,
but he recognized the need for an eco-
nomically viable Germany if the European
economy was ever to regain its strength.
President Wilson acknowledged the need
to seek justice for the mayhem committed
by Germany in starting the war. But his
most important objectives involved the
creation of a League of Nations that would
help ensure a long-lasting peace.
As a member of the British delegation
to the peace conference, John Maynard
Portrait of Economist John Maynard Keynes, circa 1925–1930.
Keynes tried to counter the Allies’ ini-
tial demands for punitive reparation
payments by circulating his analysis of
Germany’s limited ability to pay more
than a small fraction of a British cabinet
committee’s estimate of total war costs of
£24 billion. He also formalized his earlier
thoughts on another economic issue by
suggesting that the Allied and Associated
Powers cancel all debts among themselves.
Those countries freely admitted they
would be using the anticipated reparation
payments from Germany to repay their
inter-Allied loans. Keynes concluded that
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