Paris 1919

On November 11 I went to see the documentary Paris 1919 by Paul Cowan. The film mixes original footage with (usually silent) recreations, in color, of scenes for which footage is lacking: diplomats and cartographers at work or taking a stroll, the attempted assassination of Clemenceau, a German negotiator who resigned, back home at the dinner table with his wife and children. Most of the talking is voice-over narration, which relies heavily on the letters and diaries of Harold Nicholson, John Maynard Keynes, and one of the German negotiators. The actors seldom speak, so that when they do we sit on the edge of our chairs. There are no talking heads to break the tension and help provide perspective; it is all painfully close and inexorable. I was a bit uneasy about the format of the film before I saw it — who needs a frivolous mixture of fact and fiction about the events of 1919? — but was soon won over. I can't recommend it highly enough; it's one of the best historical documentaries I've ever seen.

Here's what I learned:
Lloyd George, who had done so much to stir up revenge hysteria in his recent electoral campaign, at the very end pleaded with Wilson for a more generous settlement with Germany. But by then Clemenceau had won Wilson over, and the American president, who had expended so much energy in trying to moderate French and British demands, dug in his heels on the other side. Why? Had Clemenceau really convinced him? Or was he eager to get the conference over with so that he could go back to the US to campaign for the League of Nations? And why did Lloyd George have a change of heart? Had Keynes convinced him, finally, that Germany was capable of paying only a small fraction of what Lloyd George had promised the British public?

An armistice is not the same thing as capitulation. One learns that Germany lost WWI, and one assumes (or at least I did), that it was a case of utter defeat, like WWII. But no: an armistice is a truce; the German negotiators went to Paris expecting to negotiate, not to have the terms of the peace dictated to them. Of course, they were anxious about their reception; on the train into France they are shown busily drafting arguments showing, on the basis of international law, that the war was justified, or that Germany was not solely responsible, or that all sides engaged in atrocities. The long suspense, as the German delegation does its homework in an unheated hotel, their shock upon receiving a copy of the draft treaty, and the speech of their chief negotiator before the assembled diplomats are among the high points.

A small, memorable detail: the Germans suspected that their hotel was bugged, and so they played Wagner on the gramophone all day, at high volume. After they saw the draft treaty, however, they turned off the gramophone. Why? In despair? Or was it a way of saying to the French, "We have no important secrets to keep from you; go ahead, listen in."

But the film does not focus exclusively on the main actors; it also does a good job of evoking the myriad negotiations that settled borders, with fateful consequences, all over the globe, from Africa, to Iraq and China.