18 - Losing the peace

Summary

On 4 December 1918 Foch noted: ‘The war is not ended.’ He suffered several defeats before the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June, putting an end to the state of war which the Armistice had only suspended. Foch’s role in the peace-making was restricted. Clemenceau kept him deliberately at arm’s length from the political process by refusing to make him one of the French delegates to the peace conference, on the grounds that he represented the Allies and not France. Nonetheless Foch presided over the Permanent Armistice Commission that the Germans had requested as a means of communicating with the Allies, and the months following the Armistice were hugely important for Foch. He played a significant role in four areas of the peace-making: first, the military conditions involved in renewing the Armistices and in preparing contingency plans to restart hostilities, should the enemy refuse to sign; second, the question of disarmament and the treaty’s military terms; third, the problem of Germany’s eastern frontier, which involved questions of how to deal with Russia and Bolshevism, and how to create a strong cordon sanitaire in a revived Polish state and the successor states to the Austro-Hungarian empire; finally, and most importantly, the question of Germany’s western border, which affected not only France’s territorial security in the face of any further invasion, but also France’s economic security in the face of the possibility of renewed German commercial success whilst French infrastructure (railways, coalmines and so on) remained devastated. It was the last question that haunted Foch and that caused the most friction with Clemenceau and the Allies.