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Perspective Essays 3 The Saar itself was placed under the League of Nations’ control, with its inhabitants to decide their future at the end of the 15-year period. A storm of controversy broke out over the issue of the Rhineland, the German territory west of the Rhine River. France wanted this taken from Germany and made into one or more independent states that would also maintain a permanent Allied military presence to guarantee that Germany would not again strike westward. Lloyd George and Wilson worked to prevent Clemenceau from securing this. Already seeking to disengage their nations from Continental commitments, they characterized taking the Rhineland from Germany as “an Alsace-Lorraine in reverse.” They also wanted to end the Allied military presence on German soil as soon as a peace treaty was signed. These considerable differences were resolved when Clemenceau yielded on the Rhineland issue in return for an Anglo-American Treaty of Guarantee, by which Britain and the United States prom- ised to come to the aid of France should Germany strike west. The Rhineland would remain part of the new German Republic but was to be permanently demilitarized, along with a belt of German territory east of the Rhine 50 kilometers (30 miles) deep. Allied garrisons would remain for only a limited period: the British in a northern zone for 5 years, the Americans in a central zone for 10 years, and the French in a southern zone for 15 years. Unfortunately for France, the pact for which it traded away national security never came into force. The U.S. Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Guarantee, and the British government claimed its acceptance was contingent on American approval. Many Frenchmen believed the peace had been lost. Marshal Ferdinand Foch, who had led the Allied armies to victory, declared as much, predicting that Germany would strike again in a generation. Some proposed that France seize the Rhineland by force, but even staunch nationalist Clemenceau shrank from this step, which would have isolated France. The French could only hope that if Germany did again invade, Britain and the United States would come to its aid. Germany forfeited other territory in addition to that lost to Belgium and France. Denmark gained northern Schleswig, while the new state of Poland secured the Polish Corridor, which per- mitted it access to the sea but also separated East Prussia from the remainder of Germany. The Cor- ridor became a major rallying point for German nationalists. The Western Allies rejected relocating the German population from East Prussia, which actually occurred (although not with official sanc- tion) thanks to the Soviets at the end of World War II. The Treaty of Versailles sharply limited the German military establishment. The army was restricted to 100,000 men serving 12-year enlistments and was prohibited heavy artillery, tanks, and military aviation. Also, its General Staff was to be abolished. The navy was limited to 6 pre- dreadnought battleships, 6 light cruisers, 12 destroyers, and no submarines. Other major provisions of the settlement included Article 231, the so-called war guilt clause. It fixed blame for the war on Germany and its allies and was the justification for reparations, set at $33 billion in 1920, well after Germany had signed the treaty on June 28, 1919. British economist John Maynard Keynes sharply criticized the reparations, calling them a perpetual mortgage on Ger- many’s future and stating that there was no way the Germans could pay them. (Germany ultimately spent more money rearming for World War II than the reparations demanded.) In any case, unlike France in 1871, Germany made no real effort to pay because it was not forced to do so. Germans condemned the Treaty of Versailles, conveniently forgetting that when they had defeated France in 1871, they had taken both Alsace and Lorraine and imposed an indemnity on France of 5 billion francs (more than twice the cost of the war) and then forced the French to pay every bit of it. More to the point, the German territorial losses after World War I did not materially alter German power. Well before it began its march of territorial conquest with the acquisition of Austria in 1938, Germany was still the most powerful state in Europe. Unfortunately, it was the new German democratic government of the Weimar Republic and not the kaiser or the army, which had been responsible for the decisions that led to the defeat that forced Germany to bear the shame of Versailles. Many Germans believed the lie spun by the political Right (and the army) that their nation had lost the war only because of the collapse of the home front and that this was somehow the work of the communists and the Jews.