The Treaty of Guarantee

The Treaty of Guarantee

The Treaty of Guarantee was an agreement in which Britain and the United Sates guaranteed the French frontier against German aggression. It came out of a proposal by Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, at the Paris Peace Conference as a compromise to Marshal Ferdinand Foch's insistence that the Franco-German border be pushed back to the Rhine. Foch felt that this new border would prevent another German invasion into France. The Germans had invaded France from across the Rhine five times within a century in 1814, 1815, 1870, 1914, and 1918. [Shirer p145]

This treaty is not to be confused with the Treaty of Guarantee of 1960 dealing with Cyprus.

Origins at Versailles

Along with Foch, the French premier Georges Clemenceau had demanded that Germany's Western border be fixed at the Rhine. Clemenceau relented when the Treaty of Guarantee was proposed. However Foch insisted that the French occupation of the Rhineland was crucial to halting future German aggression. [Shirer p146]

Lloyd George's proposal and Foch's protest

Lloyd George suggested a compromise. If France relinquished her claims on the Rhine, Britain and the United States would guarantee France's boundary against future German aggression. Wilson agreed and treaties to that effect were drawn up.

"If we do not hold the Rhine permanently [Foch told them] there is no neutralization, no disarmament, no written clause of any nature, which can prevent Germany from breaking out across it and gaining the upper hand. No aid could arrive in time from England or America to save France from complete defeat." [Shirer p145]

Britain and the United States reject both the Treaty of Guarantee and Versailles Treaty

In return for abandoning the Rhine Clemenceau accepted solemn guarantees of his country's frontier from his two great allies. Both houses of the British parliament approved the Treaty of Guarantee in July 1919, but on the condition that the United States also ratify it. The U.S. Senate refused to approve either it or the Versailles Treaty, and the British assent was nullified. Clemenceau had been promised that aid in return for giving up the security of the Rhine, which his generals had demanded. [Shirer p146]

References

*"The Collapse of the Third Republic" by William L. Shirer

notes


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