The War Aims of the Great Powers in WWI

The settlement of 1919, created mainly at Versailles in the aftermath of the First World War, is one of the most infamous in history. Britain and France were victorious, but bickered over the final terms. The Germans, contrary to their own expectations, were given no say, whilst the turmoil of the Habsburg and Russian Empires meant they were unable to even take part. The final treaty then seemed unfulfilling for almost everyone. In part, it was because none of the five great powers engaged in the conflict ever won a decisive victory on their own terms. The British and French only crushed the German army in 1918 with American aid, and it is not accidental that the Germans were more effective at pushing their agenda in the East, where the other peace settlement of 1918 was one dictated by Berlin alone. Though even here, the negotiations tried to play up to the emerging ideas of self-determination. But Versailles was perhaps also a failure because no power ever offered up a definitive set of aims until the end of the war. There were of course non-negotiable objectives, Alsace-Lorraine for France, Belgian independence for Britain, and Serbian defeat for Austria, but no power really created a comprehensive list of war aims before the armistice. This video then will chart some of those ambitions held by the five great powers during the war, and how they changed as the military and diplomatic circumstances shifted. It must of course be acknowledged that some war aims take on a more transnational nature. For example, all of the great powers had domestic problems in the lead up to 1914, and all governments initially saw war as a chance to solve them to some degree. All had statesmen that thought the conflict could reverse perceived national decline, real or imagined. Nonetheless, each also had very specific ideas about the type of settlement they hoped to impose, and the obstinacy of all in this regard meant that the most destructive conflict in human history went on for over four long years. Austro-Hungarian war aims had been the immediate cause of the conflagration in 1914. Since 1903, when the Serbian state on its border had turned from a de facto vassal into a potential enemy, Austria had sought ways to weaken her. Between 1912 and 1913, the Balkan wars had seen Belgrade expand rapidly, on the back of a now veteran, if exhausted army. Only an ultimatum had prevented it gaining an outlet on the Adriatic, and Serbian claims to those Slav-inhabited Habsburg territories, such as Bosnia, continued to panic statesmen in Vienna. By 1914, the Austrian establishment were determined to deal with the problem once and for all. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by Serb nationalists in June, they found themselves with a convenient excuse. The actual ultimatum dispatched in July is not really relevant, as it had always been designed for rejection. Once the war began, Vienna could begin to formulate its actual aims. Serbia was of course to be crushed completely, so as to never threaten Austrian security again. What form this would take, however, was never fully decided. The Hungarians especially were keen that little to no Serbian land should be annexed, which would bring yet more Slavs into the empire, and potentially upset their privileged position within the monarchy. There were hyper-expansionists that wanted Serbia utterly erased, potentially partitioned with Bulgaria and Greece. Those such as Hotzendorf, the Chief of Staff, believed these newly annexed Serb lands would then make up part of a third Slav kingdom within the monarchy. Rather than plain conqueror however, the disastrous performance of Habsburg armies in the early days of the war left diplomats instead fending off German pressure to buy Italian and Romanian neutrality, with the Trentino and parts of Transylvania. The victories of 1915, when German and Bulgarian assistance saw Serbia finally overrun and Austrian Galicia liberated, allowed Habsburg diplomats to once again think about a peace settlement, which in the Hofburg meant as many opinions as there were statesmen. The Hungarian Premier, Tisza, refused to oppose Serbian annexation, but came up with a plan for a border strip including Belgrade to be seized, in which the native population would be replaced with Germans and Magyars, to provide an ethnic break between Habsburg and Serb Slavs. If nothing else, all agreed that Serbia must never again be allowed to operate as an independent power capable of defying Vienna. Montenegro, which had joined in support of Russia and Serbia, was less important to Austrian statesmen. As always, there were the extremes that called for total annexation, though for the most part, conquest of the coast and vassal status were considered adequate. Russia offered the opportunity for the most considerable territorial spoils. Poland was really where Habsburg attention was fixed. Here was an opportunity to join the Russian occupied parts of the country with Austria's, a plan which came to be described as the Austro-Polish solution. Proposals differed on whether this would be annexed directly into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or set up as some kind of vassal state under a Habsburg relative. As it happened, by the middle of the war, the Germans, increasingly annoyed by Austrian grand plans, matched only in scale by her defeat on the battlefield, began extracting increasingly onerous terms for any such agreement over Poland. By 1918, the empire having become all but a German vassal state, the Austro-Polish solution was firmly buried. The entry of Romania in 1916 did present a more firm opportunity for expansion, which the Hungarians took by annexing border regions into Transylvania at the final settlement. This combined with onerous economic terms should theoretically have ended the Romanian national threat as comprehensively as the Serbian had been. The last opportunity for expansion was against the Italians, joining the war in 1915 to complete the Risorgimento. There was particular anger at Rome's alleged stab in the back, having previously been a part of the Triple Alliance. This was at best being economical with the truth, for Vienna had also spent much of the last decade ignoring the terms of the treaty, and then started an aggressive war Italy was under no obligation to enter via the terms of the pact. Nonetheless, there was particular vitriol saved for the country. The most ambitious mused about turning back the clock to 1859, annexing the old territories of Lombardy-Venetia. This was, to put it bluntly, delusional, for the Italian question was settled and could not realistically be reversed. The more lucid policy makers in Vienna accepted that Austria's gains would actually be limited, mainly concerned with further improving the highly defensible border. Whilst these were individual goals, they of course did not exist in a vacuum, and Austrian negotiators did occasionally offer a more detailed list of war aims, most famously during the Sixtus Affair, the new Emperor Charles' attempt to negotiate a compromise peace in 1917. Addressed to his brother-in-law, though actually meant for French President Poincaré, Charles promised to support the restoration of Belgian independence, and France's just claims, as he called them, to Alsace-Lorraine. Italian designs on the Trentino might also be appeased, and Austria would even agree to withdraw from Serbia. Charles was not opposed to extensive war aims, also endorsing plans for the annexation of Poland and Montenegro, but the Sixtus Affair was a genuine attempt at a peace settlement outside of decisive victory, even if it was to be paid for mainly by the Germans. The British and French were excited by the offer, Poincaré even going so far as to offer Silesia and Bavaria from a defeated Germany, if Austria made a separate peace. However, the Italians, currently doing the actual fighting against the Austrians, refused to abandon the majority of its promised territories in the West, and so the Sixtus Affair stalled. When it was publicly revealed by the French in 1918, to prevent a full German occupation, the Austrians effectively tied themselves to Berlin, as a form of vassal permanently. Ultimately, a war started as a way to stop the fragmentation of the monarchy, led to its final dissolution, with the population starving, and Habsburg armies defeated in Italy, the empire disintegrated. The German predicament in the lead up to the conflict had been an unenviable one, some of the most blundering and incompetent diplomacy of the pre-war world had managed to encircle Berlin between a firm Franco-Russian alliance, and a tenuously hostile Britain. It was Russia however, that was on the Wilhelm Strasser's mind as the July Crisis spiralled. Undergoing a large rearmament programme, Moltke, Chief of the General Staff, believed that by the time of its completion in 1917, Berlin would be unable to defeat Russia, and thus relegated to the second rank of powers. It was an almost ridiculously pessimistic assessment, not least because the European alliance system was hardly so rigid as to make conflict with St. Petersburg inevitable. In 1914, it was almost certain that the Anglo-Russian entente would fail in the coming months, and open the road for a rapprochement with the British. Nonetheless, this was the thinking of both Moltke and increasingly the German Chancellor, Bethmann-Holweg. Thus, when the Germans could have with little effort restrained the Austrians and saved European peace, Moltke instead declared 1914 was the last chance to defeat Russia. In sum then, this can be extrapolated as Germany's ultimate and primary purpose upon entering the war. Nonetheless, once the conflict began, breaking Russian power only became part of a larger goal to achieve security for all imaginable time, as one of Bethmann's assistants wrote. In essence, this meant destroying Germany's rivals and establishing supremacy on the continent. The details of how this security was to be obtained were always relatively flexible. The September Programme is perhaps the most infamous statement of German war aims made when the Reich's armies had plunged deep into the French interior and seemed poised to take Paris. These ambitious plans envisaged widespread annexations of French territory and the reduction of Belgium to a vassal state, whilst in the East, Russia's borders were to be forced back by two centuries, with St. Petersburg's domination over the non-Russian vassal peoples broken, as the document loftily claimed. The most interesting idea offered in the text was a Central European Economic Association through Common Custom Treaties. This was in effect the beginnings of the Middle Europa proposal, that was to entrance Bethmann in particular. It would secure markets for German goods within the continent, confirming not only the Reich's military, but also economic hegemony over Europe. It was also planned to serve as a weapon against Britain, a sort of repackaged continental system from Bonaparte's day, that would squeeze out British manufacturers. These were maximalist ambitions, and it is unlikely that even victory in 1914 could have delivered them. Nonetheless, they served as a basis for German designs throughout the war, once the Western Front bogged down. The failure at the Marne meant Germany's prospects of winning the total victory the September Programme required vanished. Any peace would now involve negotiation to some extent, but superficially the Germans remained in a strong position, with Belgium and Northern France occupied. Belgium, originally only invaded as a route to Paris, became a particular fascination for Berlin. Almost all agreed they must continue to occupy the country in some capacity, for it offered an easy jumping off point in any future war with France. What form this control would take, like always, differed depending on who you asked. The Kaiser appears to have wanted it to be annexed outright in 1914, others believed it should be partitioned, and Bethmann planned for a client state. Regarding France, it was generally agreed that Brie and its important iron ore mines should be annexed. The Channel Ports were to be put under German control in some form, perhaps as part of a Belgian puppet. This would leave Berlin on the tactical defensive, but strategic offensive against Britain. From the Channel Ports, they could bypass British minefields, point submarines and the High Seas Fleet directly across from Dover, and bombard the English coast with long-range guns. One British admiral went so far as to suggest that had the Germans captured the Channel Ports and closed the Dover Strait, London would have had to be partially evacuated for lack of supplies. The truth of this is dubious, but German plans here show how their war aims were beginning to swing. The most aggressive statesmen in Berlin did not view this as the war to end all wars, in fact, even before they had won this one, they were planning on another, final showdown with Great Britain. Here, they would break London's commercial dominance over the globe and crush the British Empire. In this sense, German aims were seen by those such as Ludendorff as only a stepping stone to the next war. This is again of course focusing on the most belligerent of the German leadership, though Berlin did seem to produce such thinking in its droves. Others, such as Bethmann, were not quite as aggressive. The Chancellor, by all accounts a good, honest man and an Anglophile in outlook, still proposed extensive war aims as discussed earlier, but also showed a willingness to compromise. He did for example consider restoring Belgian sovereignty in some form during President Wilson's forays into the diplomatic arena. He stressed the defensive nature of the war to keep the more liberal-minded factions in the Reichstag on side, and even considered handing back some small part of Alsace-Lorraine to France. The only non-negotiable part of his agenda was Middle Europa. In the pre-war world, commentators had tended to think that the 20th century would be one of great land empires, more specifically it would be a world dominated by the United States, Russia and Britain, if it could unite the white settler colonies in some sort of federation. Germany, though the growing and vigorous power of the late 19th century, would be eclipsed. Middle Europa then offered the solution to this, a great pan-continental economic bloc under German domination, able to resist and compete with the other major empires, whatever else German statesmen were not wanting in ambition. The main focus of German war aims however was to be found in the East. Despite having entered the war mainly concerned with crushing Russia, the weakness of Petersburg's armies against Germany in 1914, initially convinced many that the true enemy was in the West. To this end, Falkenhayn, Molke's replacement after the Mann, proposed that a separate peace should be made with the Tsar, taking only a small indemnity and minor border corrections. The conquest of Poland and Lithuania in 1915 turned most against Falkenhayn's suggestions of conceding such territory. Of course, no one seriously wanted to annex more Poles into Germany, but proposals for border strips which could be settled with German colonists were generally popular. For the rest of Congress Poland, the policy remained undecided, initially favouring Austrian hopes for annexation. By late war, Berlin had become bored with Habsburg incompetence, and instead planned a puppet state of their own. The problem for Germany in the East was Ukraine. If Russia was left with it, she would be a great power, capable of threatening German hegemony over Europe. If she lost it, St. Petersburg would immediately be relegated to the second, perhaps even third rank of powers. But even after the great victories of 1915, Germany did not occupy Ukraine, and nor was she likely to, for the Tsarist armies after this only ever grew in strength. It meant any peace before March 1917 would have resulted in Russia maintaining the territory, and thus continuing to pose a threat to Berlin's security for all time. This is not to say that any peace without Ukraine was impossible. Indeed, the Germans were in such a desperate situation by early 1917, they would likely have renounced ambitions in that direction in return for a deal with the new provisional government after the Tsar's deposition. But Kerensky, who emerged as the country's leader a few months later, remained committed to the war, and so the Germans turned to more drastic measures. In one of the most cynical acts of foreign policy, certainly in the 20th century, Berlin sponsored the Russian Bolshevik Vladimir Lenin, assisting his return via the infamous sealed train, and then providing him with at least 40 million German marks in gold for propaganda. Lenin, always the pragmatist, served as something of a useful idiot for the Kaiser, eventually overthrowing the provisional government and Russia's best chance at democracy. After initially refusing German terms, the lack of resistance to the Reich's armies meant that at Brest-Litovsk in 1918, the Bolsheviks agreed to sweeping concessions, losing much of their industrial and agricultural strength. Brest is probably the most intriguing treaty of the war, it was not as much a blatant piece of imperialism as it seemed, the language of the negotiations was couched in notions of self-determination for non-Russian peoples. And had Berlin not at this point been run by increasingly delusional militarists, the Germans may well have achieved a great PR victory in the wake of President Wilson's 14 points, perhaps even created a sustainable new order in the East. Unsurprisingly, typical German diplomatic clumsiness revealed this self-determination to be a very obvious smokescreen for Prussian militarism, particularly after the Bolsheviks initially rejected terms which gave full vent to hyper-imperialists in Berlin. The Germans believed that the creation of a satellite regime in Ukraine would allow them to circumvent the British blockade, currently starving their cities with new grain imports. Their hopes were quickly dashed, even if the Germans had somehow extracted everything from the Ukrainians, leaving nothing for the local population, they would still have not come close to relieving their country's starvation. The extremely troubled political situation of Ukraine at this point, along with other German plans for a very unsavoury, almost neo-feudal colonisation of the Baltic, highlights some of the future pitfalls with German war aims. It's all very well and good taking as much territory as possible, but conquest is often the easiest part of empire building. Actually creating a stable system is less simple, made even harder by the deteriorating situation in Germany itself. Financially, the conflict had been an utter catastrophe. Despite the fact that Germany spent less than the British on the war, her economy had shrunk by 27%, whilst London's had grown by 8%. Even the French, with the most industrial parts of their country occupied, had only experienced a 23% drop. To finance the war, Germany had been forced to decouple the Reichsmark from gold after suffering an immediate liquidity crisis in 1914, followed by the sale of bonds to the public and an orgy of money printing to pay for them. The German Treasury Secretary, Helferisch, boasted that he had granted the army everything it wanted through domestic borrowing and monetary inflation. Interwar inflation is often blamed on Versailles and the reparations imposed. There's some truth to this, but the Germans effectively created the mess themselves in the way they financed a war they, to put it simply, could not afford. All this is to say, Germany increasingly needed extensive war aims. Things like the indemnity that was to be placed on France in 1914, mainly as a way of weakening her, now became a non-negotiable necessity for the Germans to try and rescue their collapsing economy. This was the vicious circle that was the First World War for the German Empire. The enormous cost of the conflict meant she had to press for more expansive war aims to justify the struggle, but to obtain them the war had to continue for longer, increasing the cost yet further. And even then, in the aftermath of the Marne, there was no realistic way for Germany to win the type of victory it really needed. France could not be crushed or the Royal Navy beaten. For sure, Ludendorff might have just about secured Amiens in 1918 had he tried, and forced some type of armistice, but for the actual decisive victory German war aims seriously needed, the problems seemed too insurmountable. As it happened, even a Pyrrhic victory in the West proved too great an ask. The Entente checked Ludendorff's final offensive, had subsequently broke through the Hindenburg line. Germany suffered the issue that many an insecure country has done in history. It's appetite was large, but it's teeth were rotten. Of all the great powers, Russia's situation in 1914 could be interpreted as either the most optimistic, or the most pessimistic. On the one hand, the great program of rearmament was well on it's way to being completed, new railways in Poland would make mobilisation much faster, and industry was expanding rapidly. Superficially then, the geopolitical situation seemed bright, but internally, discontent was growing. After a massacre at Lena Goldfields in 1912, industrial unrest was rising. This, to the point that some have speculated war, and the patriotic outburst it brought, staved off a revolution that summer. We cannot know if this was true, but Russian statesmen themselves appear not to have been overly phased. They still thought of Russia's prospects optimistically. For this reason, they were generally against doing anything that could promote war before 1917. Yet when it became clear the Austrians were set on a conflict in 1914, after much debate, the Tsar agreed to partial, then full mobilisation in defence of Serbia. Belgrade was not a formal ally, and so St. Petersburg would have been under no obligation to come to her aid. But geopolitically, Serbia was in Russia's sphere of influence, which the Austrians well knew. Doing nothing would not only be humiliation on the international stage for a second time by the moribund Habsburg Empire, it could even potentially threaten the Romanov dynasty if the public outcry was large enough. Thus, defending Serbia became, at least publicly, Russia's overriding war aim. However, once the conflict began, more pressing territorial ambitions overtook diplomats in St. Petersburg. Galicia in particular was the object of Russian desire. A territory inhabited by Poles and Ruthenians, pan-Slavists justified the conquest as reuniting Russian peoples. The planned territorial changes would take the Empire's frontiers to the natural border of the Carpathian Mountains. Russian plans to seize Galicia from the outset were codified by Grand Duke Nicholas in an appeal from August. He declared that a self-governing Polish nation would be reunited under the scepter of the Russian Tsar, though potential borders were not defined. The document was suitably vague and did not bear Nicholas II's signature, so would have been easy to dismiss had St. Petersburg decided to after victory. The ambitions in the direction of Galicia are one of the great examples of how war aims could dictate military strategy, even to the detriment of the wider war effort. With hindsight, and even suggested by some contemporaries, the main Russian effort should have been against the Germans. The two armies actually deployed were defeated in detail by the single German force left to guard East Prussia. Designs on Galicia meant the main Russian offensive was waited there, and brought about a series of crushing victories, but did little to aid her French ally or defeat the main enemy in Berlin. This is not to say Germany was ignored by Russian diplomats. War aims in that direction were equally ambitious, if viewed as less pressing, imagining the seizure of East Prussia and the industrial region of Silesia. Sazonov, the foreign minister, came up with an even more comprehensive program, not just focused on Russian expansion, but an entire reordering of Europe. Talking to the French ambassador, Sazonov outlined his plans for the enlargement of Belgium, reconstitution of Hanover, return of Schleswig to Denmark and liberation of Bohemia. This, along with promises to Serbia that included Bosnia and Dalmatia, would have effectively destroyed Austria and Germany as significant powers. Like the September program, these were again maximalist ambitions, and it is to some extent doubtful Sazonov, a shrewd man, was ever serious about them, but they do show the ambition in Russian thinking. The entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war saw Russia's aims grow even further. In some ways, how quickly St. Petersburg was prepared to contemplate large conquests in Turkey was interesting, for the two empires had actually had fairly cordial relations since the war of 1878, with Nicholas previously refusing a mandate over Armenia, when the possibility was mooted even by the British. His thinking had been changed in part by the recent Balkan Wars, where an Ottoman closure of the strait had a disastrous impact on Russian grain exports. Thus, control over Constantinople became a strategic priority. There was uncertainty in the first months after the declaration of war, as to whether St. Petersburg would be able to secure this prize, even in the event of victory. Although the British had detached themselves from the role of Ottoman protector in previous decades, they still blocked Russian hopes of opening the straits in 1908, and could well veto any annexation. Yet in 1915, Russia not only had leverage, being an essential ally, but the British government and public's traditional Russophobia had also largely vanished because of the war. King George himself delighted the ambassador to London by declaring in a meeting that, as to Constantinople, it's clear it must be yours. Sazonov played the game shrewdly, and in early 1915 obtained a guarantee that Russia would take the straits at the end of the war. Elsewhere, the empire's aims were somewhat more fluid. Should I annex Armenia, the Tsar mused to a slightly baffled French diplomat in one meeting, he would only do so if they asked, he eventually concluded. Despite the fact that victory seemed very obtainable in early 1917, in particular on the Ottoman front, where Third Army was little more than a shell waiting to be destroyed. First the February, and then the Bolshevik Revolution ruined the Russian war effort. Lenin repudiated Russian war aims, and publicly revealed the secret agreements made over the carve-up of Ottoman territory with the Western powers. The Bolsheviks had assumed they would be able to make good immediately on their peace and bread slogan with a lenient settlement. Instead, the Germans left Russia a broken and shriveled rump state. Only their defeat in the West rescued the Bolsheviks, and allowed a reconquest of several territories, most importantly Ukraine. The failure of the war effort in 1917 had disastrous consequences, not only for Russia, but for the wider world. The lack of a waiting in the East against Germany at Versailles always meant any treaty was going to be volatile, for France alone was not a match for Berlin's advantages in manpower. The British Empire entered the First World War with the very explicit war aim of upholding Belgian neutrality, something guaranteed by all the great powers in 1839. The guarantee was not as binding as sometimes stated. Had the British cabinet genuinely desired to remain neutral, it could have been creatively interpreted as a collective guarantee by all signatories, for example. Indeed, Salisbury had tried to wriggle the country out of it in his time, and someone of his calibre would not have allowed Britain into the conflict on a justification so out of Whitehall's hands. As it was, most of the government was already in favour of the war, though each for differing reasons. Gray viewed it as the culmination of his policy over the last decade that had seen a rapprochement between Britain and France. Haldane spoke for many when he calculated a neutral British Empire would go down to defeat in less than half a decade, whilst Asquith just seemed grateful his career was no longer about to be ruined by the Irish question. The belligerency of others was for less nuanced reasons. Most of the conservative frontbench felt morally committed to the war by the entente with France. Some went so far as to consider the conflict an actual opportunity to crush an imperial rival in the shape of Germany. This, it should be stressed, was not a popular view. War is seldom good for the current hegemon, nor would a decisive defeat of Germany and the inevitable aggrandisement of France and Russia have been an obvious benefit to the British Empire. In this muddle of differing ideas and opinions, the basic raison d'etre for the British state of war was Belgium independence, as much to ensure the Germans did not secure its strategic ports as to save the country itself. The temptation to moralise was far too strong for most, and Asquith gave a verbose justification for British entry into the war, arguing it was to defend the rights of small nations. Morley was perhaps more perceptive in his analysis that British policy was really about defending France and crushing Germany. As regards to Germany itself, rarely did serious British diplomats engage in fantasies about dismemberment, for the country had been and hopefully would be again a key trading partner. The main focus of British efforts was on the high seas fleet, the imperial navy whose construction had so poisoned relations in the pre-war world. The naval arms race had been over for two years in 1914, with Britain the decisive victor, but the second largest navy in the world still presented a clear strategic threat, not least because Tirpitz had been explicit in arguing its purpose was as a weapon against the British Isles. Part of the dilemma for Britain was that, at least in Europe, these aims were the most limited of any powers, yet the country was pouring incalculable resources into the war effort. Unlike the Germans, who'd been immediately cut off from all but a limited pool of international trade, Britain had a worldwide system to draw upon. But the cost of financing not only the largest navy in the world, but also the creation of a mass land army, and subsidising every allied power was enormous. Even if Britain's wealth and commercial position meant it did not have to sap its own economy and living standards in the way Berlin did, London was nonetheless willing to plough a century of assets built up since the defeat of Bonaparte into Flanders mud. The issue for Britain was that the most important war aim inevitably revolved around retaining her unique position in the global financial system and avoiding the long-term issues the Germans were injecting into their economy. But it also wanted to maintain a high tempo of offensives on the Western Front that gobbled up resources like nothing else. The result was that London relied heavily on foreign, mainly American loans to finance the war effort once initial dollar and gold reserves were depleted. She spent heavily on preserving the value of the pound and only changed trade policy slightly, introducing the McKenna duties mainly on luxury goods instead of a comprehensive system. The Lloyd George administration proved more willing to eat into the country's resources, but even then Britain continued to fight a rich man's war, without resorting to anything like the measures the Germans did to fight a poor man's one. Rationing was only introduced in 1918 for example, as opposed to Germany facing famine in 1916. To sum up this very oversimplified explanation of British war economics, Britain wished to preserve its economy and position in the post-war world. This she generally did, but at the cost of an extraordinary debt burden to the United States. For all of that, the possibility of territorial spoils did not elude British statesmen. Once the Ottomans entered the war, their empire in particular emerged as the focus of British designs. This famously became a very unfortunate muddle that is hard to really do justice to in a broader video like this. The prospect of an Arab revolt against the Ottomans that would counteract the Sultan's call to Jihad, led to a promise in the McMahon-Hussein correspondence of handing the Middle East to the Arabs, with vague exceptions for parts of Syria promised to the French and Baghdad and Basra for the British. However, London also separately agreed to partition the Middle East with France, British influence mainly being confined to Iraq and modern day Jordan. It was not intended as duplicity, for British statesmen had not realised the scale of French ambitions until then, and McMahon's previous offers to the Arabs, whether they constituted a treaty or not, appear to have been sincere, but it very much came out looking like it. Anglo-French bickering over the fate of Palestine led to it effectively being left for later discussions. Concern about this meant that Whitehall began to look to the notion of Zionism as a potential solution, which would not only win Britain the favourability of foreign Jews it had lost by allying with pogrom riddled Russia, but also provide a friendly buffer against French Syria. It was a mess that can only really be explained in a more detailed study. When the agreements were made in 1915 and 16, the British were not overly concerned and felt facts on the ground would really dictate the settlement as they so often did. In 1918 British forces swept away Ottoman resistance, but the Arab revolt had also played its part and arrived first in Damascus, Syria. The British seemed to have hoped to create a series of Arab supported protectorates, probably ruled by Hussein's sons under his nominal suzerainty, ignoring promises made to the French. The British liaison to the Arabs, Lawrence, reported back that they were prepared to accept British rights in Iraq and Palestine, so long as London opposed France's claims to Syria, but Balfour then announced that Sykes-Picot would be honoured after all, following a storm of French protest. The subsequent wrangling over the Middle East is really outside the scope of this video and cannot be explained here without devolving even further into gross oversimplifications. In the end the British established something of a satellite regime in Iraq under Faisal after his deposition from Syria, and were handed a mandate in Palestine. Overall, most of Britain's aims were achieved in the war, and London probably got the most out of Versailles in relative terms. Germany and its threat to the Channel ports was defeated, the High Seas Fleet humiliatingly interned at Scapa Flow and scuttled, whilst London's influence over Iraq was confirmed. The British economy remained intact, though the enormous American debt would have future consequences. The Empire was more secure than at any time since the 1880s, but British power was more overstretched than ever. Of all belligerence, France held the firmest territorial goal, the reclamation of Alsace-Lorraine, carved from her in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War. The territory has long been seen as an underlying cause of the war, permanently poisoning relations between Paris and Berlin, as the former refused to renounce its claim. There is some truth to this, though the issue had lost a lot of its sting by the 1880s, certainly did not mean France intended to start a war over it in 1914. Nonetheless, once the conflict had begun, Alsace-Lorraine became the only non-negotiable French objective. Again, war aims to an extent dictated military strategy, with Plan XVII designed as a bold thrust to reclaim Alsace. That the result was German armies dug into French territory, rather than the other way round, proved an extreme frustration to Paris. Although the country was exhausted by mid-1917, Alsace-Lorraine in particular meant French negotiators tended to bulk at any settlement, though had the Germans ever seriously offered to restore the status quo of 1914, it may have been hard to refuse. For the most part, the grim struggle France was engaged in meant her statesmen had little time for wider expansionist goals within Europe, but as the Allied armies began their unstoppable advance in 1918, the question was no longer about a relatively minor border adjustment, but what to do with a totally defeated Germany. French psychology at this point in regards to war aims is important to understand. They could not take comfort in new idealistic international bodies being created. During the war, the scale of German destruction, well outside the then established rules of war, was such that they needed tangible security. Captured documents in 1917 and 18 had reinforced the belief that the destruction of French land as the Germans retreated was a deliberate action to hurt the country's recovery. For many, like Marshal Foch, the only security could come by the amputation of the Rhineland, either annexing it to France or more probably as a protectorate. Others wanted the coal-heavy region of the Saarland. In the end, pressure from Britain and America, stringent German disarmament terms and other assurances meant Clemenceau settled for the demilitarisation of the Rhineland and a complex League of Nations mandate in the Saarland. French territorial expansion in Europe was then limited, but as with the British, the Ottoman Empire was seen as a possible outlet. Paris had been the most disappointed with the Turks entry in 1914, for it held the largest share of Ottoman debt and had been attempting to increase its influence in the country. However, once the war had begun, the quest for territorial gains inevitably followed. Syria, which the British did not claim, was of particular interest. What French ministers struggled with was working out how to justify their plans. The British and Russians both had major armies in the area, France's were mostly stuck facing the Germans. To make their case, one diplomat reached into the history books and came up with the suggestion that France had a historical claim inherited from the Crusades, evidenced by the fact that Arabs in the region still called foreigners Franks. Such waffle hardly appealed to British statesmen, but they were keen to avoid putting undue strain on the alliance and so willing to concede land. Discussions were tense nonetheless, one British statesman summing up the French approach to negotiations as, to give nothing and to claim everything. Indeed, initial French demands included a Syria that encompassed Mosul and stretched down to the Egyptian border. The final result was generally satisfactory for Paris, considering the small role France had played in the Ottoman defeat. Sykes-Picot, surprisingly, remained relatively intact, and French influence in Syria was secured after an invasion in 1920. The war then had seen France temporarily re-establish itself as Europe's preeminent land power, but the losses in the conflict, heaped on an already disadvantageous demographic and geopolitical position, did not bode well for the country. There had been European conflicts before where few or no powers achieved their aims, though 1914 to 1918 was notable for not just the defeat, but actual collapse of the three Great Eastern Empires. The British and French stood victorious in the West, but they relied on American money, and to a lesser extent troops, to do so. It's probably an exaggeration to say the Entente would have lost the war without American entry in 1917, for as discussed earlier, Britain was not yet financially an exhausted power. But it's equally unlikely the British and French would have won the staggering string of victories that crushed the German army in late 1918. That, more than anything, is why, for all the pretensions of the five great powers, it would be Washington that in many ways set the terms at Versailles.