Thursday, March 24, 2011

Georges Clemenceau: “French Demands for Security and Revenge”

Rob Edwards

Georges Clemenceau: “French Demands for Security and Revenge”

  • France is really upset with Wilson's promised “new world,” because after being invaded by Germany in 1870 and 1914, France was completely in ruins

  • France feels that the only way to get fair compensation and security is to cripple Germany

  • Clemenceau argues that the Germans are entirely responsible for the events of 1914

  • The war was entirely undertaken and instigated by the German people

  • Germany's characteristic tendency to go to extremes showed itself here

  • If the Germans had won the war, society would have relapsed into violence and bloodshed

  • Europe should feel menaced by the “mad doctrine of universal Germanic supremacy over England, France, America, and every other country”

  • Everyone, including Germany's most powerful aristocracy and smartest professors and thinkers of the time, bought into and supported the propaganda that the German people are superior to all men, and that the Kaiser is “the most eminent of living men”

  • German officers were quoted as saying that they wanted to find a way of completely wiping out London, and that they would use it to save the life of even one German soldier

  • Germany must be completely crippled if Europe wants to feel any sense of security whatsoever

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