Versailles #35: An Innocent Abroad?
When Diplomacy Fails Podcast
Zack Twamley
4.8 • 773 Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2019
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You know the story of 'plucky little Belgium', but what about the Belgium after the war? After all they had been through, facing the might of the German Army in its initial unrelenting phase, Belgium had unquestionably been through the ringer. The question was though, what would the Belgian Foreign Minister Paul Hymans now ask for in return? The answer to that question was more incredible - read, ridiculous - than any of the allies could have imagined. As Hymans put forward his laundry list of demands, with no thought for how Belgium's neighbours would be compensated, visions of disaster were pouring forth from French strategists.
Linking the Low Countries and France together was essential, it was said, if this war was to be avoided in the future. The guilty Germans would certainly try again if they sniffed any hints of weakness in the west, but what of the innocents, innocents like Belgium, who had been caught up in the midst of this Franco-German enmity, and been utterly destroyed? In return for this ordeal, Paul Hymans would demand a high price, but neither his aims nor the eerily prophetic French fears could ever be humoured to the extent that either party felt was deserved.
This, of course, was the nature of the Peace Conference. Using detailed secondary sources and the actual minutes of the meetings where the Belgian Foreign Minister poured out his heart, I am privileged to be able to bring this story to you now. The allies had to listen to the naive Belgian ramble, but whether they would actually heed his warnings or accede to his demands was another story altogether, and it's a story which is well worth your time!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | All right, what is up? You're listening to the latest episode of When Diplomacy Fails, specifically the Versailles Anniversary Project. |
| 0:07.6 | My name is Zach Twomley, and I'm very happy to welcome you here. |
| 0:11.2 | If you've never listened to the Versailles Anniversary Project before, or VAP, as I keep on calling it in shorthand version, |
| 0:17.5 | because writing those three words all the time takes a while and I have been |
| 0:21.8 | writing those three words an awful lot over the last few months. The VAP, Versailles Anniversary Project, |
| 0:27.3 | Versailles, whatever you want to call it. If you've never listened to it before, make sure to |
| 0:31.4 | check out the previous 34 episodes. This here is episode 35 and if you've never listened, |
| 0:36.2 | then you might not understand why |
| 0:37.9 | exactly we have to listen to Belgium in the first place, as the name of this episode implies. |
| 0:43.0 | Otherwise, what is when diplomacy fails? Well, it looks at different wars throughout history, |
| 0:46.9 | but for the last few months we've been looking in depth at the Paris Peace Conference. It is |
| 0:50.9 | indeed a whopper sort of project, but the reason why we're able to do it and the |
| 0:54.6 | reason why we're able to go into so much detail is because you guys support this podcast so well. |
| 0:59.5 | This is a listener-supported podcast, and never is that more obvious than when you're looking |
| 1:03.8 | at the sheer range of topics on offer here. If this was not my job, there's no way I'd be able |
| 1:10.8 | to give this project the |
| 1:12.2 | time and attention to detail it deserves. We're barely even, we're not even halfway there, |
| 1:17.2 | really. I can kind of see why no one's ever taken this on. Also, the fact that it's a century ago, |
| 1:22.6 | since all this stuff was happening, makes it very relevant, even though surprisingly enough |
| 1:26.5 | people aren't really talking about it. Not enough people know about the Paris Peace Conference, or where the |
| 1:30.9 | Treaty of Versailles came from. Most people just know that, after the First World War, the |
| 1:34.9 | Second War happened, and that's that. I'm here to change that. I'm here to make the Paris Peace |
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