Liana Fix
“Igive you my solemn warning that under the present trend, the next world war is inevitable,” declared the French military leader Ferdinand Foch. It was 1921, and Foch, the commander in chief of the Allied armies during World War I, was raising alarms in a speech from New York City. His concern was simple. After defeating Germany, the Allied powers had forced it to disarm with the Treaty of Versailles. But just a couple of years later, they had stopped enforcing the terms of their victory. Berlin, Foch warned, thus could and would rebuild its military. “If the Allies continue their present indifference . . . Germany will surely rise in arms again.”
Foch’s comments proved prescient. By the late 1930s, Germany had indeed rebuilt its military. It seized Austria, then Czechoslovakia, and then Poland, sparking World War II. When it was again defeated, the Allies were more attentive in their management of the country. They occupied and divided it, disbanded its armed forces, and largely abolished its defense industry. When the United States and the Soviet Union allowed West Germany and East Germany, respectively, to reestablish their militaries, it was only under strict oversight. When they allowed the halves to merge, Germany had to limit the size of its armed forces. Even so, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opposed reunification, fearing it would produce a dangerously powerful country. A bigger Germany, she warned in 1989, “would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.”