Pacelli sends Gasparri a report from Erzberger about the Center Party’s role in the last-minute formation of a new German Government to sign the Versailles Treaty and avert Allied invasion and national calamity - July 15, 1919
Source: Timeline
Pacelli sends Gasparri a report from Erzberger about the Center Party’s role in the last-minute formation of a new German Government to sign the Versailles Treaty and avert Allied invasion and national calamity. English translation
July 15, 1919 Pacelli to Gasparri, transmitting [Pacelli-Edition.de, Dokt. No. 3036] the following memorandum from Matthias Erzberger re the circumstances leading to the signing of the Versailles Treaty by the German Government:
After the Allies and associated governments had rejected the German counter-proposals to the proposed peace treaty of the Allies, conceding only the guarantee of several secondary facilitations, and afterwards had fixed an extremely short deadline (June 23rd) for the decision of the German Government, the latter came face to face with the stark, pitiless question of accepting or rejecting the peace treaty, and, in the latter case, of taking on before its own people the enormous responsibility for a new war. Public opinion, at least as seen in the press, was divided into two camps: one part agitated for signing without reservations, the other for rejection pure and simple. Those for signing without reserve were above all the Independent Socialists, while the Right and the Democrats were making propaganda for refusing to sign. The Majority Socialists and the Center Party, for tactical reasons, had not committed as to the question of signing; but also in those parties, opinion was anything but unanimous.
Also the Cabinet found itself divided into two camps on the question of sign or not to sign. Especially the Democrats energetically proposed rejecting...
... What would have been the situation if there had been a refusal to sign the peace treaty? The Allies would have continued to march into Germany. The state of war would have recommenced immediately ...
On June 22nd ... Socialists and Center presented a motion inviting the National Assembly to authorize the Government to sign the peace treaty. The motion was accepted by 237 votes vs 138 and 5 abstentions. The motion carried with the votes of the Center Party, the Majority Socialists, the Independent Socialists, and some deputies of the Democratic Party.
[meeting through the night of June 22-23, the new Socialist-Center Party Cabinet could not reach a decision] ... Of decisive importance both for the Center Party and for the troops’ opinion of the Government, was the telegram from the Quartermaster General of the Supreme Army Command direct to the President of the Republic, Ebert, stating that military resistance was hopeless and that the Ministry of War had to assume co-responsibility for concluding the peace... The Cabinet decision on the morning of June 23rd therefore was based on an agreement among the Center Party, the Socialist Party and the army, to sign the peace treaty.
In the afternoon, at 3:00, a session of the National Assembly took place, in which a simple authorization was conferred on the Government to conclude the peace ...
The Center Party and the Socialist Party now form the Government. In opposition are the Democrats, the right, and the extreme left. It will not be easy for the Center to take on the weight of the Government alone with the Socialist Party. If the Center Party stuck to it, it did it only to prevent the chaos that would have threated the culture and the unity of the Reich, the Church and the State, if a majority had not formed to sign the peace treaty... Germany would have had a Government formed by Independent Socialists or Communists. Placing the Center Party at the disposal of the Government did nothing other than bring the consequence of its responsibility before the German people to bring a guarantee against internal collapse.
It is necessary to add that the Minister of Finance, Erzberger, as the personality directing the peace policy of the Cabinet, is exposed to the fiercest attacks by the rightwing parties and certain circles of officials. Some plans for attempts on his life have been uncovered. The campaign initiated against him by the parties of the right is continuing with the same intensity. He endures the dangers that threaten him with a clear conscience of having done his best for the good of the German people in the hope that the German people will soon recognize that it was better to yield to the brutal violence of the Allies than to go, by refusing to sign, to greater misery.
Source: Pacelli-Edition.de, Dokt. No. 2808