The Spa Conference was a meeting between the
Supreme War Council and the government of the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
in
Spa, Belgium
Spa (; wa, Spå) is a city and municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Liège, Belgium, whose name became an eponym for mineral baths with supposed curative properties. It is situated in a valley in the Ardennes mountains sout ...
on 5–16 July 1920. The main topics were German disarmament, coal shipments to the Allies and war reparations.
Attendees
The Spa Conference was the first post-war conference to include German representatives.
The Allies considered that if there were violations of the peace treaty and issues concerning reparations it would be better to discuss the problems face-to-face than through an exchange of notes.
The conference was attended by heads of state, heads of government and foreign secretaries.
The attendees included British and French Prime Ministers
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. He was a Liberal Party politician from Wales, known for leading the United Kingdom during t ...
and
Alexandre Millerand
Alexandre Millerand (; – ) was a French politician. He was Prime Minister of France from 20 January to 23 September 1920 and President of France from 23 September 1920 to 11 June 1924. His participation in Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet at the s ...
, German Chancellor
Constantin Fehrenbach
Constantin Fehrenbach, sometimes falsely,Bernd Braun: ''Constantin Fehrenbach (1852–1926)'', in: Reinhold Weber, Ines Mayer: ''Politische Köpfe aus Südwestdeutschland'', Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2005, p. 106. Konstantin Fehrenbach (11 January 185 ...
.
The British and French ambassadors to Germany,
Lord d'Abernon and
Charles François Laurent
Charles François Laurent (12 November 1856 – 16 February 1939) was a French senior civil servant, specializing in finance.
He was president of the Cour des comptes (Court of Audit).
After taking early retirement at the age of 53 he became a busi ...
, were invited to the Conference and tasked with supervision of reparation payments and control of the Berlin-based
Reparation Commission.
Discussions
Coal shipments
Contrary to German expectations the conference did not focus on the issue of
war reparations
War reparations are compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other. They are intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war.
History
Making one party pay a war indemnity is a common practice with a long history.
...
but was initially dominated by the topic of disarmament, also part of the
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June ...
. Due to current events the coal negotiations then moved to centre stage.
The issue of coal pertained to shipments from Germany to France, Belgium and Italy according to Art. 236 of Part VIII of the Versailles Treaty. In a protocol signed on 19 August 1919 Germany had agreed on these deliveries, but due to the uprisings of spring 1920 (
Kapp Putsch
The Kapp Putsch (), also known as the Kapp–Lüttwitz Putsch (), was an attempted coup against the German national government in Berlin on 13 March 1920. Named after its leaders Wolfgang Kapp and Walther von Lüttwitz, its goal was to undo th ...
,
Red Ruhr Army
The Ruhr Red Army (13 March – 12 April 1920) was an army of between 50,000 and 80,000 left-wing workers who conducted what was known as the Ruhr Uprising (''Ruhraufstand''), in the Weimar Republic. It was the largest armed workers' uprising in ...
) and associated strikes in the coal industry had been unable to comply.
Discussion of the coal issue, which began on 9 July, soon showed that the Allied side was unwilling to compromise. At the very beginning threats about sanctions were issued, with Millerand acting as the spokesman on the Allied side. After days of tough negotiations, the talks almost broke down on 14 July. On 16 July, Fehrenbach and foreign minister
Walter Simons signed the Spa coal protocol as drawn up by the Allies. Germany promised to deliver 2 million tons of coal per month for six months. In exchange for the Allied right to insist on the delivery of specifics types or quality of coal, Germany was granted 5 Goldmark per ton to purchase food for the miners. In addition, the Allies agreed to monthly advance payments for the coal. The German side did not sign up to the Allied threat that missed deliveries would be answered by military occupation of the Ruhr or other German territories.
Despite Allied financial concessions the coal agreement dealt a heavy blow to the German economy. Supply of coal had been adequate before the conference, but now domestic bottlenecks emerged that damaged output of the iron and steel industry, the railways and coal conversion industry.
War reparations
The German foreign minister, Walter Simons only got a chance on the afternoon of 10 July to outline the German position on reparations. He mostly followed a proposal endorsed by the cabinet beforehand, and avoided naming any hard numbers or dates. On 12 July, the German delegation handed over a number of proposals, once again without definite sums, calling for a total of 30 annual payments. On 13 July these proposals were discussed by a sub-committee of the conference but the concurrent coal discussions had escalated to such a degree that debate on this issue was stopped. The topic was only revisited a few weeks later at a conference in Geneva.
There was no settlement of the total sum of German reparations, but the shares of the recipients were fixed: France 52%, UK 22%, Italy 10%, Belgium 8% with the remainder (8%) distributed among the other Allied nations.
Disarmament
The discussions of disarmament focused on the strength of the German army and the treatment of the ''
Sicherheitspolizei'', paramilitary police units. The German side arrived with the negotiation goal of a 200,000-man army and the intent to keep the police units, while possibly making concessions on their equipment. However, on this issue also the Allied side was unwilling to move. By the second day the Allies threatened to break off the talks and to implement sanctions unless the German delegation abandoned the 200,000-target. The German counterproposal agreed to 100,000 men but asked for a longer period of implementation. This was rejected by the Allies and on 8 July they handed over a note that specified their position and demanded its signature by the Germans by the next day.
Fehrenbach contacted Berlin and on the morning of 9 July his cabinet agreed, but instructed the delegation not to sign the sanction threat the protocol contained.
The protocol signed by Fehrenbach and Simons on 9 July called for ''Sicherheitspolizei'' and militias to be disarmed immediately and for laws to be passed to disarm the general population. The regular German army was scheduled to be reduced to 100,000 men by 1 January 1921 (this was less than six months away, but later than initially demanded by the Allies), conscription was to be abolished and replaced by a professional army and substantial materiel was to be handed over to the Allies. This was backed up by an Allied threat to occupy additional German territory in case of violations. However, the German side introduced a proviso clause that they did not accede to this last point.
Other topics
Other controversial issues included the trial of German war criminals and the status of
Gdańsk
Gdańsk ( , also ; ; csb, Gduńsk;Stefan Ramułt, ''Słownik języka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego'', Kraków 1893, Gdańsk 2003, ISBN 83-87408-64-6. , Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, ''Orbis latinus oder Verzeichniss der lateinischen Benen ...
.
There was also discussion of the territorial dispute over
Cieszyn Silesia
Cieszyn Silesia, Těšín Silesia or Teschen Silesia ( pl, Śląsk Cieszyński ; cs, Těšínské Slezsko or ; german: Teschener Schlesien or ) is a historical region in south-eastern Silesia, centered on the towns of Cieszyn and Český T ...
between the
Second Polish Republic and
Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
. After the conference, on 28 July 1920, the territory was divided between the states leaving
Zaolzie
Trans-Olza ( pl, Zaolzie, ; cs, Záolží, ''Záolší''; german: Olsa-Gebiet; Cieszyn Silesian: ''Zaolzi''), also known as Trans-Olza Silesia ( Polish: ''Śląsk Zaolziański''), is a territory in the Czech Republic, which was disputed betwe ...
with a sizable
Polish minority on the Czech side of the border. This division also created further future animosities between these two countries.
See also
*
Curzon Line
The Curzon Line was a proposed demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union, two new states emerging after World War I. It was first proposed by The 1st Earl Curzon of Kedleston, the British Foreign Secretary, to ...
References
Sources
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{{coord, 50, 29, 47, N, 5, 53, 14, E, type:landmark_source:kolossus-frwiki, display=title
July 1920 events
1920 in Germany
1920 in Poland
1920 in Czechoslovakia
Cieszyn Silesia
Diplomatic conferences in Belgium
20th-century diplomatic conferences
1920 in international relations
Czechoslovakia–Poland relations
1920 conferences
Spa, Belgium