The Big Three

After the war, Britain, the USA and France had to decide how to treat Germany, the country that agreed to the armistice in November 1918. The leaders of those 3 countries were known as ‘The Big Three.’ The Big Three were of Britain, Georges  of France and  of America.

 of Great Britain had two views on how Germany should be treated. In public, as a politician, he needed the support of the public to succeed in elections and if he came across as being soft on Germany, he would have been voted out of office. The British public wanted revenge and Lloyd George's public image reflected this mood. "Hang the Kaiser" and "Make Germany Pay" were two very common calls in the era immediately after the end of the war.

However, in private Lloyd George was also very concerned with the rise of communism in Russia and he feared that it might spread to Western Europe. Privately, he felt that Germany should be treated in such a way that left her as a barrier to resist the expected spread of communism. He also wanted to avoid any long term British military commitment on the Continent and he also wanted to prevent the annexation of German minorities by Poland or France, something which he feared might sow the seeds of future bitterness.

Naval supremacy - A key British aim was to ensure its naval supremacy in the North Sea and Western Approaches. It wanted to maintain its position at the centre of a worldwide trading empire and naval supremacy was key to this, as the German submarine campaign of 1917 had proved. Britain also wanted control of the Channel coast and to avoid one power being dominant in that region. This partly involved recognising the independence of Belgium and strengthening the country after WW1.

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Reparations - another key British aim as they had to repay US loans which were not going to be cancelled. However, there was a British objection to an extremely high reparations bill. This was partly because there had been little direct damage to British infrastructure (in contrast to France) because air raids from German Zeppelin and Gotha bombers had not caused significant damage.

Nonetheless the British consistently maximised their reparations claims on Germany. As Lloyd George himself said ‘the imposition of a high indemnity…would prevent the Germans spending money on an army.’  It was also argued that ...

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