From Mr Gregor Dallas Sir: Broadly speaking, Paul Gottfried is
right about the development of anti-Americanism in Europe and of the equally virulent anti-Europeanism in America. Unfortunately, this has been a long time in the making.
One could begin with the hypocrisy of American 'virtue' at the end of the first world war, which, however, Professor Gottfried does not quite get right. The American First Army was inaugurated on 13 August 1918. Repeating the same blunders as the French in 1914 and the British in 1916, it got bogged down in the Argonne that autumn; it eventually began moving forward in the first week of November, ten days before the Armistice — America's military contribution to the Allied victory of 1918 was negligible.
Gottfried is wrong to regard the Paris peace conference and the various treaties that resulted from it as punitive. Germany herself actually lost little territory and paid virtually no reparations; the fact that reparations became a problem at all was due to America's refusal to aid Britain in the war credits Britain had offered her hard pressed allies — America's influence on the peace settlement of 1919 was baneful.
Gregor Dallas
gregor.dallas@free.fr
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