Abstract
Although a model for NGO diplomatic initiatives has been proposed, not every situation is the same; the model won’t always be a perfect choice. In other words, the model is a guideline, not a static approach. Chapters 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 provide case studies of major diplomatic initiatives that used or failed to use some or all of this book’s techniques. Regardless of the model used, however, before taking action, NGOs need to gather facts, do a professional analysis, conduct professional negotiating, and report on results in a truthful, clear manner.
When reading these case studies, also keep in mind the many other examples already discussed. Chapter 19 explores an effort by a German NGO that acted in partnership with its government to save its country from political disaster. Though “Die Liga” failed in its goal, it used many of the techniques proposed in the book and provides many useful lessons that might be used in countries emerging from revolution or military occupation.
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Notes
- 1.
GDIN (the Global Disaster Information Network) was another example of a public–private partnership. It was begun by the office of Vice President Al Gore in the 1990s and had two parts. The domestic program was not an NGO and was entirely managed and staffed by the US government, but the international part was an NGO which gained legal nonprofit status and had an Executive Director who was elected by the members, officials from governments (local and national), the UN, the IFRC, NGOs, academic centers, and a few corporations. However, though GDIN was legally independent as an organization, the Executive Director was also a US State Department official who took instructions from the Office of the Vice President and the Department.
- 2.
A more felicitous translation perhaps is the German League of Nations Union. Die Liga is worth a major monograph in its own right, tracing its origins to the end of life during the Nazi era. We recommend the finding aids “Catalogue of Files and Microfilms of the German Foreign Ministry Archives 1920–1945, Volume II,” compiled and edited by George O. Kent, Historical Office, US Department of State. This Catalogue and the microfilms of the files are available in the National Archives, Washington, DC. The Handakten (reference files) von Staatssekretär Simson are kept in the Political Archive of the Foreign Ministry Auswärtiges Amt in Berlin. Also relevant is Jost Dülffer’s article “De l’internationalism a l’expansionism: la Ligue Allemand pour la Société des Nations,” Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 39 (1989), pp. 23–39. The most recent German sources are Joachim Wintzer, Deutschland und der Volkerbund 1918–1926 Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2006, a massive (634 pp.), heavily detailed exploration of Germany’s relationship with the League of Nations, which also covers some of the NGOs active in the cause. More specifically on Die Liga is Günter Hohne, “Deutsche Liga für Volkerbund” in Fricke, Dieter et al., eds., Lexikon zur Parteiengeschichte vol. 2 (1984).
- 3.
Unlike some other national leagues, Die Liga was never a mass, membership organization. It did not conduct membership drives (lest it dilute the influence of the government) and its members were appointed rather than taken in upon application (Kimmich 2012).
- 4.
Ernst Friedrich Wilhelm Jäckh (b.1875 in Urach, d. 1959 in New York City) was a liberal who believed in parliamentary democracy. He was also a consultant with the Foreign Ministry and an enthusiast for Wilson’s ideas.
- 5.
Schücking was a liberal politician and professor of public international law, the first German judge at the Permanent Court of International Justice in the Hague and one of the six German delegates to the Paris Peace Conference.
- 6.
Ludwig Quidde was a German pacifist (associated with Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft, the German Peace Society) and a critic of Emperor Wilhelm II and lived through the Bismarck era, the Hohenzollern Empire, and the Weimar Republic and then escaped to Switzerland during the Nazi era. In 1927 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
- 7.
Instructor of international law and a pacifist. Walther Schucking founded the pacifist doctrine of international law. From 1924 until his death, Wehberg was the editor of the Journal of International Peace and Organization.
- 8.
A brief analysis of the German proposals is offered by David Hunter Miller in (Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant 1928b).
- 9.
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918, Supplement 1, The World War, Vol. I, pp. 12–17, January 8, 1918: Address of the President of the United States delivered at a Joint Session of the Two Houses of Congress
- 10.
Hudson was a US attorney, expert in international law. He became a judge at the Permanent Court of International Justice, joined the International Law Commission, was an international conflict mediator, and gained a professorship at Harvard University. He was also nominated twice for the Nobel Prize. He was also a member of the Law Department of the League of Nations.
- 11.
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918, Supplement 1, The World War, Vol. II, page 17, Message from Col. House to the President on Communication from Clemenceau
- 12.
Solf’s wife Johanna Dotti would become an active member of the German resistance to Adolf Hitler.
- 13.
There were also all kinds of informal, behind-the-scenes contacts between the allies and the Germans while the peace conference was in session in Paris. There is evidence in the German Foreign Ministry archives on contacts with the Americans and with the French (and probably with the British), many of them by Germans who had no official standing but reconnected with contacts dating from before the war. The information they brought back would end up at the German Foreign Ministry, some to be believed and some not. For the diplomats it was obviously useful to have this kind of backchannel for the latest on what was happening at Paris. We first learned of German NGO participation through the diary of David Hunter Miller; the conversation was probably among these.
- 14.
Apropos Die Liga after 1933, Dülffer’s essay has information on that. Die Liga’s near-voluntary adaptation to Nazism early on, its relatively obscure existence after Germany left the League, an official decision to disband it in 1935/36 or so (stayed when Hitler talked, not seriously, about a return to the League), and a subsequent fading from the scene. While this may support the concern about NGOs getting burnt by being too close to the regime, in this case Die Liga was no different from most other organizations and associations in Germany at the time, whether close to the regime or not.
What’s significant in the 1920s is that Die Liga was active and usefully employed until Germany entered the League; it pretty much lost much of its usefulness after that. Before then, Die Liga helped make the government’s case for a “true” League (which underscored Germany’s determination to keep its distance from Geneva), and the diplomats were prepared to tolerate Die Liga’s more extreme views/activities. In fact in the summer of 1921, upon the recommendation of the French, Die Liga, led by former German Ambassador to the United States Count Bernstorff, was admitted into the Union of League of Nations Societies (Walters 1952 (reprint 1965). But after 1926, with Germany a member of the League, the tolerance faded and Die Liga lost most of its support from the government; it would be interesting to see on what occasions after that the Foreign Ministry resorted to it again, but it would have been relatively seldom).
- 15.
Drawing in part on ideas developed by Die Liga at the start of its efforts, these treaties were the result of an effort by the Weimar Republic to rehabilitate Germany politically in the eyes of the rest of Europe and lay down a mechanism for peace management, entry of Germany into the League of Nations, and its own economic resurgence. One was the Rhineland Pact between Germany, France, Belgium, the UK, and Italy in which the first three agreed not to attack each other and the latter two nations were guarantors. An attack on one was an attack on all.
Germany also signed arbitration conventions with France and Belgium and arbitration treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia, disputes to be handled by an arbitration tribunal or the Permanent Court of International Justice. France also signed treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia, pledging mutual assistance should Germany attack.
- 16.
A country in turmoil can be a confusing entity for negotiations or NGO activity. A good contemporary example is post-revolutionary Egypt in 2012 or Germany in 1919, which was close to collapse. In late October 1918 the Navy planned one last big battle with the British fleet, but sailors in Wilhelmshaven and Kiel mutinied, setting up councils similar to Russian soviets. Within days the revolution spread to the Western front and Germany’s major cities and ports. This became known as the November Revolution. The Kaiser then abdicated, followed by the King of Bavaria, which was declared a socialist Republic, though not in the Russian mold. Chancellor, Max von Baden, handed power to Friedrich Ebert, the leader of the German Social Democrat Party (SDP). Due to the revolution, the Council of the People’s Deputies (Rat der Volksbeauftragten) was then government (Nov 1918–Feb 1919). Communists were heavily involved, but unlike in the Russian revolution, an accommodation was made to blend the aristocracy into the new Germany. The Council organized a ceasefire on November 11, 1918, and the election of a National Assembly in December. The leading political party (SPD) also refused to go the route of Russian Soviets because of hatred and mistrust of the Bolsheviks. In addition to all of this was the risk of a full-scale armed uprising, and indeed there was the Spartacist uprising, putdown by right-wing militia or Freikorps. Then on August 11, 1919, the revolution ended with the establishment of the Weimar Constitution.
- 17.
Bosch would work hard after the Nazis took over to save many people from deportation and death.
- 18.
Might be too high a figure
- 19.
Count Bernsdorff would later represent the German League of Nations Society to the League of Nations.
- 20.
Preuß was Jewish, which the Nazi Party used against him, saying that because the Weimar Republic was created by a Jew, it was un-German. He was even mentioned in the 1940 Nazi propaganda film Der Ewige Jude by Fritz Hippler.
- 21.
The LNU had as members some of the more important figures in the British Empire and membership in 1933 was about one million.
- 22.
The author, Dr. Theodor Niemeyer, was a good choice, in part because he knew English and the American culture. Niemeyer was a Professor of International Law at Kiel University and in 1914–1915 the Kaiser Wilhelm Exchange Professor at Columbia University. It is interesting to note that he, like many Germans, saw the war as a struggle for the preservation of German culture (Niemeyer, The Causes of the War 1915). Niemeyer gained international attention as a defense attorney for his successful defense of Soghomon Tehlirian in 1921. Tehlirian had assassinated the Grand Vizir Talaat Pasha, who many was felt responsible for the slaughter of Armenians. Niemeyer’s team convinced the jury that the shooter was suffering from temporary insanity. Niemeyer was also the first Director of the Institute for International Law at Kiel University, later renamed to Walther Schücking Institute for International Law, honoring Professor Schücking who was the successor of Professor Niemeyer and the first German Judge at the PCIJ (Permanent Court of International Justice) (Braasch 2012).
- 23.
No surprisingly perhaps national societies in Great Britain, Canada, and elsewhere in support of the League teamed with pacifists.
- 24.
Mathias Erzberger was the leader of the Centre Party in Germany and a member of the armistice delegation. This paragraph appears to be a reference to his paper called “The league of nations: the way to the world’s peace,” which was reprinted by Holt in English in 1919 and is now a Google book. Erzberger would later be assassinated for signing the instrument of armistice.
- 25.
Simons was the head of the German peace delegation in Versailles but resigned because he rejected the treaty of Versailles. An interesting side note, in later life, he formed a social club called the SeSiSo-Club, many of who members formed the Solf-Kreis, a group of resisters against Nazi party.
- 26.
Gaus was Director of the Legal Department in the Foreign Offices in the 1920s and 1930s.
- 27.
At least some NGO meetings happened at the Cercle de l’Union interalliée or Inter-allied Club, founded in Paris when the United States entered the war, a club which still exists to this day. The location provided a convivial atmosphere for off-the-record conversations.
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Roeder, L.W., Simard, A. (2013). Die Deutsche Liga für Völkerbund (DLfV). In: Diplomacy and Negotiation for Humanitarian NGOs. Humanitarian Solutions in the 21st Century. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7113-4_19
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