Charles Dawes: Vice-President and Peacemaker
By Jason Sibert
Although he is largely forgotten today, Charles Dawes was one of 21 Americans who claimed the Nobel Peace Prize.
Dawes, vice-president to Calvin Coolidge (1925-1929), won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925 for the Dawes Plan. The plan was an attempt to restore Germany’s economy after the ravages of World War I and settle a dispute with France. It successfully resolved the issue of German reparations.
The Treaty of Versailles ended World War I. It made Germany pay war reparations to other countries. In the 1920’s hyperinflation hit the German economy and extracted suffering on the part of the Germany people. Energy also became an issue at this time. German steel companies needed coal to run their plants and there was a coal shortage across Europe. France also needed coal for its steel plants and German coal producers started to raise shipping rates on coal shipped to France. The French occupied the Ruhr when Germany failed to pay its reparations in 1923 and demanded that Germany pay its reparations in coal.
The Allied Reparations Committee asked Dawes to find a solution and he used his skills as a diplomat to find one. Representatives from the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, and Italy sat on the committee to defuse the crises. The main points of the Dawes Plan were the continued payment of reparations by Germany on a sliding scale, as it would pay one billion marks the first year, two billion the second year, and half-billion marks after the five years. In addition, France had to remove its troops from Ruhr, Germany’s central bank was reorganized under allied supervision, the sources of reparations money would include excise, transportation, and custom taxes, and Germany was loaned $200 million dollars from American banks.
The German economy rebounded in the mid-1920’s and the country seemed to be stabilizing. The German steel industry prospered in those years. The progress was halted with the Great Depression and the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. Poor economic times helped drive the German people toward Nazism. However, many would say Hitler used the terms of the Treaty of Versailles to preach the idea of revenge on the rest of the world for extracting such large reparations on Germany after World War I. When Nazi Germany fell in 1945, the allies rebuilt the country with few reparations, as the world had learned something from the experience of World War I.
While today’s political demagogues are different than the Fascist demagogues of the World War II era, they use the stab in the back ideology of that period. They preach that their country would be in better shape, and the economic lives of the people would be improved, if it wasn’t for this country, that group of people in their own country, or elements of the government and media that don’t like them. The outcome is each country sees the world as filled with other countries that wish their own country ill. The concept of the international community is thrown out and war becomes more likely. We currently think a lot less like Charles Dawes!
Geopolitical tension in the world exist. However, it makes more sense to play the role of Dawes the diplomat considering the lethality of the weapons in the world today. Mr. Dawes had a successful career in politics before becoming known for his peace work. He graduated from Cincinnati Law School and later practiced law in Lincoln, Nebraska. Dawes worked as a manager for a gas plant and later managed William McKinley’s 1896 presidential campaign in Illinois. He served on Warren Harding’s Budget Bureau and was tapped as President Coolidge’s running mate in 1924. Dawes worked in banking in Illinois after leaving the office of vice-president. He passed away in 1951 at age of 85.
Jason Sibert is the executive director of the Peace Economy Project in St Louis.
