Rights without Ratification: How the US Government Found Its Way to Peace with Austria in the 1920s

Abstract

The front page of the New York Times (NYT) on November 4, 1918, began with the large headline “Austria Signs Armistice, Quits War Today.” The first two subheadlines for the story announced, “Truce with Italy Is Signed” and “Vienna Announces that Hostilities against the Allies Have Terminated.”¹ These were very nuanced headlines; armistice, truce, and hostilities, as opposed to war, all correctly suggested that fighting with the Austrians was over but not going all the way to saying that peace or even the end of the war had arrived. By contrast, on November 11, 1918, the main headline was “Armistice Signed, End of the War!,” followed by the subheadline, “War Ends at 6 O’clock This Morning,” using local time.² There was certainly much to celebrate with the signing of the November 11 armistice; it was a large, necessary, and meaningful step toward the end of the war as a whole. But in a legal sense the war was still far from over.³

Without a legal ending, many things could not shift back to normal, peacetime operation, including the economy. The blockade of the Central Powers was still in place, and property and assets were frozen in many places, along with many other disruptions to normal economic activity. These disruptions had dramatic consequences for the everyday lives of millions of people around the world. People in the emerging Republic of Austria felt the economic effects particularly acutely, and the resolution of many of their economic problems relied on being legally at peace with the United States. Unfortunately for them, there were numerous factors that made legal peace and then a return to peacetime economic practices—particularly trade and the protection of private property—difficult and time-consuming to obtain. A new US-Austrian relationship relied on concerted action on the part of the executive branch, the House and the Senate, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, on the courts. Such concerted action has frequently been difficult to achieve in US history, but in this particular moment it was even more challenging because politicians’ fundamental ideas about US foreign policy did not align with political party affiliation, thus reducing the ability to use party discipline to achieve legislative results. The process took over a decade, concluding in August 1929.

The US government also had a particularly difficult problem to solve after the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and, by extension, the whole Paris treaty system. The government needed to find a legal and politically viable way out of the state of war. Political viability relied on retaining the victors’ rights that were articulated in the November armistices, while also avoiding joining the League of Nations, which had become the primary body for giving specific definition and protection to those rights once other countries had approved Versailles and the other Paris treaties. And, as many members of Congress repeatedly insisted, this all also had to be done within the structure of the US Constitution, which divided powers related to foreign policy among the branches of government.

The NYT offered ample coverage of the US government’s quest for a complete resolution to the ruptures of the state of war, focusing particularly on debate and action in Congress and on the relationship between Congress and the executive branch. At the time, the NYT was a nationally and internationally circulated paper that was internationalist, pro-business, and leaning Republican, while also leading the way in terms of contemporary journalistic ethics and professionalism.⁴ Many people in the United States—including members of the diplomatic corps posted to Washington—got their news about the activities of the federal government from the NYT either directly or via reprints of NYT stories in their local papers. Readers seeking news of the complete resumption of normal political and economic relations between Washington and Vienna encountered four major stories in the paper after the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles. Congress passed the so-called July Resolution to declare peace in 1921, then debated the ratification of separate bilateral peace treaties with Austria, Hungary, and Germany. Austria again featured in congressional debates in 1922, when the Austrian government sought an extension on payments for a relief shipment of grain as a precursor to securing League of Nations assistance in restructuring their economy. Finally, claims commissions created from the 1921 treaties had to do their work and secure congressional approval for their results before property sequestered during the years of active fighting could be released and regular economic interaction could resume.

The NYT coverage certainly did not provide an exhaustive account of all these developments, and historians seeking a detailed understanding of all that transpired and why have more work to do.⁵ We can use it to trace the basic timeline of US government actions, however, and doing so reminds us that the war was definitely not over with the armistices in 1918, the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, or even the bilateral US-Austrian treaty in 1921. The coverage also provides a starting point for understanding the ways in which a complete peace with Austria was tied up with other aspects of US politics.⁶

Certainly, in contemporary American political discourse and the NYT coverage, Austria was tied up with Germany. Politicians and the NYT frequently focused their attention on Germany, pulling Austria and Hungary along as an afterthought. This could have some benefits—many of which seem to have accrued to Hungary—but it was damaging to the Austrians when issues unique to them were ignored by the US government until the situation was very dire indeed, as was the case with Austrian efforts to reorganize their economy with the help of the League of Nations and with efforts to release the property of individual Austrians held by the US Alien Property Custodian. The NYT coverage gives the impression that Germany was always more important than Austria, but relations between Congress and the executive—and, arguably, between Democrats and Republicans—were yet more important.

The United States at War: Where Wilson Left Things

Shortly after widespread war was underway in 1914, US President Woodrow Wilson first proclaimed US neutrality and then repeatedly tried and failed to bring the warring Allied Powers and Central Powers to a negotiated peace. Eventually, in April 1917, Wilson requested and received a congressional declaration of war against the German government. The declaration did not extend to Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria, the other Central Powers. Normal diplomatic relations were suspended with Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, with neutral countries stepping in to offer a limited range of consular services to the citizens or subjects of the governments in conflict.⁷ Wilson and his administration also distanced themselves from the Allies, styling the United States an “Associated Power.” As 1917 progressed and US officials became more involved in planning with the Allies and some Austro-Hungarian troops were integrated into the German lines on the Western front and thus in a position to fight directly with US troops, Congress once again granted a request from Wilson, this time declaring war on the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian government in December 1917. Legally, this was as far into the war as the United States ever got. As a result, the United States was a party to the November 3 and November 11, 1918, armistices with Austria-Hungary and Germany, respectively, but not the earlier ones with Bulgaria and the Ottomans.

Wilson and the roughly one thousand other Americans who went to Paris in 1919 as the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, however, did not generally take such a limited view of the peace settlement they helped to craft.⁸ The Treaty of Versailles—which was for Germany, but which was also copied in its structure and many of its particulars into the other Paris treaties, including the Treaty of St. Germain for Austria—did much more than end the legal state of war. It did more than punish the Central Powers with territorial losses and economic penalties, too. It set up new structures, from new states in Central Europe to the League of Nations and its mandate system, the International Labour Organization, and the Reparations Commission. As the NYT put it, the Treaty of Versailles “is today the fundamental instrument upon which Europe is organized.”⁹ They could have gone further and said it organized the world.

The German delegation signed the Versailles treaty on June 28, 1919, and in the next few days the blockade was fully removed from Germany and Austria, with the Allies accepting Wilson’s signature on the treaty as US approval of this action. Lower-ranking delegates stayed in Paris and kept working on other treaties. Wilson headed back to the United States to secure the sixty-four votes he would need in the Senate for the ratification of the treaty.¹⁰ The broad nature of the Paris treaties, so important to Wilson, was significantly less popular with the Sixty-sixth US Congress, elected in November 1918 and first in session May 1, 1919. This Congress, Wilson’s fourth, was his first one in which fellow Democrats did not control both the House and the Senate. Wilson might have mitigated some of the consequences of this by courting some Republican senators, keeping them in the loop as the Paris negotiations progressed, but he did not.

Partisan conflicts were an issue, but in the debate over the Versailles ratification it was clear that differences of opinion about the treaty specifically and US foreign policy more generally did not line up neatly with party membership. As many other historians have documented, there were those who wanted to support the treaty with the League embedded within as Wilson had negotiated. Another group, the “Reservationists,” wanted to modify the terms to preserve more freedom of action for the United States and to keep Congress more firmly involved in the creation and conduct of foreign policy as the US Constitution required. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) chair Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA) was the leader of this group. Finally, the “Irreconcilables” did not support the treaty and its new system at all. They were concerned about the Constitution, and they also held fast to Thomas Jefferson’s interpretation of George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address, insisting that the United States eschew “entangling alliances.” Some favored a unilateral foreign policy, while others were isolationists.¹¹

Wilson’s hostile Senate voted three times on the ratification of Versailles. On November 19, 1919, they voted on a version with reservations (39–55) and then on one without (38–53). After Wilson went on a national speaking tour to try and rouse public support, the Senate voted again on a version with reservations. That March 19, 1920, vote was 49 to 35 in favor, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed. After that last vote, the Senate sent the treaty back to Wilson; if they were going to vote on it again, he would have to resubmit it. Wilson did not, nor did he submit any of the other Paris treaties to the Senate.

Right after the failed third vote, Senator Philander Knox (R-PA) offered another potential path out of the state of war. He submitted a resolution to repeal the 1917 declarations of war, but the Senate adjourned before voting on it. A few weeks later, in April and May 1920, Knox and Representative Stephen Porter (R-PA) both advanced similar resolutions in their respective chambers, with a joint resolution successfully passed on May 21, 1920. For most Democrats, the reason to pass it was so Wilson could veto it and remove this approach from the set of options available. Wilson did veto it, and Congress lacked the votes to override him.

On June 1, 1920, Representative Andrew Volstead (R-MN) proposed a resolution that left the whole peace issue aside and just aimed at ending a variety of wartime domestic legislation. This also passed, but it was right before Congress adjourned, and Wilson used a pocket veto to scuttle it; the president wanted everything about the end of the war to come through the ratification and proclamation of the Treaty of Versailles. With no Volstead Resolution, the United States was still on a wartime legal footing domestically, too, with many modifications to regular economic activity remaining in place.

While all this debate was happening in the United States, in Europe the Treaty of Versailles had gone into effect as of January 1, 1920, morphing the Paris Peace Conference into the League of Nations. Some wartime inter-Allied institutions remained active; the Reparations Commission established in the treaty went to work figuring out the specifics of how much the former Central Powers needed to pay; the American Relief Administration headed by Herbert Hoover was very busy trying to distribute food and other humanitarian aid; and troops—including US troops—were still on the ground in occupation.¹² For the Wilson administration, this mix of wartime continuities and treaty-produced changes was difficult to navigate because the United States had certain rights as victors stemming from the armistices, and the US military was still on duty in Europe. Without ratifying the treaties, however, they could not fully participate in the League or the Reparations Commission, which were diplomatic creations stemming from the Paris treaties. These diplomatic creations were now largely responsible for defining and protecting all rights that had originally derived from the armistices. The administration posted observers to these organizations to keep abreast of developments with the hope that Congress would eventually take action to allow them to be converted into full members, but these observers could not protect US interests directly.

What the US government should do about Versailles and the League was the key issue in the presidential election in November 1920. Both Democratic candidate James Cox, the governor of Ohio, and Republican candidate Warren G. Harding, senator from Ohio, left their true position shrouded in mystery, but the Republican campaign more generally was against Wilson’s foreign policy. Harding won by a wide margin, with more than 60 percent of the popular vote and 404 Electoral College votes to Cox’s 127. The lame duck period between the November 1920 election and the March 1921 inauguration was marked by haziness on what Harding administration foreign policy would actually be. It seemed reasonably clear that the United States would not join the League, but it was entirely uncertain how a legal peace would be achieved.¹³

The Wilson administration removed all the observers from the various international organizations but left the “American Commissioners” in place; these were State Department (DOS) employees who were not yet back to being regular chiefs of diplomatic missions, but who were on the ground monitoring developments and poised to resume their peacetime diplomatic roles as soon as the moment was right. In February 1921, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby sent a protest to the League regarding Yap, the former German Pacific possession, on which there was a cable station. Colby argued that the US government had a right to be included in decisions regarding that property and all former German colonial holdings because the United States was a victor in the war, even though it was not a member of the League. The issue was unresolved when the Wilson administration ended.

Domestically, Volstead had reintroduced his resolution to end wartime legislation in December 1920, and Congress passed it on March 1, 1921. Wilson signed it on March 3, 1921, his last full day in office. The resolution ended a range of laws, but many major pieces of legislation were not included in the action. From the Austrian perspective, the most important law still in place was the Trading with the Enemy Act. Among other things, the law had created the office of Alien Property Custodian (APC), and the APC had seized and was holding property located in the United States that belonged to German, Austrian, and Hungarian citizens. This property could range from extremely valuable factories to inheritances of less than $1; in later congressional testimony, the APC indicated that there were approximately 33,000 separate trusts under his control.¹⁴

In sum, at the very end of the Wilson administration, diplomatic relations with Germany, Austria, and Hungary remained broken. The Senate had no treaties under consideration. Some domestic wartime legislation had been ended via the Volstead Resolution, but much still remained on the books, including the Trading with the Enemy Act. The League was contemplating US involvement in mandate-related issues that were armistice-based but treaty-controlled. US troops were still on the ground in Western Europe. The United States was still very much at war.

Congress Acts: The July Resolution

When the Harding administration began in March 1921, Republicans had control of both the House and the Senate and were ready to work with the administration to end the war. Members of Congress expected to have an important role to play in that process. At minimum, Harding needed Congress to end the declarations of war, because domestic wartime legislation, international trade, and regular diplomatic relations all depended on that. Despite some claims to the contrary, the president could not do all of that alone, especially if Congress wanted to continue exercising its constitutional foreign policy roles.¹⁵ Harding requested that Congress pass a modified version of the resolution Wilson had vetoed in May 1920. As congressional work got underway, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes followed up with the League about US rights on Yap and in other mandates, reiterating the position Colby had taken a few weeks previously. Readers of the NYT who were looking for news of the legal end of the war went unapprised of any other executive branch actions that might have been underway beyond these two.

On April 14, 1921, Senator Knox complied with Harding’s wishes and introduced a version of the earlier resolution, thus providing a starting point for Congressional action. His version repealed both the 1917 war declarations, claimed US rights under the German armistice and Versailles Treaty even though the treaty had not been ratified, and said nothing about the status of domestic legislation. When asked why claims of US rights vis-à-vis Austria and Hungary were omitted, he said, “It was thought unnecessary to go into details because of the minor importance of Austria.” He thought Austria and Hungary would probably be treated the same as Germany in the end.¹⁶ Austria and Hungary were probably lucky to be included in this German-focused resolution, which members of Congress knew was important. At least once in the process, separate resolutions were considered; who knows how long Austria and Hungary might have had to wait, had they been kept separate from and secondary to Germany.¹⁷

A slightly adjusted version of the resolution—now definitely including US rights related to Austria and Hungary, not just Germany—was debated in the Senate in late April 1921. The Democratic leader, Senator Oscar Underwood of Alabama, was an early and prominent speaker against the resolution. Among his arguments, he said that in April 1917 Congress had not declared war on Germany but rather “recognized the fact that Germany had declared war on us.” By repealing the declaration—which is what the resolution said was happening, repeal—Underwood said that Congress would be saying that “we made a mistake in declaring that a state of war existed.” He asked his colleagues, “Do you want to retract that?” Paraphrasing him, the NYT noted that, “If after passing this resolution the United States went to Germany and suggested the negotiation of a new treaty of peace she would go . . . with hat in hand as a supplicant,” rather than as a victor who could, in Underwood’s words, determine “what terms we would impose.”¹⁸ Underwood was more comfortable with a dictated peace than many other people were at the time or since, and he was not talking about equality or inclusion or the League as a mechanism for avoiding future wars. The full Senate was not swayed by his arguments and voted in favor of the resolution, 49 to 23.¹⁹

Procedurally, the next thing that should have happened was House consideration of the resolution, but Harding asked Porter, the chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee (HFRC), to wait. It was not fully clear to NYT readers—or many members of Congress—what they were waiting for. One reason became evident rather quickly, much to the dismay of the Irreconcilables: without consultation or confirmation votes, the Harding administration posted official representatives to the Reparations Commissions and several other international bodies, though not to the League. The explanation given at the time was that the Reparations Commission had transmitted its specific plan for Germany to the German government, and the United States should show support of the Allies in this. The US government should not be sending a signal to Germany that a potential path out of reparation payments might be found in the negotiation of a new treaty with the Americans. The NYT also interpreted this action as a sign that the Allies, if not yet the whole League, accepted the US position on rights in Yap and other mandates.²⁰

While on this presidential delay, both the HFRC and SFRC were tinkering with the text of the resolution the Senate had passed in April. Porter was considering one of Underwood’s objections and planned to modify the resolution so it declared peace, rather than repealing the 1917 war declarations. In the Senate, committee chair Henry Cabot Lodge was meeting with administration officials about how to bring domestic laws, orders, and proclamations into the resolution so that those that needed to be ended could be, while those that needed to be protected until a later point in the process could be retained. By June 28, 1921, the committees had finalized the resolution so it was ready for a vote in both chambers. Although the German government had not yet agreed to the Reparations Commission’s terms, the Harding administration did not object to a vote at this time.²¹

The resolution contained six sections. The first two focused on Germany, with Section 1 “declar[ing] at an end” the state of war against the Imperial German Government that had been declared in April 1917 and Section 2 reserving “all rights, privileges, indemnities, reparations, or advantages, together with the right to enforce the same” stemming from the November 11, 1918, armistice and the Treaty of Versailles; those rights would have “the same force and effect as if said Treaty of Versailles had been ratified by the United States of America.” The second two sections repeated the first two, this time substituting in the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Government; the November 3, 1918, armistice; and the treaties of St. Germain and Trianon. Sections 5 and 6 clearly showed the involvement of the State Department and the Alien Property Custodian in refining the resolution. Section 5 dealt with economic issues, saying that the US Government would hold on to all German, Austrian, and Hungarian property in its control until all relevant US property claims were settled and most favored nation treatment “in all matters affecting residence, business, profession, trade, navigation, commerce and industrial property rights” had been extended to “persons owing permanent allegiance to the United States of America.” Section 6 dealt with domestic issues, making sure that the Volstead Resolution that had ended much wartime domestic legislation was not undone and laws related to passports, desertion from the military, and the draft remained in force.²²

When writing about the debate, the NYT focused on Democratic Senate leaders Underwood and Gilbert Hitchcock of Nebraska.²³ Underwood again stressed the US “right to have peace concluded on terms prescribed for the vanquished.”²⁴ Hitchcock’s interpretation of the resolution was that it would end the armistice—and, by implication, the rights based there—and require immediate troop withdrawal.²⁵ Hitchcock complained that four months had been wasted on this “mouse” of a resolution, arguing that the time could have been better spent modifying the Versailles treaty to get it ratified or negotiating a new treaty.²⁶

On June 30, 1921, the House passed the final version of the resolution by a vote of 263 to 59, with 40 Democrats voting in favor.²⁷ The next day, the Senate passed it, 38 to 19, with 3 Democrats joining the majority.²⁸ Harding, who was on vacation in New Jersey, needed to sign it.

The NYT reported that in Raritan, New Jersey, on July 2, 1921, “At 4:10 P.M., local daylight saving time, in the living room of ‘The Hill,’ Senator Joseph S. Frelinghuysen’s home here, President Harding placed his signature to the Porter joint Congressional resolution declaring peace with Germany and Austria, just two years and four days after the ill-fated Treaty of Versailles was signed.” Hungary was not mentioned. The NYT’s use of the word just is unsettling, as if one expects it to take ages for a war to be ended—especially a war that had a peace treaty negotiated and signed much closer to the related armistice. The NYT also noted with gravity that “War with Germany ended as it began, by Congressional declaration and Executive signature on American soil.”²⁹

Harding signed the resolution—and blotted the page while doing so—between rounds of golf and in the presence of approximately thirty people, including a handful of senators, their wives, the president’s doctor, a few reporters and photographers, the Frelinghuysen household staff, the three Frelinghuysen children, and a white wire-haired Irish terrier named Patsy. Perhaps trying to make more ceremony out of the occasion than there actually seems to have been, the NYT reported that the resolution was placed on an heirloom “small mahogany table” near “a broad carved wooden mantel of severe lines that would delight a collector of antiquities” and that had come from Holland in 1740. Harding was “wearing a Palm Beach suit, white shoes, white socks with black clocks, a white shirt, buttoned by removable gold studs, and a green and red bow tie,” though one doubts he had chosen patriotic Hungarian colors on purpose.³⁰

After letting the news of the July Resolution, as it was now called, sink in for a day, the NYT ran a negative, though arguably quite accurate, piece with the telling subheadline, “Now That Resolution Is Signed, No One in Authority Seems to Know What It Means.”³¹ It was unclear whether a peace proclamation was necessary.³² As the mystery went unsolved, the NYT continued a few days later: “the country may be engaged in a state of war with Germany without anybody knowing how to end it.”³³ Harding tasked Attorney General Harry Daugherty with figuring out the next steps, and at the end of August, Harding was still looking for Daugherty and the Department of Justice to weigh in on what was supposed to be happening, especially in regard to ending wartime legislation, proclamations, and orders. A key problem was that the various laws, proclamations, and orders issued during the war used different language about what circumstances would cause them to end.³⁴ The courts did determine in late August that the July Resolution was insufficient for ending the Trading with the Enemy Act.³⁵ Throughout all this, the Harding administration did not appear very competent in the pages of the NYT. In reality, though, they had not been idle.

Versailles Lite: The 1921 US Treaties

At some point—the NYT was never clear on this—the Harding administration had begun negotiating in Europe with the German and Austrian governments, then adding the Hungarian government somewhat later, after the Treaty of Trianon went into effect. ³⁶ The NYT broke the news on July 20, 1921, that “Admission was made” by Harding administration officials that the American commissioner in Berlin was negotiating there for a resumption of diplomatic relations, which would have to involve a new treaty.³⁷ Things went quiet again for a few weeks. By August 11, Democratic senators were needling Lodge and other “Administration Senators” about the absence of information on the ongoing negotiations, pointing out that the Republicans had criticized Wilson for the same kind of secrecy earlier.³⁸

On August 24, 1921, Harding called Lodge and then other SFRC members to the White House, “pledged to secrecy.” The German and Austrian treaties had been signed, and Harding was now looping in these crucial senators. The SFRC members received the treaty “with some expressions of uncertainty, but with a general show of approval,” as it was “primarily a peace treaty” that reaffirmed the language of the July Resolution. The NYT reported that “High Administration officials have asserted that they have no desire to hide from the public the fait accompli, with respect to German negotiations, when reached through the actual signing of the proposed treaty, but they have at the same time made it plain that the Administration, the President, and members of the Cabinet do not believe that treaties of importance between two nations recently at war can be successfully negotiated ‘in a mass meeting.’”³⁹

The treaty with Austria was actually the first to be signed. In a “simple ceremony” that was “devoid of formality” on the afternoon of August 24, 1921, the American Commissioner Arthur Hugh Frazier and Chancellor Johannes Schober signed the treaty within moments of Frazier’s arrival at the Foreign Office in Vienna. Readers learned that “A brief and informal exchange of congratulations followed, Commissioner Frazier expressing the hope that the signing would have a great moral as well as material effect upon Austria. Chancellor Schober, with ill-concealed emotion, voiced his deep gratification at the restoration of friendly relations with the United States.” The terms were not released to the press or the public at that time, apparently because the Austrian government did “not desire public discussion.” Instead, they wanted to wait until Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee could meet and ratify the treaty in a few days. When questioned, US officials indicated that the terms were similar to those with Germany.⁴⁰ In a tiny, easily missed article, the NYT reported on September 3, 1921, that the Austrian Foreign Affairs Committee had approved the treaty and submitted it to Chancellor Mayr, who would present it to Parliament imminently.⁴¹ The signed treaty arrived in Washington on September 12.⁴²

The German treaty was signed in Berlin on August 25, 1921, the day after the Austrian treaty was signed. Hughes released the text of the German treaty in Washington that evening.⁴³ All three treaties—the Hungarian one was signed August 31, 1921—were brief, though they referenced and ultimately incorporated much longer documents. They included July Resolution language about retaining rights from both armistices and treaties, even if the treaties were not ratified. They pulled in sections of the Paris treaties on military, naval, and air clauses; prisoners of war and graves; reparations; financial clauses; economic clauses; aerial navigation; ports, waterways, and railways; and miscellaneous provisions. They left out the sections on the League of Nations, frontiers, political clauses for Europe, interests outside Europe, penalties, and labor.⁴⁴ However, the treaties allowed the United States to join the League if it wanted to, but it could also choose to approve League actions if it wanted to, without joining. In addition, in the German treaty, the Germans renounced their previous overseas possessions, including Yap, and affirmed that the United States had the same rights in those possessions as the Allies did. The US government also tacitly accepted the frontiers and political clauses sections by recognizing the governments of the successor states, despite calling these sections “a purely European matter.”⁴⁵ The treaties also promised further action on a fixed timetable in two areas: prewar treaties and wartime property claims.

When news that the Austrian and German treaties had been signed reached Washington, the Senate was about to go into recess. They opted to wait to act on the treaties until they reconvened on September 21 because the German Reichstag was also on a recess and scheduled to meet again on September 20.⁴⁶ Acting quickly on the Austrian treaty was apparently not considered.

When Congress was back in session in mid-September 1921, the SFRC did not plan to hold hearings or call witnesses because all the Democrats on the committee had already committed to voting for the treaties.⁴⁷ Lodge was somewhat prepared for what would slow the committee down: objections from Irreconcilable Senator William Borah (R-ID). The NYT reported that “Rumpus in Committee Halts Treaty’s Progress.” The committee discussion behind closed doors lasted for hours before Lodge went to confer with Hughes. All of the discussion was focused on Germany; the Austrian and Hungarian treaties had not been mentioned. Among numerous other objections, Borah did not want Versailles to be mentioned in the treaty at all; he wanted US troops withdrawn from Europe immediately; he did not want Americans on the Reparations Commission; and he did not want any Americans to be appointed to anything abroad without the consent of the Senate.⁴⁸ Borah did get the committee to add in the need for Senate confirmation of appointees for commissions, and he also got Lodge to confirm the administration’s plans to withdraw the bulk of US troops when the new treaties were ratified. With Borah placated enough to allow the treaties out of committee, plans to hold evening sessions the following week to debate the treaties were set to go forward—if, the NYT noted, “the disorganized Senate leadership can bring them about.”⁴⁹

The full Senate debate began with a statement from Lodge that included a letter from President Harding. Lodge countered the claim that the July Resolution was sufficient for ending the state of war and reestablishing diplomatic relations. Unfortunately, he also mentioned that the administration wanted the treaties ratified before the start of the upcoming Washington Conference, which gave Democrats a reason to delay their approval.⁵⁰ Borah spoke after Lodge, and his main point, at least as presented by the NYT, was that the rights the United States wanted to maintain were defined by the Allies, not by Germany, and so US officials would have to sit down with the Allies to determine what exactly those rights were. That first step, the mere conversation, “is practically an alliance with these foreign governments.” Borah, consistently invoking George Washington’s Farewell Address and its narrower “no entangling alliances” version from Thomas Jefferson, was always opposed to anything that might be considered an alliance.⁵¹ Another Irreconcilable, Senator Moses (R-NH), argued in favor of ratifying the treaties because they would help keep the United States out of “that body of death,” the League of Nations. In contrast, Senator Sheppard (D-TX) spoke for six hours against ratification, saying that the United States should just ratify Versailles and join the League. By not doing so, he said, “we emphasize our desertion of humanity.”⁵²

As debate continued—and with the news in hand that the German Reichstag had ratified their treaty—Senate leadership arranged a unanimous consent agreement to limit the debate and thus guarantee a ratification vote by October 15.⁵³ Then, on October 12, as the deadline for closing debate loomed, Senator Knox died, prompting further delay. On October 14, senators agreed to postpone the final round of debate and hold the vote on October 18.⁵⁴

The day finally arrived, and the NYT loudly announced, “Senate Ratifies German Treaty,” adding in a subheadline “Other Treaties Also Pass.” The vote came in the evening after nearly eight hours of debate, all of which focused on the German treaty. Both the German and Austrian treaties passed by a vote of 66 to 20, while the Hungarian treaty passed 66 to 17, some members having left the chamber. “The Democratic support accorded the Harding treaties . . . surpassed all expectations,” with frequent critics Underwood and Hitchcock among the supporters. Hitchcock said that the failure to ratify Versailles had caused depression and a lack of hope both domestically and abroad. The option was now between the proposed treaties and “a protracted uncertainty”; ratifying the treaties was the right choice, in his opinion.⁵⁵

Ratifications were exchanged in Vienna on November 8, 1921, and in Berlin on November 11, 1921. Harding issued his proclamation regarding Germany at 3:52 p.m. on November 14, 1921, with the NYT noting that “The main effect of today’s proclamation is that for the purposes of war claims and other legal affairs connected with the war it definitely establishes the fact that the war terminated with the signature of the joint resolution July 2 and not with the ratification of the Berlin treaty November 11.” A proclamation regarding the Austrian treaty came on November 17, 1921, but was not reported in the NYT until November 20, 1921. Indeed, when the German proclamation was published, the paper erroneously reported that neither the Austrians nor the Hungarians had ratified their treaties yet. The Hungarians had not, but the Austrians had done so before the Germans.⁵⁶

In Hungary, after brief consideration by the relevant committee of the National Assembly, the new treaty was unanimously ratified by the full assembly on its first reading, which was held on December 12, 1921.⁵⁷ In discussing the treaty, one member approved by saying that the peace “was not dictated” and that it “recognizes Hungary as an equal,” exactly the sentiments Senator Underwood had been afraid of, at least if uttered by Germans.⁵⁸ Harding proclaimed the Hungarian treaty on December 20, 1921.

While the Hungarians were considering the treaty, NYT readers learned on December 2, 1921, that the wartime American Mission in Vienna had now been replaced with a US legation, and a US consulate was once again operational in the city, marking the reestablishment of regular diplomatic relations between the United States and Austria. Commissioner Frazier became the chargé d’affaires temporarily heading the mission. Hungarian consulates were expected to open in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland, and the anticipated Hungarian minister to the United States was Count László Széchenyi, who had married American heiress Gladys Vanderbilt in 1908.⁵⁹ On January 11, 1922, the NYT reported that Secretary of State Hughes had sent the names of the proposed US envoys for Germany, Austria, and Hungary to those governments for their preliminary approval.⁶⁰

Legal peace had arrived. Normal diplomatic relations were reestablished. The withdrawal of US troops would start in two weeks but would move at a “normal, natural and slow” pace on transport ships’ regular schedules, in part to help reassure the French—and secure French compliance at the upcoming Washington Conference. The NYT said that the German government did not want the US troops to leave, because if there were going to be occupying troops, the Americans were the least objectionable. The troops apparently did not want to leave, either, enjoying their “pleasant” duties and strong purchasing power.⁶¹ US and German officials were negotiating a new basic treaty of commerce.⁶² There was still much to fix about the economy, though, especially in Austria.

Austria’s Moment Arrives: A Very Costly $24 Million

In all of the NYT coverage and congressional debate about the July Resolution and the 1921 treaties, Germany was the primary focus. Austria and Hungary were basically along for the ride, with US officials following the precedent established at the Paris Peace Conference and applying text written for Germany to Austria and Hungary with some necessary adjustments. Apart from the story about ending the state of war, Austria and Hungary did receive some coverage in the NYT, but usually in a way that reinforced the idea that their problems were European problems and not something in which the US government should involve itself. For Hungary, this sense that what was happening on the ground there was neither relevant to the United States generally nor related to the quest for a legal end to the state of war seems to have been helpful, hastening the arrival of normal relations with the United States. For Austria, though, specific US action was desperately needed to allow them to move forward with an indispensable economic recovery plan, and the difficulties in getting the US government and especially Congress to take that necessary action cost the Austrians a great deal. In the end, they relied on networks of American women—newly enfranchised at the federal level—and relief workers to champion their cause in Congress.⁶³

At the same time that Congress and the Harding administration were trying to find their way to peace, the Hungarians were making the papers because of former Habsburg Emperor Karl’s efforts to regain the Hungarian throne with the help of a strong network of supporters. Karl came to Hungary at least twice, leaving his temporary home in Switzerland. On one of these trips, he fell ill and was under Spanish protection in Hungary while he convalesced. The American commissioner for Hungary, Ulysses Grant Smith, was on a hunting trip with the Hungarian prime minister in the vicinity and they stopped by unofficially to say hello.⁶⁴ The governments of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia—all of whom now claimed land that had formerly been part of the Kingdom of Hungary—were very upset by Karl’s presence and frequently threatened to invade to remove him.⁶⁵ In the NYT, all of this was Hungary’s problem; Austria was nearly absent from the coverage. There was no talk of US intervention, sanctions, or any delay in the peace process stemming from Hungarian governmental instability or its lack of a democratic character.

Nor were any of these things mentioned as Hungarian irregular forces occupied the Burgenland, a region that was supposed to be under Austrian control by the terms of the Paris treaties. The NYT shifted from calling it “German West Hungary” to “Burgenland” in the midst of the crisis, a rhetorical move that, intentional or not, helped to reinforce the legitimacy of the Austrian claim for readers. After lengthy negotiations and a plebiscite that had not been among those planned for in the Paris treaties, most of the land went to Austria, with the exception of Sopron and eight surrounding villages.⁶⁶

Locally organized plebiscites happened in multiple places in Austria in 1921, with the idea of joining Germany. The NYT did provide some coverage of these votes, and when their correspondents interviewed Austrian leaders, the question of Anschluss, or joining Germany, was always asked. Austrian leaders consistently said that what was really in the new country’s best interest was to give independence a serious chance.⁶⁷

To do that, though, they needed economic help. Not only had the lengthy wartime blockade created major problems, but the breakup of the Habsburg Empire into separate states had ruptured very long-standing economic relationships. Plus, Austria included Vienna, the previous imperial capital, and therefore had a very large number of government employees who were legally entitled to their jobs, salaries, and pensions, and there were also many private-sector white-collar workers; neither of these groups were immediately well-suited to the manual labor that needed doing.

Austrians and others in the successor states were frequently given the advice to cultivate good relations among themselves and, essentially, to keep the imperial economy in place. But such cooperation was not something that could happen quickly, if at all.⁶⁸ As the Austrian economy faltered, the League offered a potential recovery plan. In exchange for numerous domestic economic reforms and the acceptance of a League-appointed economic expert as a trustee of sorts, loans could be arranged, likely from private sources, but potentially from governments as well. To make the plan work, the League needed the governments to which Austria owed reparations under the Treaty of St. Germain to significantly postpone the due dates for those payments or even to cancel them altogether.⁶⁹

Britain and France agreed to do this quickly, and several more Allies followed their lead.⁷⁰ There was a group of European countries with more at stake in the Austrian situation that held out, including Italy. And then there was the United States. At issue was a loan from a US grain company made on September 4, 1920, for $24,055,708.92 at 6 percent interest, to be paid semiannually. The full sum was due January 1, 1925, and by March 1922, the Austrians had paid nothing at all.⁷¹ There was some question about whether it had been correctly categorized—was it relief or was it a war loan?—but the League was adamant that payment had to be postponed or forgiven before the bailout of the Austrian economy was possible.

The situation dragged on and on, and although the Austrians did make the changes to the economy established as necessary preconditions by the League, those changes were hard to sustain; the whole plan was supposed to happen quickly.⁷² In covering the situation for the NYT, there was frequent mention that it was the United States holding up the plan. That lead to finger-pointing; defensive US officials repeatedly noted that the Italians had not agreed either. But it seems that the Italians had consented; as the situation dragged out, they had some other issues that prompted the need for a new round of agreements, but, for readers of the NYT, the logical conclusion to draw from the coverage was that the United States really was the problem.

In December 1921, American banker Frank A. Vanderlip gave a speech at the Bond Club of New York that touched on many topics, including US inaction on the Austrian financial situation. He commented that “We did not refuse to [give up the claim]. We did not pay enough attention to the matter to really give it consideration.”⁷³ Potentially following up on Vanderlip’s criticism, the NYT questioned a person in “a high Administration quarter” about US inaction a few days later. The official told the NYT that the United States was not to blame for blocking the League plan and that those looking for a resolution to the crisis should be looking at Italy, Yugoslavia, and Romania instead. The US claim was “so small as to be negligible.” The story did not make the administration look well-informed on the issue.⁷⁴

In January 1922, Dr. Clemens Pirquet of Vienna was in Washington to try and help resolve the situation. In speaking with the NYT, he was clear to express his thanks for everything Americans had done, but he also pointed out that the failure to move forward with the League plan had caused a significant drop in the value of the Austrian crown and thus much economic damage. He said that all the Allies had agreed to postpone repayments, implying that Italy, Yugoslavia, and Romania had done so.⁷⁵ Nine days later, the NYT reported that no, those three nations had not agreed to the delay. The NYT also commented that the narrative of only the United States holding things up appeared to be coming from “other quarters,” and not the Austrian government.⁷⁶

On February 7, 1922, at the request of prominent Bostonian Edward A. Filene and with the support of Jane Addams and a wide range of other US organizations and voluntary associations, Lodge introduced a resolution for postponing Austria’s US debt, contingent on “substantially all other” creditor nations doing the same and sidestepping some of the debate about whether the United States was alone in holding up the League plan.⁷⁷ The Senate did not deal with the resolution for over a month. NYT headlines in early March proclaimed “Austria Hurt by Delay” and that the “Chancellor Deplores America’s Failure to Act on Claims.”⁷⁸ Shortly after, the Austrian government announced that it planned to send Sir William Goode as a representative to Washington to try and move the issue along.⁷⁹

When the Senate finally did take up the issue, it was as a unanimous consent resolution, rather than something put on the regular calendar, in an effort to get it done more quickly. Some readers—certainly many Austrians and League officials—may have been taken aback by the sudden urgency; the NYT noted that “To be effective, it had to be passed at once.” It would, of course, have been much more effective nearly a year earlier. In terms of political spin, the resolution was not presented as a measure for saving the Austrian economy generally but rather “to raise a new foreign loan for the relief of women and children facing starvation in that portion of the former dual monarchy.”⁸⁰

The so-called Lodge Resolution was passed unanimously in the Senate on March 15, 1922.⁸¹ In an editorial, the NYT opined that “A moment of unanimity and calm marked one of the sessions of Congress last week” when the Senate passed the resolution. Continuing on in melodramatic tone, the writer maintained that the loan that could now be acquired “alone can save what is left of Austria from the sort of fate to which her great Mozart came—a grave in the Potter’s Field.”⁸² Even though the House had not yet passed the resolution, the League announced a somewhat revised plan for Austria on March 25.⁸³ Their quick action, combined with the lack of other NYT stories in the interim reporting on other countries’ actions, reinforced the idea that the United States was the one holding things up.

Although the Senate had managed unanimous support and the League was moving ahead, things did not go so smoothly in the House, where the resolution was the subject of “bitter partisan debate.” Certainly, it seems to have been a gendered debate. Congressman Joseph Walsh (R-MA) complained that “You want us to do something just because some well-meaning ladies and some charitable organizations write appealing letters”; he wanted Congress to focus on domestic issues and, expressing a fairly common contemporary view about the problematic nature of charitable actions, not have the United States become the “almoner of the world.” Representative John Garner (D-TX) was asked if the resolution was “an emotional bill,” and he responded with, “Well, a very charming lady named Mrs. Todd has interviewed everybody concerning it, but I don’t know if you’d call that emotional,” hinting at the position that any political action on the part of women was not grounded in rationality. The House eventually approved the resolution on March 29, 1922, by a vote or 142 in favor and 50 against.⁸⁴ President Harding signed it on April 6, 1922.⁸⁵

The basic League plan for Austria was signed October 4, 1922, and was up and running by mid-December.⁸⁶ Additional League funding was approved in late February 1923, and by May 1923, the Dutch financial expert heading the project, Dr. Alfred Zimmerman, was able to give a speech at the American Legation in Vienna for delegates from the American Chambers of Congress that the League was “saving Austria.” He said the project was possible “because for the first time Europe has shown determination to help one of its members by a scheme of constructive international solidarity. Here we have real peace, not war continued through peace.”⁸⁷

Zimmerman’s confident remarks to American business leaders may have been in pursuit of their support for the large private international loan the Austrian government floated in June 1923. It was for $126 million, of which $25 million was offered in the United States via J. P. Morgan. The NYT, seemingly forgetting about all the delays that had gone before, commented that the loan set the precedent of “victorious nations coming to the aid of a one-time enemy” and that this was business, but with “a sentimental weight.”⁸⁸

On August 2, 1923, President Harding died, elevating Calvin Coolidge to the presidency. When Coolidge was campaigning for his own election in 1924, he praised the United States for helping Austria by delaying their repayment date. This prompted Sarah Wambaugh, an American who worked for the League and the daughter of an international law professor at Harvard, to write an editorial reviewing the entire situation and pointing out that “instead of helping in the reconstruction of Austria, we actually delayed it!” In March 1921, when the League had been ready to act, “Everything waited on us. We did nothing.” She went on: “The plan had been based on immediate action. Our delay had killed it. Austrian credit had in the meantime collapsed.”⁸⁹

Seeing the success in Austria, the Hungarians asked for their own version of the League plan. In less than a year, an American lawyer, Jeremiah Smith, was Dr. Zimmerman’s counterpart there, running the economy. Shortly after Smith’s appointment, Congress agreed to postpone $2 million in claims, moving much more swiftly than they had done with Austria.⁹⁰

The Champions of Private Property: The Claims Commission Treaties

Right after the US-Austrian treaty was signed in August 1921, the NYT ran a short article about Austrian press reaction to the treaty. The headline was probably what many Americans were expecting to hear: “Rejoice at Peace Treaty.” The article also stressed that the Austrians were grateful for American “charities and benevolence.” For some American readers, these positive expressions may have overshadowed two important requests that also came from the Austrian press: waive reparations and release the property sequestered by the Alien Property Custodian (APC).⁹¹ As we have seen, the postponement of reparations necessary for the League economic plan came in April 1922 and relied on women’s narratives of starving children to overcome congressional trepidations about the Paris treaties and “the taint of the League of Nations.”⁹² The APC issues took much longer, despite the fact that US officials and politicians were much more comfortable with the idea of protecting private citizens’ private property. Mismanagement at the DOS and the APC’s office contributed significantly to the delay in resolving wartime property claims for Austria, Hungary, and Germany, but an emphasis on handling Germany’s larger and more complex situation first further stalled the process for Austria and Hungary.

The July Resolution and the subsequent 1921 treaties connected two kinds of property claims stemming from the war. The first were regular war claims, which had been a staple of international law for well over a century; private citizens put in requests for reimbursements when their property was damaged or confiscated without compensation during the war. The second were sequestered property claims; in the United States, this was property located in the United States that belonged to German, Austrian, or Hungarian citizens—enemy aliens—and was held in trust by the APC; there were approximately 33,000 trusts.⁹³ The July Resolution and 1921 treaties insisted that Americans’ regular war claims against the German, Austrian, and Hungarian governments had to be settled before the sequestered property could be released.⁹⁴ The door was left open for using the sequestered property to pay the Americans’ war claims, but that was not a door many US officials wanted to use, because it would have required the US government to confiscate individuals’ private property and transfer it to US citizens, and those officials did not want other governments to do that to Americans in future conflicts.

There were an estimated $400 million in war claims to be resolved, with most of that being claims for German, Austrian, and Hungarian property that had been damaged or confiscated by Americans or the US government. Indeed, the estimate reported in late August 1921 was that Germany held approximately $19 million in American property, and later figures put the Austrian holdings at around $10 million and the Hungarian holdings at less than that, leaving roughly $375 million for the United States. By that point, the APC had already returned roughly $50 million to former Austrian and Hungarian citizens who were now in the successor states of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland. It had also returned the property of American heiresses who had married German nationals before the war. That included the wife of Count Bernstorff, the last prewar German ambassador in Washington.⁹⁵

There were numerous efforts to try and get the sequestered property released in a timely fashion, but there were also challenges to that because of economic volatility. In congressional testimony and in a speech to a local Republican Club, Harding’s APC, Thomas W. Miller, outlined his plan for dealing with the German, Austrian, and Hungarian property held by his office once the 1921 treaties officially ended the state of war. He aimed to return the property of the “poorer classes” as soon as possible. For larger interests—and here he was thinking primarily of German interests—he wanted to get the owners to let him sell the property in the United States and use the money to buy things like tobacco in the United States for export to Germany. In addition to helping US trade, he argued that this plan would also help the German owners avoid losses from the exchange rate and very high German taxes. However, selling the property also put even more decision-making power in the APC’s hands, and the process was vulnerable to corruption.

In the Reparations Commission, there was frequent politicking to use sequestered property or war claims to pay down war debts or reparations bills. The APC and the DOS, however, were fundamentally opposed to arrangements like that involving the United States, and they repeatedly positioned the US government as the protector of private property. The NYT does not put it in these terms, but one factor in this quest to protect private property was surely the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of the communist Soviet Union; US officials were setting themselves up as the champions of capitalism. In his Republican Club speech, Miller stressed that the sequestered property he held could not be used toward the German government’s debt or reparations because the property belonged to private citizens. Although the APC had been able to hold that property during the war, he could not permanently confiscate it, which is what would be necessary if the value was to be applied to German government accounts.⁹⁶

Some members of Congress moved to disconnect the APC’s sequestered property from the war claims. In May 1922, Representative Adolph Sabath (D-IL), a naturalized US citizen originally from a town that was now in Czechoslovakia, asked the APC to release the property of people who were still in the United States and had been there long enough to become US citizens.⁹⁷ Another larger bill was offered in June 1922 to speed things along. All property up to $10,000 was to be returned, and for those people owed more than $10,000, they would get a $10,000 credit now.⁹⁸ Neither of these proposals was successful. The Austrian government also formally asked at least once between June 1922 and early April 1924 for Congress to pass a law releasing their citizens’ approximately $15 million worth of APC holdings, but, as the NYT reported, “The request was not granted.”⁹⁹

The Austrian government was still in a position to ask about sequestered property in spring 1924 because, diplomatically, things had gone horribly wrong. According to the 1921 treaties, arbitration commissions to settle property claims could be created, but that creation had to happen within ninety days.¹⁰⁰ On April 9, 1922, the NYT, with judicious use of the passive voice, reported that a new round of treaties with Germany, Austria, and Hungary would be needed because “the ninety days elapsed without the court being organized.” Fault could probably be traced to some specific individuals within the DOS, but it was definitely a failing on the part of the US government because the prerogative to set up the commissions rested with the United States, not the Germans, Austrians, or Hungarians. In the same article, the DOS estimated that settling all the claims would take “several years,” a prediction consistent with US experiences throughout the nineteenth century.¹⁰¹

The fact that new treaties were needed meant that the Senate had to get involved again, and the opportunity was there for senators to slow things down. The Harding administration was pursuing the standard model for the claims commissions, with a three-member commission comprised of one commissioner from the United States, one from the other country, and a third from a neutral country. Much to Hughes’s annoyance, Senator Underwood proposed that the commission for German claims be made up entirely of Americans with no German participation at all.¹⁰² Hughes responded to Underwood’s proposal in writing, pointing out that mixed commissions were the norm in international affairs and that this was definitely not a purely domestic matter. Congressional action would be needed to actually move money once the commission had decided where money was due, but that time had not yet arrived. Plus, Hughes continued, Underwood’s bill suggested that the APC was confiscating private property, and that was clearly not in the interest of the US government. Underwood attempted to back away from his proposal by commenting that the administration had not informed him or others in the Senate that negotiations with the German, Austrian, and Hungarian governments on the issue were underway; he had merely been trying to move things forward.¹⁰³ A NYT editorial followed up this exchange by being generally critical of the Senate and noting that, had the Treaty of Versailles been ratified, the Reparations Commission would have dealt with all of this and none of this extra work would have been necessary.¹⁰⁴

The Harding administration managed to get the German government to set up the claims commission through an exchange of notes rather than a formal treaty; that agreement was reached in August 1922.¹⁰⁵ The two governments still had to agree on the three commissioners, organize meetings, publicize the window for claims submissions, and reach their decisions. The proposed legislation for Congress to accept the commission’s findings and settle the claims was first read in the House in December 1926.¹⁰⁶

The three 1921 treaties had been negotiated, signed, and ratified at basically the same time, with Hungary lagging a bit, but when it came to the claims commissions, Austria and Hungary were separated from Germany and became a lesser priority; readers of the NYT would have been unclear as to why that happened. Certainly, the amounts of property involved were significantly less than in the case of Germany. The Austrians had not sequestered foreign property during the war but did have some restrictions about removing foreign assets, so the DOS thought claims in Austria would probably be focused on bank accounts. They estimated that perhaps $10 million was held in Austria and less than that in Hungary, while the United States held approximately $15 million in Austrian and Hungarian assets via the APC.¹⁰⁷

A tentative agreement with the Austrian government was reached in April 1924, and the final details and Hungarian participation were not worked out until late November 1924. The US government had decided that both the Austrians and Hungarians needed to be involved in the same commission because of the interconnected nature of the Habsburg Empire before and during the war. There would be a single commissioner, and he would hold his first hearings within two months of ratification. All claims to be considered would need to be submitted within one year of that first meeting.¹⁰⁸ The Coolidge administration determined that Edwin B. Parker, the American on the German claims commission, would also be the commissioner for the Austrian and Hungarian claims, which meant that his work on German claims had to be over and submitted to Congress for approval before work on Austrian and Hungarian claims could begin.¹⁰⁹

The SFRC chair, Henry Cabot Lodge, died November 9, 1924, roughly three weeks before the Austrian and Hungarian claims treaty was signed. His successor was the Irreconcilable William Borah, and the Senate did not ratify the claims treaty until nearly a year later, on August 4, 1925. It is not clear from the NYT whether Borah was actively trying to block the treaty—a distinct possibility—or if the Senate was just waiting for Commissioner Parker to be done with his German work so he would be available to start on the Austrian and Hungarian work within two months of ratification, as the treaty called for. Choosing another commissioner who could have started more quickly does not seem to have been considered. Once the US Senate did ratify, the Austrians and Hungarians still had to act; they had been waiting on the Senate. The Austrians ratified quickly, on August 25, 1925, but the Hungarians did not do so until November 5, 1925. Ratifications were exchanged in Washington, and the treaty entered into force on December 12, 1925.¹¹⁰ At some point in early 1926, Commissioner Parker began the actual work.

In 1926 and 1927, members of Congress occasionally checked in on the process and also investigated APC Miller, who had left office in 1925. Miller was found guilty of conspiracy for having taken a bribe. The APC’s office still held sequestered property, and Congress had paid no war claims. At a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee, members heard from Acting Treasury Secretary Garrard B. Winston that Austrian property held by the APC amounted to $12 million, while there was $315 million in German property. Representative Sam Rayburn (D-TX) interrupted the witness: “Isn’t this the truth . . . that the peace conference so completely dismembered Austria-Hungary that there is nothing left but a few hills and a town? The Austrian people, from a standpoint of equity, should have their property returned to them, probably more so than any other nation.” In response, Winston maintained that the US government had a strong interest in “preserving the inviolability of property” and thus needed to adhere to a formal, legal procedure.¹¹¹

In December 1927, when the Austrian and Hungarian commission was done with its work, Austria was due to pay between $3.5 and $4 million to US nationals, and its nationals were due to receive around $1 million, separate from what was held by the APC. The House was still debating the December 1926 German war claims bill—indeed, the bill had not reached the Senate yet—and so Austrian and Hungarian claims were added to it, once again tying the fate of Austrian and Hungarian issues to those of Germany.¹¹² The relevant Senate committee received the bill in early February 1928.¹¹³ After adding numerous amendments, the Senate passed the bill on February 21, 1928; the House passed the final version on February 29, 1928; and President Coolidge signed it March 10, 1928. For Austria and Hungary, it meant that the APC could release Austrian and Hungarian property as soon as the governments paid enough to cover American claims. The US government would also pay 5 percent interest on what the APC had seized.¹¹⁴

On August 24, 1929, the NYT made its last report on the Austrian property claims: Treasury Secretary Mellon had sent the Austrian government a check for $1,122,814, closing this outstanding element of the state of war between the United States and Austria-Hungary.¹¹⁵ Nearly eleven years after the armistice ended US-Austrian fighting, the war between the United States and Austria was legally over on terms that were very much congruent with the Treaty of St. Germain, despite the fact that the US Senate has explicitly rejected the treaty system established at the Paris Peace Conference. Normal diplomatic and trade relations in US-Austrian relations had been reestablished. Private property claims, the issue the US government cared about most, had been settled, though it took two treaties and a host of congressional and executive actions to do so. Reparations and war debt loomed, but the Austrians and Hungarians were not held accountable by the US government for that, and there were multiple American efforts to minimize or eliminate those obligations from all the Allies and former Central Powers as the 1920s turned to the 1930s. Just in time, of course, for the next war to start.