Victory without Peace

The United States Navy in European Waters, 1919-1924

Victory Without Peace is about the US Navy in European and Near Eastern waters in the post World War I era. It is the third book in the author’s study of the US Navy in European waters. The author discusses the Navy’s participation in the peace negotiations at Versailles. The Navy was involved carrying out the naval terms of the Armistice and peace negotiations and in efforts to preserve stability and peace created by the war, revolutions, civil wars, famine and general unrest. US warships were deployed in the Near East, the Baltic, northern Europe, and the Adriatic at the same time that demobilization was withdrawing these forces from European waters. The United States Navy for the first time contributed to these peacetime efforts. It set a precedence that the Navy still carried out today. This deployment was handicapped by demobilization, general naval policy and the postwar reduction of personnel and operating funds as a result of Congressional appropriations. The Navy was reluctant to allocate forces to European and Near Eastern waters considered after the war to be of little importance to the United States. Nonetheless, under pressure from the State Department and Herbert Hoover, as head of the American Relief Administration, forces were deployed and played significant roles in carrying out their responsibilities. Most of them were withdrawn by 1924 and the European Station assumed the traditional policy of showing the flag.