World War I and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, ending that deadly conflict, occurred just over one hundred years ago. For many today, these events seem as distant as and irrelevant to the world and international affairs today as the Napoleonic Wars or even the Middle Ages. As the world today transitions from the post-Cold War era to whatever the system of state-to-state (and non-state) interaction may come to be called by future historians (dynamic multi-polarity?), the Treaty of Versailles may come to have a larger influence on events and outcomes than Yalta or the subsequent post-WWII institutions that have dominated world affairs since the onset of the Cold War.
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The historian Margeret MacMillan admirably tackles this complex subject in her work, Paris 1919. Written almost twenty-five years ago, MacMillan’s history is startingly relevant for readers watching the seismic events unfolding in the Middle East, and the still unsettled situations in the Balkans, Turkey, and the Far East. Rather than chronologically tackle the months long conference leading to the final signature of the Versailles Treaty in June 1919 (discussions continued on some issues until 1922), MacMillan effectively divides the telling by region. She examines the creation of the new states of Central and Eastern Europe, including the vexing problem of the Balkans, the spark that ignited the war in the first place. This section foreshadows the brutal civil war in the 1990s that tore apart Yugoslavia, one of the creations of the Versailles Treaty. The book details the painstaking discussions on what to do about Russia, which was in the throes a Bolshevik Revolution and the subsequent civil war. In the end, the leaders of the Allied nations punted on Russia, for lack of a better strategy, leaving it an international pariah in the early 1920s. Japan/China, Turkey, Greece, Armenia, and the Middle East represent the other regions Allied leaders tried to address in one comprehensive agreement. The familiar lines that demarcate nations in the Mideast of today are all products of secret discussions between the British and the France as early as 1916. Among the bilateral decisions was awarding Britain a mandate (or political sphere) over Palestine. Lobbyists in London were able to get the British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour to agree to allow to the free emigration of Jews there. The problem that MacMillan highlights is that the peace negotiations meant to settle affairs across the globe were carried out almost exclusively by Western leaders. It was a new century and a new world, and yet the discussions were done by diplomats and statesmen schooled in 19th century practices.
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The focus of MacMillan’s book is of course the leaders of the four Allied nations that vanquished Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, President Woodrow Wilson, and British Prime Minister David Llyod George (by coincidence MacMillan’s great grandfather) all had different agendas. The most vexing question for them was what to do with Germany, barely defeated in battle and territorially untouched by war. Clemenceau and his generals wanted occupation, onerous reparations, and loss of territory. Llyod George initially was sympathetic to French desires, but Wilson wanted a peace that was without malice and rancor. His Fourteen Points spoke of the need to be magnanimous to the vanquished and to respect the will of the people in Europe (ignoring those in Africa, China, and the Mideast). The British leader at the eleventh hour tried to walk his initial position back, leading to a furious French reaction. Wilson, who by this time just wanted to wrap up the conference, sign the treaty, and sail home accused Llyod George of spinelessness. In the end, and to the consternation of Germany’s new leaders and their irate populace, the French got their way. The Versailles Treaty became known as the ‘perfidious treaty’ among extreme nationalists in Germany, including one young veteran by the name of Adolph Hitler.
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MacMillan addresses the basic question of whether the Versailles Treaty directly led to World War II. She effectively argues that it was not the treaty itself, but the failure of subsequent leaders in Europe and the United States to address the issues that ultimately led to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939.
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