The First World War had been fought for four years when, on November 11th 1918, Germany and the Allies signed an armistice. The Allies soon gathered to discuss the peace treaty they would sign, but Germany and Austria-Hungary weren't invited; instead they were only allowed to present a response to the treaty, a response which was largely ignored. Instead terms were drawn up mainly by the ‘Big Three’: British Prime Minister Lloyd George, French Prime Minister Frances Clemenceau and US President Woodrow Wilson. The result was a treaty which tried to compromise, and many of the details were passed down to un-coordinated sub committees to work out, which thought they were drafting a starting point, rather than the final wording. It was an almost
There were other factors that Germany thought that were very unfair such as their tiny army and the amount of land that was taken from them. Their army had to be reduced to 100,000 men and also they could not have any military aircraft, submarines or armored cars. This made them very vulnerable to other countries and other countries took valuable resources from Germany making their future seem even worse. All the countries who had been involved in the war had different aims in the treaty these included France who at the time president was Clemenceau who was seen as the harshest of the big three. France in the war had suffered the most so it was only right that they wanted Germany to be crippled and Clemenceau with the support of France had the aim of crushing them.
The reason why the League of Nations was idealistic was because Britain and France would be forced to accept Germany’s induction. Britain and France would be the last countries to come to Germany’s aid after the war and now Wilson was asking them, in a way, to simply forgive and forget. Actions such as these have caused historians to debate whether the TOV was killed because Wilson was a man too ahead of his time, and his Fourteen Points were to idealistic for the other World Powers to accept, or it was Wilson himself that prevented the Treaty from being truly effective in preventing future wars because of his unwillingness to yield to even a single compromise. Wilson was indeed a visionary idealist, made evident by his assumption that nations had the ability to simply get along after the war. He saw the best in men, mostly due to his inexperience with foreign affairs and the fact that he was a progressive.
Wilson (President of the USA) was dissatisfied also. He was pleased to get the League of Nations accepted, and the map of Eastern Europe was mainly drawn according to his principle of self-determination. But he found most of the rest of his 14 points ignored or rejected. Only the defeated powers were disarmed. Britain refused to accept freedom of the seas, and neither Britain, France nor Belgium would allow self-determination to the colonies in their empires.
““Why are we doing this?” cried Winston Churchill in a bitter moment of depression about Operation OVERLORD in February 1944, which caused him a spasm of enthusiasm for an alternative Allied landing in Portugal. ‘I am very uneasy about the whole operation,” wrote the Chief of the Imperial general Staff, Sir Alan Brooke, as late as June 5, 1944. “At the best, it will come very short of the expectation the bulk of the people, namely all those who know nothing about its difficulties. At its worst, it may well be the most ghastly disaster of the whole war,”” (Ambrose, 56). It seems that the British favored opening a second front to relieve some of the pressure from Russia, but did not agree with the second front being opened in the beaches of Normandy, but rather that of Italy through the Mediterranean.
In this case we are talking about Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey and Germany. When the representatives of all 32 countries arrived at Versailles, the situation was fraught. The reason for that was the debarment of all the five losing countries. That basically means that they had to accept whatever was decided by the conference. Russia was left out as well for the reason that they had a revolution in 1917 and the new government reconciled with Germany.
Negotiation thus took place between Germany and Russia. With Soviet Union agreeing to be neutral, it gave Germany a peace of mind and Hitler was confident because even if Britain and France were to war with Germany, Hitler was confident of being able to handle a war on the west as he only had to fight on one front. With his fear of a two-sided war removed, he thus invaded Poland. Another reason would be the failure of the League of Nations. Despite one of its main purpose being to prevent the outbreak of war, it was useless and did nothing to prevent the outbreak of World War 2.
The peace treaty did not satisfy France as it was not harsh enough in the eyes of France. After suffered badly from WWI with umpteen casualties, France was determined to cripple Germany completely as a form of revenge as well as an assurance against future German revival. Some provisions of the treaty did meet French demands, such as the return of Alsace-Lorraine from Germany; the German disarmament which set a maximum strength of 100000 soldiers together with the dissolution of the air force and the reduction of navy to 6 batttleships; and a whopping reparation of 132 billion gold marks to be paid over 42 years. These clauses would severely weaken Germany economically and militarily which certainly catered to French aim. However, French felt these punishments were not harsh enough to eliminate the chance of future German revival.
During Lenin’s reign as leader of the party, Stalin was seen as a ‘grey blur’ in the background of political proceedings. This was not the same for his colleagues; Tomsky, Bukharin and Rykov were adamantly right wing whereas Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev were all extremely left wing. Stalin, however, appeared to little to no opinions on these factions. Throughout the next five years, he would use this trait to his advantage, seeking to join one side of the arguments in order to rid himself of some of his rivals, then repeat the process until only he was left standing. This particular political skill would become one of the key factors in his rise to power.
France might have also been frightenend by the progressing German unification. There were other more politically domestic long term reasons for the war. These were that Bismarck wanted to unify the land that he had won as a result of the Austrian and Prussian war in 1866. Bismarck also used France as a common enemy of Germany all together so that unification could take place much more easily. France thought the war would not only help by stopping Germany’s increase in power.