The Treaty of Versailles

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The Treaty of Versailles

In January of 1919, Woodrow Wilson of the United States, David LLoyd

George Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Orlando of

Italy convened in Paris to Create a peace settlement that would put an

end to World War I -- a war which devastated numerous countries

throughout the world, and one that had threatened the chances of peace

ever existing in the future among the nations of Europe. Known as the

Treaty of Versailles, its goal was to restore a new nationalism

throughout the world by creating new states and forming new

boundaries. However, conflicts which resulted over dispute border

regions between Germany and Poland. Austria and Hungary, and Italy and

Yugoslavia, as well as the intense hatred towards the Allies and the

peace settlement itself, but the Germans clearly indicated that the

Treaty of Versailles had created more problems that it had solved and

laid the foundations for World War II.

Practically all of the nations involved in the war, fought on the

basis of selfish motives. Recognizing that most countries had

participated in order to acquire new territories. Woodrow Wilson, the

most idealistic of the Big Four that convened at the peace conference

in Paris, created a series of "Fourteen Points", which he believed

encompassed the main principles which would meet the needs of each

individual country. His main ideas included "open covenants of peace,

openly arrived at after which there shall be no private international

understandings of any kind."(2), as well as self-determination for

everyone because Wilson believed that "it is an imperative principle

of action...

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...ome involved in

a Second World War. However, some argue that perhaps if the provisions

of the treaty had been rigorously enforced, Europe would not have had

to deal with the many conflicts that it did, once World War I came to

an end. Because of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany suffered a

collapse of power and practically every Eastern European state was

left to deal with various minority groups that were destined to create

future problems. Said one architect after the war, "the old forms are

in ruins, the benumbed world is shaken up...We float in space and

cannot yet perceive the new order."(4) Truly, it was quite unfortunate

to all the nations involved, that a treaty which was meant to

reconcile major issues that had caused the war, subsequently resulted

in increasing problems which fueled the fire for the next war.

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