Destructiveness of The Treaty of Versailles

The idea and practice that the loser in wars should be severely punished so as to prevent a future recurrence has been in existence since ancient times. After all, it is only a logical extension, to conflicts between nations, of the “eye for an eye” doctrine of vengeance. When the Greeks avenged Paris stealing of Helen, they burned Troy to the ground. When the Romans defeated Carthage in the Punic Wars, they went one step further – obliterating the city and spreading salt over the site of the city. In Utopia, Sir Thomas More writes that the Utopians’ one aim in wartime is to “punish the offenders so severely that nobody will ever dare to do such a thing again” (111). However, nothing could have prepared the world for the devastation wrought by World War I, fought with new technology and new weapons. After the destruction of property, devastation of lands, and loss of life that took place during the war, people seemed ready to break tradition - to break the cycle of violence and vengeance. Indeed, it appeared almost impossible – unimaginable – that any subsequent treaty of peace could worsen the situation. But leave it to the politicians. In November 1918, after Germany signed the Armistice, the Big Four – U.S.’s Woodrow Wilson, France’s Georges Clemenceau, England’s Lloyd George, and Italy’s Orlando met in Paris from January 1919 to January 1920 and drafted what would become the Treaty of Versailles. Later in 1920, John Maynard Keynes, a spectator present at the conference, wrote The Economic Consequences of Peace, which predicted the dire economic consequences of the harsh peace imposed by the treaty and proposed revisions that leaned more towards forgiveness than vengeance. Keynes analyzed Europe before and after World War I and...

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...past five years [1914-1919],” and thought sensibly about the future. A fair, timeless warning.

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