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.