The Treaty of Versailles

Paris 1919 brought a political move that would alter history in ways its creators never foresaw. The Treaty of Versailles, written at the Paris Peace Conference by the Big Four allied nations, officially ended World War I and stated the terms of settlement. Representatives from the United States, Britain, France, and Italy made up the Big Four: Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, and Vittorio Orlando respectively. Although Orlando eventually walked out because he wasn’t getting everything he wanted (Meyer 610). These four men each had his own ideas of what the treaty would entail and what the repercussions for the war would be. Britain had already accomplished what it set out to by the end of the war, so Prime Minister Lloyd George went into the treaty with “few major aspirations beyond protecting the British Empire’s gains” and “restoring some kind of balance of power on the continent” (610). However he also wanted to satisfy the “popular demand for the punishment of Germany (610). Clemenceau’s ideas were very different. Germany had more influence on France at the time than Britain did with higher German population. Clemenceau’s vision of post war Germany, as well as the vision of the French people was of a “Germany either dismantled or so permanently disabled as to be incapable of posing a threat”(611). Wilson started out with a quixotic views of the panning out of the Peace Conference. He believed it was his, and therefore America’s, responsibility to play “full part in making good what [allied soldiers] gave their life’s blood to obtain” (Wilson quoted in MacMillan 3). He wanted to not only end the war, but prevent all future wars mainly with the installment of the League of Nations (Meyer 611). Also with...

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...wing day the Drew Middleton of the New York Times reported that a “U.S. aircraft, which four years ago brought death to the city, will bring life in the form of food and medicines to the people of the Western sectors, whose food supplies have been cut off by the Russians” (Middleton qt. in Behrman 204).

America succeeded in rebuilding other parts of Europe as well. Roubaix, France housed one of the world’s largest textile mills which the Marshall Plan, supplying wood, was able to keep in operation (Mee 251). 70% of French harbors destroyed during the war were restored within two years (252). Shipments of carbon black arrived in Birmingham, England, and “Europe’s largest tire plant was put back in production” and 10,000 workers returned to their jobs (246). Europe was up and running again, becoming more and more economically prosperous, due to the Marshall Plan.