The Failure of the Treaty of Versailles

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Imagine this: a child starts a fight on the playground in elementary school. After a nasty scuffle he is caught and brought into the principal’s office for punishment. Present in the office is the mother of a child whose arm was broken in the fight. She wants the child punished severely as restitution for hurting her son. Next is one of the children who stepped in to defend the victim. He wants the child punished, but not as harshly as the mother. And, of course, the principal. He stepped in at the end of the fight and broke it up. His only goal at this point is to make sure another fight does not occur. Welcome to the situation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 at the close of World War I. Germany had started a major war, and it was up to the leaders of France, the mother country whose children were hurt the worst in the war; Britain, a major player in the fighting; and America, the authoritative party that stepped in at the close of the war to end it, to determine what punishment to inflict upon the aggressor. The result of these differing views is the Treaty of Versailles. But the results of the Treaty of Versailles were less than successful at promoting peace, to say the least. The effects of the treaty on Germany coupled with the American policy of isolationism at the time resulted in the rise of a terrible dictator and the beginning of a war even worse than the first. The United States’ approach to the Treaty of Versailles was shortsighted.
At the Paris Peace Conference, leaders’ differing views caused President Wilson to make a shortsighted compromise. Prime Minister of Britain David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau of France, and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States formed the “Big Three”, the world leaders ...

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