THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE, 1919 Term Paper

On 18 January 1919, representatives of twenty-seven nations met in Paris to draft the peace treaties ending World War I (1914–1918). Although all delegates would sign the peace treaties, an Allied Council of Four, consisting of David Lloyd George, prime minister of Great Britain; Georges Clemenceau, premier of France; Vittorio Orlando, premier of Italy; and Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States, presided over the conference. The Big Four Powersdecided all matters dealing with the defeated Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey.

All sides had expected President Wilson’s proposals to frame the peace, but four issues overshadowed his Fourteen Points and shaped the treaties. First, although allied leaders respected Wilson, they found him difficult to work with. Wilson, for his part, was troubled by the secret wartime agreements between the allies that violated his Fourteen Points. Increasingly, bickering and mistrust soured the relations among the four allied leaders.

A second issue was the question of European security. To ensure a compliant Germany, its army was reduced to 100,000. France occupied the Saarland coal fields, and Germany’s Rhineland was demilitarized. Yet, France did not believe these measures would guarantee its own security. Having little faith in Wilson’s League of Nations, France took the position that European security must be linked to German war reparations.

The linking of security and reparations resulted in a third issue—certainly one of the most contentious of the Peace Conference. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles charged that Germany and its allies were solely responsible for “causing all the loss and damage” of the war. Article 232 required that Germany “make compensation for all damage” done to civilians and property during the war. These “war guilt” articles stipulated that Germany was responsible for the war and that ultimately it must pay reparations.

Finally, the conference was keenly aware that the collapse of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Turkish empires left a power vacuum in the heart of Europe. Boundaries for seven new countries had to be drawn and a mandate system established to govern former German and Turkish colonies.

After the Big Four decided all issues, they required the defeated Central Powers to sign five separate treaties: the Treaty of Versailles with Germany (28 June 1919), the Treaty Saint-Germain-en-Laye with Austria (10 September 1919), the Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria (27 November 1919), the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary (4 June 1920), and the Treaty of Sèvres with Turkey (10 August 1920). Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Using an atlas, find one of the new countries established by the Paris Peace Conference and give a brief account of its history in the 1920s and 1930s.
2. Read Articles 231 and 232 of the Treaty of Versailles as part of a research project on the “war guilt” issue. Discuss whether the concept of German war guilt was correct.
3. Why didn’t the Paris Peace Conference design a more durable peace? Was this a peace doomed to failure?
4. Investigate the mandate system and see how it was applied to Germany’s former colonies in China.
5. The Soviet Union was not invited to the Paris Peace Conference and probably would not have attended even if invited. What difference do you think its absence made?
6. Perhaps too much attention has been focused on Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference. What roles did David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau play?

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “The 1917 Russian Revolution” (#10), “The May 4th Movement in China, 1919” (#12), “The British Mandate of Palestine, 1922” (#13), “Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Founding of the Republic of Turkey, 1923” (#15), and “The Nazi ‘Seizure of Power’ in 1933” (#24). Search under Versailles System.

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Link, Arthur, et al., eds. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson. 67 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966–1993. A full account of Wilson’s views on peacemaking.

Mantoux, Paul, ed. The Deliberations of the Council of Four (March 24–June 28, 1919): Notes of the Official Interpreter, Paul Mantoux. 2 vols. Translated and edited by Arthur S. Link, with the assistance of Manfred F. Boemeke. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. A bird’s-eye-view of the inner workings of the Council of Four. Nicolson, Harold. Peacemaking 1919. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1965. Insightful comments on the diplomacy and the participants by a member of the British delegation.

Temperley, Harold, et al., eds. History of the Peace Conference of Paris.6 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1920. An exhaustive collection of documentation in English covering all aspects of the treaty.

U.S. Department of State. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919. 13 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943. 13 vols. A comprehensive collection of documents on America’s role in peacemaking.

Secondary Sources

Boemeke, Manfred E., et al., eds. The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after Seventy-Five Years. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Leading German scholars have contributed the major essays in this collection.

Kent, Bruce. The Spoils of War: The Politics, Economics and Diplomacy of Reparations, 1918–1932. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. One of the most recent studies to focus on the importance of the treaties during the 1920s.

Keylor, William R., ed. The Legacy of the Great War: Peacemaking 1919. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. An up-to-date collection of the key interpretations of the Paris Conference.

Link, Arthur. Woodrow Wilson: War, Revolution and Peace. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. The best study of Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference.

Sharp, Alan. The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919.New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. A succinct analysis of all aspects of peacemaking, including a summary of eight decades of scholarly debate on the treaties.

Sontag, Raymond. A Broken World, 1919–1939. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. The first chapter of this text is a masterly summary of the Peace of Paris. The remainder of the book traces the effects of the treaties on Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.

World Wide Web

“The Versailles Treaty.” http://ac.acusd/edu/History/text/versaillestreaty/vercontents.html. All of the articles of the Versailles treaty are here.