Post War Developments
US President Woodrow Wilson was a
dominating figure of the peace conference so that
his moralistic ‘fourteen points’ were incorporated
into the resulting treaties, which transformed the
map of Europe on the principle of ‘selfdetermination
of nations’, and established a
League of Nations to uphold the peace on the
principle of ‘collective security’.
Germany was punished territorially and
financially. Alsace-Lorraine was restored to
France. The port of Danzig was made a free city
and a Polish Corridor ran through the eastern
provinces of Germany. Rearmament of any kind
was forbidden, as was fortification of the
Rhineland or union with Austria. Colonial
possessions were detached and unspecified
amounts demanded in reparations.
The Habsburg Dynasty was dismissed and
its Austria-Hungary Empire dismantled.
Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland became
independent. Austria ceded South Tyrol, Istria,
the Dalmatian, coast and some Adriatic Islands
to Italy, and its southern Slav provinces of
Slovenia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina to Yugoslavia. Other territorial
transfers took from Bulgaria and added to
Romania. The Ottoman Empire too was abolished
with the Treaty of Sevres, 1920; Turkey became
a republic, its Arab provinces were placed under
British/French mandate.
Outcome of the War
Territorial changes failed to solve the basic
problems of insecurity in Europe, dividing the
continent into ‘satisfied’ but weakened powers
such as Britain, and dissatisfied or revisionist
states, including Germany and Russia. The
economic consequences of the peace compounded
the high cost of the war to cause inflation and
unemployment, undermine currencies, and
disrupt trading patterns, leading to the Great
Depression of the 1930s. At the core of a complex
process lay the problem of allied war debts to
the US. A weak League of Nations could take no
effective action against Japan in 1931, Italy in
1935, or Nazi Germany in successive violations
of the Treaty. All this ultimately led to World
War 2.
Versailles conference was dominated by three
major actors: President Woodrow Wilson of the
United States, Georges Clemenceau of France and
Lloyd George of Britain. The real debate was
between Wilson's liberal vision over the post-war
settlement and Clemenceau's nationalist
insistence on extracting harsh terms from
Germany.
Wilson's vision was a broader one. His
Fourteen Points stressed the ideals of selfdetermination,
sovereignty and justice. Wilson's
idea was to provide for a new programme stability
for the modern state system. While Wilson's was
a liberal programme speaking of a new world
order, world government (the League of Nations),
Lenin's was a radical cry to overturn the old
state system through a world revolution.
The harshness with which the victors treated
Germany, and the unwillingness to give freedom
to the colonies gave considerable weight to Lenin
and the Bolshevik's assertion that World War I
was essentially a war among imperial powers to
re-divide the world among themselves.
