~Carol Varghese
Paris Peace Conference
League of Nations
- Great War caused major physical destruction, especially in France and Belgium
- Millions were left homeless, orphaned, disabled, or dead
- All attention was turned to Paris in 1919 where the victorious powers set terms for the defeated nations
- The Allies didn’t allow any Central Power representatives or the Soviet Union, and leaders from the United States, Britain and France dominated the conference
- The Peace Treaties made were compromises for the victors. Also, Germany was considered the sole nation responsible for the war
- Treaty of Versailles: limited German navy, air force, army, political unions but was seen by the public and obviously the German government as extremely harsh
- In the long run, the peace settlement was a failure because it had few participants, many wanted to revise it, and most importantly, a second world war in a matter of decades
League of Nations
- The diplomats in Paris created the League of Nations in an effort to avoid future destruction
- The league was the first organization whose mission was to keep world peace
- President Woodrow Wilson urged for the Covenant of the League of Nations; every signature had to accept this organization
- The League seemed great in the beginning, but it had no power and it relied on collective security to keep peace
- Collective security: strategy in which a group of nations agree not to attack each other and to defend each other against an attack from one of the others if an attack is made
- Ironically, several countries never joined the League or eventually left it
- However, the League of Nations served as a model for the United Nations
Self-Determination and the Mandate System
- An active theme of the process to peace was self determination, something that Woodrow Wilson intensely encouraged because he believed it was the key to international peace
- However, in some cases like Austria, Germany and Poland the strategy was ignored
- Unwillingness to apply self-determination led to trusteeship
- The Covenant of the League of the Nations referred to the colonies as unable and so advanced nations were given the responsibility
- The Mandate System was used to figure out what do with Germany's former colonies(aka Mandates)
- Mandates were expecting self-rule, but instead they were administered by the French and the British
- Revolutionary idea made by Woodrow Wilson which gave hope to those under imperial rule
- A speech that was basically America’s terms for peace
- Woodrow Wilson- “the interests of the native populations be given equal weight with the desires of European governments.
- Wilson wished for lasting peace and that WW1 be the "war to end all wars."