The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years

by Edited by Manfred F. Boemeke , Gerald D. Feldman , Elisabeth Glaser

• ISBN13: 9780521621328
• ISBN10: 0521621321
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-09-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book on the Treaty of Versailles constitutes a new synthesis of peace conference scholarship. It illuminates events from the armistice in 1918 to the signing of the treaty in 1919, scrutinizing the motives, actions and constraints that informed decision-making by the French, American and English politicians who bore the principal responsibility for drafting the peace settlement. It also addresses German reactions to the draft treaty and the final agreement, as well as Germany's role in the immediate postwar period. The findings call attention to diverging peace aims within the American and Allied camps and underscore the degree to which the negotiators themselves considered the Versailles Treaty a work in progress. A detailed examination of the proceedings from the point of view of the main protagonists forms the core of the investigation.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix	(2)
List of Contributors	xi
Introduction	1	(20)
Manfred F. Boemeke
Gerald D. Feldman
Elisabeth Glaser
Prologue: 1919-1945-1989	21	(16)
Ronald Steel
PART ONE PEACE PLANNING AND THE ACTUALITIES OF THE ARMISTIGE	37	(110)
1 Germany's Peace Aims and the Domestic and International Constraints	37	(32)
Klaus Schwabe
2 "Had We Known How Bad Things Were in Germany, We Might Have Got Stiffer Terms": Great Britain and the German Armistice	69	(18)
David French
3 French War Aims and Peace Planning	87	(24)
David Stevenson
4 Wilsonian Concepts and International Realities at the End of the War	111	(20)
Thomas J. Knock
5 A Comment by	131	(16)
Alan Sharp
PART TWO THE PEACEMAKERS AND THEIR HOME FRONTS	147	(102)
6 Great Britain: The Home Front	147	(20)
Erik Goldstein
7 The French Peacemakers and Their Home Front	167	(22)
Georges-Henri Soutou
8 The American Mission to Negotiate Peace: An Historian Looks Back	189	(14)
Lawrence E. Gelfand
9 Between Compiegne and Versailles: The Germans on the Way from a Misunderstood Defeat to an Unwanted Peace	203	(18)
Fritz Klein
10 A Comment	221	(28)
Antony Lentin
PART THREE THE RECONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE AND THE SETTLEMENT OF ACCOUNTS	249	(202)
11 The Minorities Question at the Paris Peace Conference: The Polish Minority Treaty, June 28, 1919	249	(26)
Carole Fink
12 The Rhineland Question: West European Security at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919	275	(38)
Stephen A. Schuker
13 The Polish Question	313	(24)
Piotr S. Wandycz
14 Smoke and Mirrors: In Smoke-Filled Rooms and the Galerie des Glaces	337	(34)
Sally Marks
15 The Making of the Economic Peace	371	(30)
Elisabeth Glaser
16 The Balance of Payments Question: Versailles and After	401	(40)
Niall Ferguson
17 A Comment	441	(10)
Gerald D. Feldman
PART FOUR THE LEGACY AND CONSEQUENCES OF VERSAILLES	451	(84)
18 The Soviet Union and Versailles	451	(18)
Jon Jacobson
19 Versailles and International Diplomacy	469	(38)
William R. Keylor
20 The League of Nations: Toward a New Appreciation of Its History	507	(16)
Antoine Fleury
21 A Comment	523	(12)
Diane B. Kunz
PART FIVE ANTECEDENTS AND AFTERMATHS: REFLECTIONS ON THE WAR-GUILT QUESTION AND THE SETTLEMENT	535	(102)
22 Max Weber and the Peace Treaty of Versailles	535	(12)
Wolfgang J. Mommsen
23 The Construction of the American Interpretation: The Pro-Treaty Version	547	(18)
William C. Widenor
24 British Revisionism	565	(38)
Michael Graham Fry
25 Woodrow Wilson's Image of Germany, the War-Guilt Question, and the Treaty of Versailles	603	(12)
Manfred F. Boemeke
26 A Comment	615	(22)
Gordon Martel
Bibliography	637	(22)
Index	659