A year before the Versailles Treaty, President Woodrow Wilson proposed fourteen points as a basis for a just and lasting peace. Although his idealism was widely acclaimed, opposition to various points developed quickly. The attempt at practical application of the 14 points exposed a multilateral system of secret agreements between the European victors and Wilson was compelled to abandon his insistence upon the acceptance of his full program. His points for autonomy and self-determination of the peoples of Austria-Hungary and Russia, although accepted and wished for by the European peoples, would be impossible to implement. The various peoples were not settled within distinct boundaries and it would be impossible to grant self determination without impacting minority groups. The 14th point , the founding of the League of Nations, was accepted. This essay will show how the Versailles Treaty of June 28th 1919 and the various events in the years that followed would create an unstable peace in Europe. Although the Allied powers felt Germany was to blame for the war, they disagreed about what to do with her in defeat.
Germany expected a negotiated peace rather than the terms imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The Allies were determined to see that their enemy was never again in a position to endanger them or the rest of Europe. She was forced to accept full responsibility for the war and would have to pay reparation to the victors. She lost her colonies and had to give up most of its coal, trains and merchant ships as well as its navy. Germany had to limit its army and submit to Allied occupation of the Rhineland for 15 years. Territories that belonged to Germany before the war were taken away. Accordingly, she lost Alsace-Lorraine to France and West Prussia to Poland, creating a Polish Corridor between Germany and East Prussia. The terms of the Versailles Treaty attempted to crush Germany and did not encourage her to return to the European community. Eventually the Allies imposed new frontiers on old Europe, carving out new countries from multi national empires of Austria and Russia. The Austrian Empire was dismembered to form three whole new states (Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia) and parts of three others (Poland, Yugoslavia and Romania). Minorities found themselves forced to live in a country alongside people who had been their enemies during the war. Germans were forced to live in the new Poland, Hungarians in Romania, Romanians in Yugoslavia and so on. These new countries were formed by peoples with a long history of mutual dislike. Serious conflicts broke out between the new states as individual countries claimed new territories. The Austrian Empire had been a complete economic system, held together by a railway network and free trade between regions. The Empire was carved up without preserving the system. If the system had been preserved, the new states would have cause for cooperation instead of reasons for conflict. As the conflicts grew, the newly formed League of Nations did little to preserve peace in Europe. It lacked the necessary power because the United States had refused to join. The fact that Germany was not allowed to join, further emphasized the rift forming between Eastern and Western Europe. When Czechoslovakia seized Teschen because of its railways and coalfields and Poland took land from Lithuania and Russia, the League did nothing to stop it. These disputes made it unlikely that these states would ever stand together in the event of a threat from Germany.
Immediately following the end of the war, the factories that supplied armaments were dismantled, and thousands of workers were on the streets. Soon, food was in short supply and there was a sharp increase in sicknesses associated with improper diets. Inflation was skyrocketing. Germany was unable to make the payments of reparation which amounted to 6 600 000 000 British Pounds. In January 1923, French and Belgian troops marched into the Ruhr to extract reparations for themselves, in violation of the peace treaty of Versailles. The government of Germany consequently refused to pay any reparations to the Allies. The miners and railway workers in the occupied territories went on strike and there were outbreaks of violence between French troops and German workers. In order to support the people of the Ruhr, Germany printed more money, pushing the country towards economic disaster. Finally, Germany decided to resume the payments of reparation. This was perceived by the extreme nationalists in Germany as another surrender to the enemy. The nationalists in Germany had already attempted to overthrow the government and there had been attempts to set up a communist system. In 1924, the Americans proposed the Dawes Plan, a scheme which would allow Germany to make payments based on her industrial output each year. With the acceptance of this plan, the French would also withdraw their troops from the Rhur. In 1925, the Western European Powers signed the Locarno Pact with Germany. Belgium, France and Germany promised to respect the frontier between them while England would come to the defense of any of these countries attacked by its neighbors This pact effectively divided Europe into East and West and left countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia very insecure. If Germany became powerful enough in the future, it could easily retake territories in the east which were taken from her with the Treaty of Versailles.
The Treaty of Versailles contributed to the unstable peace by its partition of Europe and its peoples. Instead of encouraging Germany to rebuild and trying to get European industry and trade moving again, a series of regional conflicts arose which divided Europe. The League of Nations did little to restore the peace and settle conflicts. Post war Europe was in constant conflict and political turmoil.
In January 1919, representatives of the Allied Powers assembled in Paris to draw up Peace Terms. After months of negotiations, the peacemakers hammered out a settlement. The peace treaty declared Germany responsible for the war in which many damages were caused. Germany was forced to accept responsibility for the loss and damages which they and her allies had caused. They were forced to pay for all of the reparations.
President Woodrow Wilson who was also at the peace conference, had hopes for a new world. For Wilson, the war had been fought against autocracy. A peace settlement based on liberal-democratic ideals, he hoped, would sweep away the foundations of war. He expressed these hopes in several speeches, including the famous Fourteen Points of January 1918. None of Wilson's hopes seemed more fair than the idea of self-determination -- the right of a people to have its own state, free of foreign domination. In particular, this goal meant the return of Alsace and Lorraine to France which had been lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian war, the creation of an independent Poland, the changing of the frontiers of Italy to include Austrian lands where Italians lived, and an opportunity for Slavs of the Austro- Hungarian Empire to form their own states.
Aware that a harshly treated Germany might seek revenge, engulfing the world in another destruction, Wilson insisted that there should be a " peace without victory." A fair settlement would encourage a defeated Germany to work with the victorious Allies in building a new Europe. To preserve peace and to help remake the world, Wilson urged the formation of a League of Nations, an international parliament to settle disputes and discourage aggression. Wilson wanted a peace of justice to preserve Western civilization in its democratic and Christian form.
Five treaties made up the Peace of Paris -- one each with Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Of the five, the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany signed on June 28, 1919, was the most significant. The treaty broke up empires and changed boundaries. The Germans lost territory and other countries tried to weaken their military potential and strengthen their own to compensate for the destruction of their lands caused by the Germans.
The Treaty of Versailles left Germany with an open-ended bill to pay for all of the reparations, which would probably take generations to pay. Moreover, article 231 of the treaty placed sole responsibility for the war on Germany and its allies. The Germans responded to the accusation with contempt. The Germans unanimously were against the Treaty of Versailles. They viewed the terms of the treaty as humiliating and merciless-- designed to keep Germany militarily and economically weak.
The Germans protested that when the United States entered the war, President Woodrow Wilson had stated that the enemy was not the German people but their government. Surely, the Germans now argued, the new German democracy should not be punished for the sins of the monarchy and the military. To the Germans, the Treaty of Versailles was not the beginning of the new world that Wilson had promised, but a vile crime.
Many people in other lands thought that the treaty was a way of constituting punishment on the Germans and this was in violation of Wilsonian idealism. The peacemakers should have been able to set aside hatred built up from the past in order to come up with a more proper and fair settlement. Instead of doing this, they placed the blame and burden on the Germans by forcing them to pay for reparations they couldn't afford, insulting them with the accusation of guilt from the war and taking away territory. The critics argued that the treaty would only intensify the hatred felt by all parties involved in the treaty and heighten German nationalism. This was a poor beginning for democracy in Germany and for Wilson's new world. However, defenders of the peace settlement insisted that if Germany had won the war, it would have imposed a far harsher settlement on the Allies. Moreover, they insisted that the peace settlement was by no means a rejection of Wilson's principles.
What was most significant about the Treaty of Versailles was that it did not solve the German problem. Germany was left weak but unbroken -- its industrial and military power only temporarily taken away and its nationalist feelings intensified. The real danger in Europe was German unwillingness to accept defeat or surrender the dream of expansion.
The Paris peace settlement left Germany resentful but potentially powerful. Surely if Germany became powerful and ambitious enough, they would most likely demand the return of those lands in the east which the Treaty of Versailles had taken away from her in order to make up for the humiliation they had felt.
In conclusion, had the Allies Powers listened to President Wilson's hopes for a new world and to his famous Fourteen Points, the settlement would have been peaceful and the Germans would not have been humiliated as they have been and would have no reason to want to seek revenge.
For centuries, the Russian Empire was ruled by generations of Tzars. It was a society of extremes - poverty and hardship for many and incredible wealth in the hands of only a few. While Europe was experiencing the benefits of the Industrial Revolution - Russia was still a serf base agricultural system. These inequalities, in addition to the massive social pressures the war brought on, led to the violent conflict. The first World War, in essence gave Russia the "push" it needed to break the three hundred year old chains of Imperialism. This essay will demonstrate that the atmosphere which lead to the downfall of the Tzar, the civil war and eventually the first communist regime, were all circumstances resulting from World War I. These events would be feared by western nations and admired by nations of similar conditions as to those of Russia, it would Inspire great dictators to attempt to "clean-up" the broken pieces of Russia's government and ideologically create an egalitarian/classless environment for Russia's people.
The Tzar, the sole ruler of one the largest countries of the world, seemed blind to the poor standard of living his own people were bound to. Early into the twentieth century, the Russian economy found itself trailing behind that of the more industrialized countries of Western Europe. Russian labor was mainly unskilled and desperately poor, and industrial workers made up only a sixth of the overall population. Until 1861, Russians were serfs: landless laborers owned by the state or wealthy. The few that had little land were faced with starvation when the harvest failed and the death rate was high. Inflation and taxes were on the rise too which all added to the extremely fine line between the wealthy living conditions of the Tzar and the rest of the country. When Germany declared war on Russia, because Russia was allied to Siberia against the threat of Austria-Hungary and Germany. Russian armies suffered terrible military losses, economic crisis and food shortages. As a result of poor management, when the great war broke out, the old fashioned government(the Duma) of Tzar Nicholas the 2nd (1868-1918) was not competent enough to fight the war. The war devastated the peasants economy, as most of Russia's 15 million soldiers had been taken off the land, leaving women and the old to farm. Even when an attempt was made on Nicholas' part to aid the situation by becoming commander-in-chief, it was too late to stop the foreseeable revolution which was about to emerge. Perhaps Nicholas by then realized his lack of sensitivity towards the nation that would soon turn its back on him and the Imperialist rule.
Under these economic difficulties, the actual revolution of 1917 grew out of a mounting wave of food and wage strikes in Petrograd in the month of February. On February 23 Demonstrations in which the principal slogan was a demand for bread were held, supported by 90 000 men and women on strike in the national capital. On the 24th, about half the workers in Petrograd became in some way or another involved with the new slogans being: "Down with the war!" "Down with autocracy!". It was plain to see, even by the uneducated Russians that they were "puppets on a string," still fighting at war all in the name of victory. Yet victory for the nation as a whole or for the Tzar and his elite? During these two days violent encounters took place with the police, with casualties on both sides. Surprisingly, even the Tzars' Cossack troops were being swayed toward a revolutionary way of thinking. These strikes had minute affect on the Tzars views because he ordered the Duma to stop meeting. The soldiers fed up with the war and hungry joined the workers' protests. The notion of treason was then confronted by the twelve members of the Duma - to risk losing their lives if the riots boiled-over or to become a part of what once was a dream of Engels and Marx�"workers rising up to overthrow the ones who would not share the wealth - the authority." The Duma, in an effort to keep control, organized a provisional government under Prince Lvov. Power was no longer in the Tzar's hands and on March 16 he was forced to abdicate.
The purpose of the of this new provisional government was to temporarily fill up the "political hole" embedded in Russia until the people elected a Constituent Assembly which would work out a new system of government. Perhaps people of Russia viewed this new government as a step up from where they were - all too eager for change and a higher standard of living. Under the provisional government, censorship was relaxed, a free press flourished and political prisoners were released. Though Russia was now taking a step forward, it was taking a step back too because of the rivalry for political power. Towns all over Russia elected assemblies of workers, local councils called "Soviets" which were independent from the government. Soviets, at the time, included a small group of Marxist political extremists called the Bolsheviks whose leader, Lenin, believed in overthrowing the liberals and creating a new government in the name of the working class. Neither the government nor the soviet were really clear on how to make the peasants happy. The war was still being fought during this time and the majority of Russians wanted it over with already. Yet, the government continued to fight and the soviet accepted that Russia needed to be protected against Germany's aggression. The Bolsheviks popularity was steadily rising with the slogan "Peace, Bread and Land" - essentially offering everything the people wanted in exchange for Bolshevik support. Lenin continuously showed support to the peasants with the spread of Bolshevik propaganda - laying blame on the government for inflation. The Bolsheviks had proven their strength in the elections to the Soviet, when they won the majority vote and Leon Trotsky, Lenin's "right-hand man," was already chairman of the Soviet. The new government, set up by Lenin and the Bolsheviks after the revolution of November 1917 was called 'Sovnarkom', short for Council of people's Commissars. By the end of 1917 most of Russia was in revolutionary/Soviet hands.
Under Bolshevik control, the new government finally ended Russia's involvement in World War I by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918. This treaty was seen by the Bolsheviks as a way to keep support among the people of Russia and was a high price to pay for a peace that would not come anytime soon. Under the treaty Russia had to give up the Baltic states, Finland, Poland, and Ukraine. Indignation at losing this territory sprang up in Russia, and opposition to the Bolshevik party, by then called the Russian Communist Party, erupted into a civil war that lasted from 1918 until late 1920. Lenin's government, operating out of the new capital in Moscow, began a policy of crushing all opposition - afraid of the threat of counterrevolution. The Russian Communists began the "Red terror" campaign in which suspected anti-Communists, known as Whites, were arrested, tried, and executed. The White armies, consisted of anti-Communists and aid from outside opposition was never really a united force. All of these countries seemed to want control over how to go about fighting the Bolsheviks and knew that the threat Communism was at their doorstep. Although the people of Russia had become hostile to the Communists, they also supported them, fearing that a victory by the Whites would result in a return to the Monarchy. Poorly organized and without widespread support, the Whites were defeated by the Red Army in 1920. The civil war, in the name of politics, was a bitter one between the Red and Whites - leaving a devastated economy and famine that killed millions in its wake. Life in Russia seemed to hit rock bottom. However, the Bolshevik government managed to survive.
After the civil war, Lenin and the Russian Communist Party took strict control over the country. All signs of opposition such as: Workers' strikes, peasant uprisings, and a sailors' revolt known as the Kronstadt Rebellion were quickly crushed - the Bolsheviks were now reassured their position in government. In 1921 Lenin established the New Economic Policy to strengthen the country, which had been drained by seven years of turmoil and economic decline. Finally, the political unrest in Russia appeared to be at least temporarily solved and the N.E.P. - brought at least a minimal amount of grain to those who were suffering of famine the previous year. On December 30, 1921, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was born - it was the world's first single party state. All power lay with the Communist party, which to some was welcomed with open arms and to the others who had no choice but to vote Communism it would become a fresh start. Peasants were allowed to own land and sell grain - a step up. Capitalist business also operated in a small way. Life was now bearable for most Russians - the hardest part was the journey.
From Russia to the USSR, a country of constant change in political and economic control. Though one thing is certain, the people of this country have suffered a great deal of tragedies - from war, to civil war, and then starvation. The goal a country's leading political power should not be based solely on victory, greed and power but on the people who make up the country. The Great War gave an opportunity for certain political groups to rise after the downfall of the Tzar - weather for the purposes of victory or in the name of the proletariat or both, lives were unjustly taken in the name of government. In the end, all most Russians wanted was a fair chance to live life in comfort and stability. A Communist state seemed a footstep in the right direction - offering a little of both.