Versailles Opens: The Peace Conference That Failed

Seventy delegations representing twenty-seven nations gathered at the French Foreign Ministry on the Quai d'Orsay in Paris on January 18, 1919, to redraw the map of the world after the most destructive war in human history. The Paris Peace Conference would produce five treaties, create new nations, dissolve empires, and establish the League of Nations. Nearly every decision it made would be contested, and several would contribute directly to the next world war. The conference was dominated by the "Big Four": U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French Premier Georges Clemenceau, and Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando. Wilson arrived in Paris as the most popular figure in Europe, his Fourteen Points having inspired hope for a just and lasting peace. Clemenceau, whose country had suffered 1.4 million military dead and whose northern provinces had been devastated by four years of trench warfare, wanted security above all else. Lloyd George sought to balance punishing Germany with preserving European stability. Orlando cared primarily about Italy's territorial claims. The negotiations consumed six months and produced the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919. Germany was forced to accept sole responsibility for the war under the "war guilt" clause, pay reparations initially set at 132 billion gold marks, cede territory to France, Belgium, Poland, and Denmark, and accept severe limitations on its military. The Rhineland was demilitarized. The Saar coal mines were given to France. Germany's overseas colonies were redistributed as League of Nations mandates. The treaty's terms satisfied no one completely. Clemenceau thought they were too lenient. Wilson's League of Nations, his greatest achievement at the conference, was rejected by the U.S. Senate, leaving the new international body without its most powerful proposed member. The mandates that distributed Ottoman and German colonial territory to Britain, France, and Japan planted seeds of conflict across the Middle East, Africa, and the Pacific. German resentment of the treaty became the most potent political force in Weimar Germany, exploited ruthlessly by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. The peace that was supposed to end all wars created the conditions for an even greater one, twenty years later.