18-Jan: Today in History

January 18, 2007 · Filed Under todayinhistory

In 1919, the Paris Peace Conference, held to negotiate peace treaties ending World War I, opened in Versailles, France.

I Say: And a fat lot of good it did! All they really accomplished was to impose such onerous terms on the Germans that the nascent Weimar Republic was pretty much doomed to fail from the start. Thus ensuring that an Austrian loon would gain stature, influence, & power, appeasement would become all the rage in the UK, the French would build the defense to end all defenses at Maginot, and Wilson’s Folly would become the precursor of the U.N.

Wow — thanks for all that good, good stuff, David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, & Woodrow Wilson! Feh!

One of my favorite non-standard views/takes on early 20th-century history is that WWI & WWII really weren’t two separate, distinct events. Rather, they were a single conflict, linked by a smoldering, not-so-cold/calm period of time in the 20’s & 30’s — a “reloading” phase, if you will. If that is a valid theory (and it is in many ways), it is largely so because of what was done at Versailles.

-ghp

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Tags: history