Versailles and After, 1919-1933

by Ruth Henig

Book Overview

Ruth Henig's fully revised and extended second edition of Versailles and After includes a new chapter on recent historiography of the subject and provides students with concise coverage of the following topics:

* the terms of the Treaty of Versailles
* the inadeqacies of the League of Nations as a supranational peacekeeping body
* why hopes of long term stability gradually faded.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415127106
• ISBN13: 9780415127103
• Release Date: June 1995
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 100 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.6" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 17 to 18 years
• Grade Range: Grade 12 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

the [...] of versailles

The Versailles Treaty, the most flawed if not the most infamous treaties between nations, was in 1919, and still is the model of wrecking the hopes for a "just peace" and at the same time openly setting the stage for future wars. The 1919 Versailles "treaty" made the Third Reich of 1933-1945 inevitable. Reparations, based on Gold-Bearer Bonds of $33,000,000,000.00, was something Germany or almost any other nation in 1919 could not afford to pay. The Versailles Treaty was the 1919 "garage sale" of Germany's war-weakened economy, and made Germany weak in terms of any real national defense, even for a defeated foe. Poland and Czechoslovakia in the 1919-1933 period did their best to try to kick Germany when that nation had only a 100,000-man "defense force" to defend itself. France, humiliated by it's stupid war loss to Germany in 1871, only made things worse: For example, the Ruhr Invasion of Germany--1923-1924. Also, several attempts to create a series of pro-French separatist "Rhineland Republics"---1919- thru-1924. A.K.A.--Divide and Conquer a prostrated Germany. The new democratic German Weimar "republic" had to accept the responsibility, and "take the heat" for the deposed Kaiser Wilhelm-the Second, and also accepting the "fact" that Germany had to not only admit, under coersion, that the Germans "started" World War One, but to accept "full responsibility" for the total costs of the First World War. Colonel House took advantage of a emotionally disturbed maniac-depressive called Woodrow Wilson, that tried to create an abortive attempt at a new world order, that only made the Second World War inevitable. Wilson's Fourteen Points of January of 1918, were exposed as the "points" of hypocrisy and stupid wishful thinking. Wilson was already showing signs of delusions of grandeur. During the Versailles Treaty's creation, a British delegate, the Rt. Hon. John Maynard Keynes, the future "father" of modern Keynesian economics, saw through Wilson and the phony "peace process" of 1919 the Versailles "peace process". The book--Versailles and After 1919-1933, did an excellent job in exposing the [...] of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, and shows that President Woodrow Wilson, and his puppet-master and controller Colonel House, were at best, naive to the real aggressor--the Third French Republic, and in reality, highly educated fools that France played the U.S. for suckers in 1919-and beyond. I recommend this fine book. Thank You; Dr. Nick Stage--PHD