The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years

Description

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.

"Representing as it does the best in contemporary scholarship, this volume should deal a death blow to the older view... An important work that should be in all academic libraries." Choice "For those seeking to understand the tough realities of building a new world order, this volume will be fascinating to explore." Foreign Affairs "This is an altogether admirable purpose, and the essays in this volume are for the most part models of scholarship, their arguments backed up by voluminous footnotes based on government and private archives and the vast amount of published evidence that has become available over the past half century." Norman Rich, Central European History