The Treaty of Versailles:

The Players:

A. United States
- Woodrow Wilson - "14 Points" (university professor, pacifist)
B. Britain
- David Lloyd George - "Hang the Kaiser"
C. France
- Jacques Clemenceau - "Revenche" (spirit of revenge, the tiger)
D. Italy
- Vittorio Orlando -"Irridenta" (redemption)

Conditions (placed on Germany)
1. Loss of Territory:
-Alsasce Lorraine to France
-Eupen Malmadie to Belgium
-Schlesweigholstein to Denmark
-Polish Corridor to Poland
-Danzig to Poland (international city)

2. Military Conditions
-German army is limited to 100 000 full-time soldiers
-no navy
-no air force

3. Reparations
-repair costs: Germany pays 33 billion dollars U.S.
-Weimar Republic loses profits from Alsasce Lorraine
-Decline in trade relations with Germany

4. Article #231
-the war guilt clause indicating that Germany takes sole responsibility for starting WW1

5. Saar Basin
-France gets to mine the mineral rich Saar Basin for 15 years

6. Germany is forbidden to join with Austria
-self-determination does not apply to Germany

7. Germany loses all colonies in Africa and Asia

-Treaty of St. Germain signed with defeated Austria.

-Treaty of Neuilly signed with defeated Bulgaria.

-Creation of the League of Nations.

The League of Nations

The League of Nations stemmed from one of Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points, in which he suggested that a "global parliament" be formed to handle international problems.

The League of Nations consisted of:

The Covenant of the League: all nations swear a solemn promise to stand by the principles of the League for law and order

The Council: group of national representatives that could impose sanctions against any nation threatening to break the Covenant of the League.

3 Forms of Sanctions: -Moral Sanctions: the League would use world opinion to persuade the offending power to accept a settlement
-Economic Sanctions: the League would cut off world trade with offending nation
-Military Sanctions: the League would impose its will by force

The Assembly: all nations send a delegate to the Geneva Assembly to discuss world problems

The Permanent Court of International Justice: would pass judgments on all international disputes

-The greatest drawback of the League’s power was that several powerful nations either refused to, or were not allowed to join the League.

-The United States government (at the time, a Republican government) decided to practice isolationism and refused to sign the Covenant of the League.
-Russia, who was in the middle of a civil war and a communist revolution was not allowed to join the League.
-Germany, thanks to the Treaty of Versailles, was refused entry to the League of Nations.

-Creation of the Weimar Republic in Germany, which was the first attempt at a representative democracy in Germany. Its formation led to social upheaval due to popular discontent with the Reichstag’s manner of dealing with the Treaty of Versailles.

-Mussolini’s ‘fasci di cobattimento’ (combat units) attack strikers and communists in Italy - April, 1919.

-France suffers the loss of tens of thousands of buildings, over 9000 factories, and hundreds of kilometers of railway.

-Britain faces economic competition from the USA and Japan

-Germany is unwelcome on world markets which makes it difficult for the nation to make a profit with which it can pay its reparations (33 billion US dollars)

-Pulitzer Prize for Fiction won by Booth Tarkington for The Magnificent Ambersons

-Nobel Prize for Literaturewon by Carl Spitteler (Switzerland)

-Dial telephones are introduced by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.

-Nobel Prize for physics won by Johannes Stark (Germany), for the discovery of the Doppler effect in Canal rays and decomposition of spectrum lines by electric fields

-Nobel Prize for physiology & medicine won by Jules Bordet (Belgium), for discoveries in connection with immunity