Who was most pleased with the Treaty of Versailles. Woodrow Wilson or George Clemenceau?

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Who was most pleased with the Treaty of Versailles. Woodrow Wilson or George Clemenceau?

After the First World War a treaty had to be made to punish Germany for their actions. This had to be done as Germany had lost the war and had signed the Armistice on the 11th November 1918. The German peoples were hungry, war weary and demanded peace. The Paris peace conference’s job was to write the Treaty of Versailles. Britain, America and France all had representatives at this meeting; the Big Three. The ‘Big Three’ included George Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson. In June 1919,  those three powers discussed the peace treaty thoroughly. They all wanted peace, but this was hard to come by the wide scale disruption to Europe during the war.

The German people thought that their nation had been ‘stabbed in the back’ when they learnt of the nature of the treaty. This expression is normally used when something is killed, suggesting that German hopes were killed. This was as they though that their country was winning the war. This idea had been planted because of government propaganda. The people only heard of German victories at war in newspapers, never of losses. This was to keep the nation’s morale up and to try and prevent a revolt.

As there were three huge nations, they all had different ideas as to how Germany should be dealt with.

France had suffered greatly at the hands of the Germans. The north of their country

Had been left in pieces, and 1,400,000 soldiers had been killed. As a result, they wanted a harsh treaty. France wanted to ensure that no third attack would ever take place, and wanted Germany to be reduced to a minor European State. France was an Imperialist country, therefore it had vast expanses of empire around the world; as did England who opposed the idea of self determination too.

Britain had debts reaching to £9 billion, some of which had to be paid back. They were left to rebuild their industrial towns and cities after German bombardment. Therefore, they wanted a harsh, but fair treaty.

Woodrow Wilson wanted the treaty to be based on his own ‘14 Points’ plan. These aims were not based around punishing Germany as such,  but ensuring that no war of that escalation should happen again. Only 116,000 American soldiers died in the war; this is as they only entered the war in the last year. Also, Woodrow Wilson. believed strongly in self determination; where a country is allowed to make the decision itself as to whether it should have it’s own government. Their land was not damaged as battles were fought in Europe therefore war effort also did not cost them much financially.

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The treaty of Versailles was signed on the 28th June 1919. Germany had no choice but to sign. This was as if they did not sign it would result in war which Germany could not afford to do.

As a result of the treaty, Germany was weakened dramatically. Their empire had been disbanded and their country was being cut up, and there was nothing that they could do about it. Their military forces were limited to 100,000 soldiers, also conscription was abolished. The German navy was reduced to: six battleships, six light cruisers, twelve destroyers, and twelve torpedo boats. ...

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