Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World

One of the best history books that I have read. This covers so much more than the conference because the author gives us relevant historical information to set the events in context. She also does a great job of sketching details of the main characters. Extremely well written and highly recommended

This is an important book covering a momentous event of modern history. It should be read by all politicians as a salutary warning of the risks involved in handling the aftermath of war. That the outcome of the Paris Conference failed to prevent the sequel to WW1 within 20 years teaches profound lessons. If anything the book is guilty of a similar outcome as the Conference. The delegates in Paris were faced with huge complications and attempted to deal with them all and please as many people as possible. The book also covers too much and by dealing with every country involved at length, leaves the reader overwhelmed with detail and includes much repetition. For example, the Balkans could have been dealt with en bloc instead of country by country, without distracting from the message. An omission is the lack of more explanation of the reasons for the subsequent failure by the US to endorse the League of Nations. That failure was the primary reason for the failure by the Allied nations to enforce outcome of the Conference. That said it is an authoritative book and will be a definitive reference source for future scholars.

Margaret MacMillan, as her excellent volume on the outbreak of the First World War did, has written another excellent book on a complex subject. She outlines all the vanity, machinations, special agendas and passions that went into the formulation of the Treaty of Versailles. It is usually considered a complete mess and one of the causes of the Second World War. Margaret MacMillan is more benign in her judgments, pointing out that the Treaty had little to do with Hitler's final agenda, although it was a good excuse, and that the task that the peacemakers had set themselves was virtually impossible to fulfill with all the ragged loose ends of ethnic identities and border lines that the dissolution of the old Empires had left. Margaret MacMillan has given an excellent summary that allows us to judge for ourselves.

The author of this book is the Warden of St. Anthony's college at the University of Oxford. As a student who's currently studying at Oxford University, this book was recommended to me by my professor - and I would recommend it to anyone who's interested in 20th century history - and the fact that Professor Macmillan looks at it from a female's perspective makes the book all the more refreshing! If you like this book - she's got another that I haven't yet read but my father has - and he recommends it strongly. Its called "The Uses and Abuses of History" and is apparently just as good. When a highly acclaimed academic from Oxford recommends a book, its probably worth reading! :)

Lengthy book, but easy read made some sense of the why's and wherefores of the treaty still a mystery of not why but how so called men of great intelligence and power could come to such agreeing such a s..t storm

My former simplistic 'understanding' of the Versailles treaty has been replaced by an awareness of the vast scope of the enterprise and the sheer arrogance of our forebears in the carving up of the map of Europe and beyond from which the world continues to suffer. An extremely thorough and penetrating account which it is hard to imagine being bettered. Highly recommended.

Anybody who is interested in the history of the 20th century should read this book. It is full of facts and personalities that influenced the course of European war and peace. The various political interest groups combined to make the second world war inevitable. The author is to be congratulated for the thoroughness of the research. The interaction Of Lloyd George and President Wilson is a study in power politics, and the French attitude to Germany reveals much about where Europe is today.

This book covers the peace conference that was established in 1919 following the end of the first world war. It is impressive for its detail but at the same time hard-going for the amateur historian like me. The Peace Conference took place in Paris and sat for six months. Remarkably, much of Europe was reorganised, with new countries and new borders by a committee of four from the UK (Lloyd George), US (Wilson), France (Clemenceau) and Italy (Orlando). Actually, it dropped to three when Orlando left because Italy didn’t get all that they asked for. The Japanese were also represented but tended to stay in the wings with occasional polite requests such as one where Japan took full control of a huge chunk of China (Manchuria). Amazingly, the gang of four acted rather like a school board, as representatives from each country, or in the case of Yugoslavia, new countries, popped along to ask for what they wanted and were then told what they could actually have. There again, if the conferenced was run as an open meeting for all delegates to make their claims and counter- claims, the whole thing would have descended into an almighty mess, much squabbling and perhaps new wars over territories gained and lost. To this end, the big four are to be congratulated in preventing a new war although their reconstruction of Europe did facilitate grievances that led to the 2nd world war, 20 years later. For example, the establishment of Danzig as a free Germanic city was an open door for Hitler to reclaim in his maniacal drive for lebensraum. The Peace Conference was not just about Europe. Upon the fall of the Ottoman empire there was the Turkish question and how this impacted on the likes of Greece and the new Yugoslavia. There were also far flung posts of the Ottoman empire that were also up for grabs, namely Palestine. The state of Israel established after the 2nd world war owed much to the apportioning of a large part of Palestine as a Zionist region that was agreed at the 1919 Conference. It was strange to discover that the Arab nations of 1919 were treated as second class citizens and, more or less told who would be in charge of their respective lands. There was the far east where the gang of four allowed China to be carved up. There was also the League of nations pioneered by Wilson and, ironically, rejected by the US And finally, there was Germany. I had to read this chapter twice because it didn’t impact as I thought it might. Again, the immense detail, page by page, tended to dull the episodic moments. It’s more or less well known that France demanded a very high reparation agreement whilst the US and UK tried to moderate it. Actually, the French got most of what they wanted. However, successive German governments were either late with insufficient payments or by the coming of Hitler, stopped paying altogether. What I like about Margaret Macmillan’s writing, is her pen portraits of leaders like Lloyd George and Wilson and many others that played a prominent part in the peace process. Certainly, this brings the whole show to life. However, this 500-page book is not for the faint-hearted because there is immense detail to absorb about the various phases of the Congress. I presume this is useful for professional historians engaged in research but I found it difficult to keep track of the endless meetings, decisions and processes that contributed to the peace process. I find that with such excessive detail I am unable to resolve the trees from the wood.

Ouvrage remarquable qui détaille toutes les négociations de paix qui eurent lieu à Paris en 1919 au lendemain de la Première guerre mondiale. La lecture est importante car elle permet de comprendre la situation mondiale après la guerre et les contraintes imposées aux négociateurs. Les négociations couvraient l'Europe, l'Afrique, le Moyen Orient et l'Asie de l'Est (Chine et Japon)

Very good

Paris 1919 recounts the history of the Treaty of Versailles and the manner in which different ideas, so critical to 20th century thought, were born politically: The League of Nations, The Balfour Declaration, The Self-Determination of peoples and nations. Events took place during this time that one can barely conceive: The US president (Woodrow Wilson) spending months on end in Europe to help broker a new peace and avoid what everyone conceived was possible - a new war; the Japanese and Chinese traveling thousands of miles by sea to meet with the peace party to attempt to become a more important player on the world scene - they were turned down. In sum, MacMillan delivers a fascinating book that reads like a novel recounting the different issues that had to be dealt with during this troubled time. Reading through this phenomenal work certainly helps gain insight into how WWII might have been sown during this time, but also how many different currently unresolved issues - from the Balkans to the Middle East - were dealt with. Two elements: First, the writing is superb. This is an incredibly readable book. In some parts you forget you are reading through non-fiction. Second, MacMillan draws out very nicely the ambient context of 1919 - the tension in post war Europe, the anger on the part of the Germans for not having won a war they believed was theirs to win, the honest desire to broker a last peace in a fair way on the part of Lloyd George, Clemanceau and Wilson, the amazing social inequalities that were present within and between nations, and the demands of so, so many heads of state that were impossible to accommodate and that, in many cases, simply led to frustration that fed the beginning of the next conflict. After reading this book, I came away with a greater understanding for the difficulties that characterize our world and our basic inability, in the face of much honest effort, to live in peace. A 5 star without a doubt.

There are missing pages from 271 to 286.

Margaret Macmillan, eine britische Historikerin, gehört zu den Autoren, die einen komplizierten historischen Vorgang, wie die Pariser Friedenskonferenz, in großer Ausführlichkeit und dennoch spannend und einprägsam schildern können. Ihre Protagonisten, die drei Staatsmänner Wilson, der US-Präsident, Lloyd-George, der britische Premier und Clemenceau, der "Tiger", französischer Premier mit Absicht, dem Präsidenten Poincaré nachzufolgen, werden in ihren Stärken und Schwächen großartig charakterisiert. Der Zerfall des osmanischen Reiches und der Doppelmonarchie Österreich-Ungarn, sowie der revolutionäre Zustand Deutschlands, stellte die führenden Politiker der siegreichen Alliierten vor die ungeheure Aufgabe, Europa und den Nahen Osten einer Staatenordnung zuzuführen, die mit Hilfe des "zahnlosen" Völkerbunds den Frieden auf absehbare Zeit sichern sollte. Dabei spielte die Behandlung Deutschlands als vermeintlich einzige kriegsverursachende Verlierermacht, eine bedeutende, aber weiß Gott nicht die einzige Rolle. Als deutscher Leser muss man sich stets vor Augen führen, dass Paris nicht mit Versailles gleichzusetzen ist, wenn auch die im Versailler Vertrag enthaltenen Ungerechtigkeiten und Zumutungen für den Verlauf der Weltgeschichte die wahrscheinlich bedeutendsten negativen Auswirkungen hatten. Der Vorzug dieses Werken besteht darin, die ganze Breite der Aufgaben der Friedenskonferenz vorurteilsfrei, sachkundig und detailliert auch mit ihren Folgen darzustellen.