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| Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
Paperback
Author: Margaret Macmillan
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Release Date: 2003-09-09
ISBN-10: 0375760520
ISBN-13: 9780375760525
List Price: $18.00
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National Bestseller
New York Times Editors’ Choice
Winner of the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize
Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize
Silver Medalist for the Arthur Ross Book Award
of the Council on Foreign Relations
Finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
For six months in 1919, after the end of “the war to end all wars,” the Big Three—President Woodrow Wilson, British prime minister David Lloyd George, and French premier Georges Clemenceau—met in Paris to shape a lasting peace. In this landmark work of narrative history, Margaret MacMillan gives a dramatic and intimate view of those fateful days, which saw new political entities—Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Palestine, among them—born out of the ruins of bankrupt empires, and the borders of the modern world redrawn.
Paris 1919
| Customer Rating: | I picked up this book as next in a series of books looking at why countries go to war. Given Germany's propensity for such since it's unification, this material seems to fit my quest. Summarily this book covers the mood of the times closing out one war and at the same time laying the pretext for the next. WWI was the culmination of a new world order, one that like its beginning could not wait for diplomacy to work its magic. I say this with the understanding that war is the final step in diplomacy. This book describes the final phase of the Wars' diplomacy. With regard to German apt for WWII, the stab-in-the back, felt in 1919 is all the further you need to look. With regard for the apt for German apt for war, I must read on before I recommend the removal of the allied boot upon the German neck.
One by one Central Powers countries were laying down their arms. In September of 1918 when Austria- Hungry withdrew, the German generals sued for an armistice soon after. The Armistice was signed in November of 1918. Keep in mind armistice is a cessation of fighting not surrender. Treaties of some sort had to be hammered out in quick time as to alleviate a resumption of war. Ironically, troop withdrawal and a general consensus of the people of the world led to a fait accompli on unfinished business. The Treaty of Versailles was therefore a document to settle and end to a war that had a precarious beginning. A beginning that officially took place in 1914, but like a summer thunderstorm, was long in the making.
In the minds of the world and in particular the so-called "Great Powers" they saw the armistice and the world in their own self serving way. Their agenda had every appearance to secure a world order with their respective Empires in tact and their place as Great Powers in enforce. With such a daunting task of organizing a new world order the Great Powers created an organization where by they would meet daily through the first six months of 1919 and decide on boarders and mandates over the peoples of the world. There were planetary committees that were either self appointed and organized or directly assigned by the great powers to a specific study. Hence, not included in these six months of deliberation was Germany. They sat at home preparing to defend their stab-in-the-back.
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Paris 1919
| Customer Rating: | | A wonderful, well written, comprehensive history of the end of the Great War.More importantly, a great review of the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, the result of the Paris Peace conference causing perhaps most of the problems facing us today. An extensive looke at Palestine, the Balfour agreement and the existance of Isreal today. |
reasonable history, but flawed
| Customer Rating:  | There is no shortage of books that cover the post-WWI peace process. There isn't much to distinguish this one from the rest. As a generalist history, it doesn't have much depth to it or much new insight. The writing is good but not great. There is no new ground uncovered. And I suppose it can serve as a replacement for libraries who have thrown out or sold the older books on the topic.
But the special flaw of this book is with regard to Lloyd-George and his government. The book is almost delusional on the subject and the author is seemingly incapable of showing any reasonable perspective on the subject. Its almost at the level of attempting to rehabilitate a man and a set of policies that were buried in disgrace eighty or ninety years ago.
The author's understanding of post WWI germany is poor. She seems in places to be rather unaware of the civil war in germany after the war. She also seems not to understand that a peace treaty that banned civilian aviation and the construction of tractors in germany wasn't remotely possible. She also wants to assert that the peace process actually made germany stronger in europe and that any german complaint about the process was unjustified.
The ultimate conclusion the author wishes to make (on poor evidence) is that Lloyd-George was a great hero of history, the treaties that ended the war were flawless and that nothing that happened after in history can be blamed on what happened in Paris in 1919. And of course that if only the United States had been tougher on Germany after the war, things would have been better.
And for a book so fanatical about LLoyd-George, its beyond odd that the conclusion deals with his post-paris career in four lines. Wilson gets pages, but there is scant coverage of the years of foreign crisis everywhere from Ireland to India to Russia to Turkey to Iraq to Palestine that plagued his government and which all had their roots in the peace treaties. For all of what was going on at the time in Ireland, the book offers no more than two sentances. Its almost a willful blindness.
One other note on the book. The introduction by Richard Holbrooke offers good insight into the mindset that led to and supported the US invasion of Iraq. It doesn't take much reading between the lines to see the allusions were drawing at that time. The first gulf war ended with a "mistaken" false peace with Iraq (just like germany) and the only solution was full occupation of Iraq. The wheel has however turned again and Wilsonian idealism has yet again been buried in America.
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Usual Stuff
| Customer Rating: | There is a certain breed of American history writer who likes to fill the narrative with gossipy things like the protagonists favourite breakfast food and whether they have a mistress. Margaret McMillan is such a writer. One can see this as making a human connection filling out a dull historic narrative or simply padding.
Between the wars the discussion about the Paris peace treaty was whether it was to punitive and if it led to the rise of Nazism. Maynard Keynes in fact wrote a book on the topic. The book is an attempt to revisit that issue and to also talk about the changes which remade the map of Europe.
In 1917 the Russian Empire was overthrown and the Bolsheviks took power. The Austo-Hungarian Empire collapsed and Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland emerged as independent nations. The Ottoman Empire was occupied and the remaining imperial powers Britain and France carved up its territories.
The reality is of course that it was not Versailles that led to the Nazis taking over. The German conservatives rejected the move to a democratic state. It was only after the disaster of the second world war and the enormous loss of lives and territory that all Germans rejected war and moved to accepting that the future lay in developing as an industrial rather than a military power.
One debate that would be interesting but is not touched on in the book is how idiotic Wilson's ideas were. He believed breaking up states on the basis of the ethnic base of the people living there. Hungary for the Hungarians that sort of thing. This was meant to end conflict and lead to a peaceful world. As an ideology it is repellent. It led to the justification by Hitler to destroy Czechoslovakia and the rationalisation for countless acts of aggression and border disputes. Rather than this racial approach the modern approach to the formation of states is to create democratic institutions and the protection of individual rights so that diverse groups can live together and resolve conflict through the state institutions.
Still most writers see historical debates through the prism of previous debates so that issues such as this are seldom discussed. Not a bad historical overview of the period
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Paris 1919 A contrast to 2007 in a World of One
| Customer Rating: |
Insights and shortsights leading to our current situation, in the Orient.
http://cigarroomofbooks.blogspot.com/2007/12/paris-1919.html |
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