Leading to War

The Treaty of Versailles, which ended WWI, was not necessarily just or beneficial to all involved in the peace process and contained problems from its inception.  As a result of the German surrender in WWI coming a year earlier than anticipated, the Allied Powers were not unified in their strategy on how to handle a defeated Germany and its allies.  As a result of this ill preparedness, the attempted compromise did not work well for anyone. The Big 4 involved in the peace process, the United States, France, Great Britain, and Italy, had different expectations and goals when deciding peace after the war.  This caused major hurdles to be established at the beginning of the peace process.  

What did each victor want???

Representative	Country	Demands
Georges Clemenceau	France	to punish Germany and seek reparations for the damage caused by Germany during the war. From the beginning the French were out to make Germany pay because their country, industry and youth were decimated by the war.  This would effectually weakening Germany so they would never again be able to cause the amount of destruction as realized during WWI. Clemenceau took a belligerent tone from the beginning right through the end of the Paris peace settlement.  also wanted Germany to take full blame for the war.
David Lloyd George	Great Britain	ideologically between the USA and FRANCE in a request for a peace plan. Desiring reparations, while at the same time realizing that totally weakening Germany was not in the best interest of Europe as a whole.
Woodrow Wilson	USA	stabilization and peace in the world in an effort to promote world peace, delivered the Fourteen Points which called for a reduction of weapons, the right of self determination, and the proposal for a peace organization, the League of Nations, to ensure stability and peaceful solutions to conflicts between nations.

The immense changes which enveloped Germany after WWI allowed Hitler to rise to power in a time of political conflict and instability.  In 1919, at the conclusion of WWI, a new parliamentary republic was formed in Germany.  This new government, called the Weimar Republic for the German city where the new constitutional asssembly took place, was immensely unpopular with the German people.  Blamed for Germany's loss and subsequent harsh punishment through the Treaty of Versailles, the Weimar Republic, took over at a time when the German economy was overwhelmed by inflation and the German Mark was virtually worthless. 

As time progressed, Germany was left to its own devices, as occupation ended earlier than specified in the Treaty of Versailles. In addition, the supervision of disarmament in Germany was abandoned and financially, the reparations agreed upon under the peace agreement were eventually either reduced or cancelled. Despite the fact that in the early 1920s the German economy saw a small mark of improvement, the late 1920s again brought economic devastation to the German economy as the Great Depression spread throughout Europe.  These increased economic problems brought with them increased political and social chaos within Germany. 

Inevitably the peace agreement that was supposed to prevent another war on the catastrophic level of WWI, led to the emergence of the problems that fostered in WWII. Was the Treaty of Versailles successful, I argue no. Twenty years after its inception, a war on a much grander scale would occur as a result of the deficiencies leveled in the WWI peace settlement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKzZ1OwPXgk&feature=related