Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World

Rating:
Summary: dragon's teeth
Review: Hindsight is valuable in history and Ms. MacMillan's work, coming now, puts more perspective on the Paris conference and the effects that haunt us to this day. Ms. MacMillan does assert that the Versailles Treaty - one of its products - should not bear sole blame for the catastrophe that came 20 years later (though she notes that Hitler found it a gold mine of propaganda).

However, a reader can find in her story that the Paris conference, and the resulting treaties, sowed dragon's teeth that would erupt year after year: the bloody 1922 war between Turkey and Greece; the mutual suspicions between Poland and the new republics around her that left them divided later; the bad blood between Rumania and her neighbors over her new borders; the creation of fragile nations and economies in Hungary and Austria that would be easy prey for fascism; the Italian populist fervor over Fiume and Trieste that contributed so much to the rise of Mussolini; the Sudetenland issue that would awake in the 1930s; the Allied mandates in Arab lands that would cause so much resentment later; the creation of amorphous nation-states that would implode in the 1990s - Rwanda, Burundi, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Iraq.

Ms. MacMillan does provide an epilogue to each decision, as well as a new look at Woodrow Wilson, the first U.S. president to travel outside the U.S. in his term, and whose 14 Points proved perhaps the greatest unrealized promise of the period.

For a conference founded on such post-war hope and good intentions, it certainly proved a road to hell. All in all, a worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: Roots of the modern world
Review: Macmillan's book should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand our world as it is today, now just how it was a century ago. Again and again, the origins of our world today, whether it be Kosovo and Bosnia, the continuing conflict over Palestine, the origins of Iraq, or events over the last 50-60 years in Asia, are informed by the peace conference in Paris in the first six months of 1919.

This is not to say that Macmillan takes the easy way out and blames Versaille for everything that followed, in particular the rise of Nazi Germany; on the contrary, she is explicit that Versailles was nothing more than an excuse for Hitler and in its absence, another would have served as well. But what Macmillan does so well is to show that the roots of our problems today existed in 1919 and show how understanding how those problems were dealt with, for good or bad, after World War I tells us so much about how they can be dealt with, or at least understood, today.

At the same time, this book is simply a good read. As another reviewer pointed out, this is a book about real people, the movers and shakers. Macmillan shows how those real persons, with all their foibles, shaped the great events of the time. It is through her sketches of these real people and their motivations, (not just Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau, but also their supporting cast: Balfour, Curzon, House, Foch, Ataturk, Bell, Lawrence, Faisel, etc. etc. etc.) that Macmillan has generated such a vivid, interesting, and readable tale of some of the most important events of the last century.

Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Narrative History of Versailles
Review: Review of British/ Canadian Edition (Title is "The Peacemakers")

That such a narrative history could be feted by the world at large and be a best-seller in the English speaking world speaks volumes about the timeless nature of the search for international peace and, more importantly, the rich writing style of MacMillan. It is a very accessible book and one that should be read by the world's leaders and the general public.

The book tries to cover all aspects the peace conference dealth with. In 500 pages that is hard, but there are chapters on all relevant countries and issues: for every country from China Hungary. Not surprisingly some topics are dealt with better than others. I was a little surprised at the German Treaty. It actually takes up less than 100 pages in this book. There is so much to cover that it is not surprising that one feels a little cheated in details.

A few areas that are covered well is the attitude of Italy and is puerile histrionics at the talks and its boastful stance worthy of its eventual leader Mussolini. Hungary is the real orphan of the treaty with no friends at all. Rumania the great winner despite being on both sides in the war. China and Japan and the nacsent warfare between them boils below the surface with Japan's claims on China and the Shantung Penninsula.

I liked this book a lot, but I thought it was a little blown out of porportion. I have honestly read better history of the early 20th Century (eg. Piers Brendon's "The Dark Valley), but I was still noticably impressed.

In our postmodern world where everyone is a critic judging the problems of yesteryear through the lens of today, this may look like a bunch of stodgy toffs of the leaders of western countries making imperialistic decisions on the broad unshaped territories of the world. MacMillan to her credit rarely judges. She, like most people who read and incredible amount of history, realise that there are rarely good choices devoid of negative consequences. There is only a whole lot of bad choices and an even greater range of worse choices. Even in the establishment of the Palastine Mandate it is hard to see what the eventual outcome would be. If anything the British come across -- again -- as the far-sighted imperialists, ruling indirectly, trying to square the circle between US idealism and French/ Japanese raw territorial aggression. Their experience meant that they usually knew the consequences of their actions. They also had much more of a mature democracy with an independent press that was less willing to give carte blanche approval to the imperial moves of national policy. This contrasts with the French and the Italian press, which were essentially arms of the national policy when needed (some may say this has not changed in the case of Berlusconi).

All in all a great book. worthy of plaudits, but I honestly do not know if it is as great as it is commonly touted to be.

Rating:
Summary: An overlooked historical event of importance
Review: This book has so many things going for it. Outside of giving a detailed account of the Paris Peace Conference in the summer of 1919, I learned a great deal about the history of a number of European countries, their relevance toward the war and the Peace Conference (raise your hand if you knew that Armenia had something to do with World War I), as well as many of the key players' personalities and conflicts that they had to reconcile not only within themselves, but for their countries.

I was really taken aback by how many of the decisions by the Paris Peace Conference (ie. "The Big Three," after Japan and Italy were more or less muscled out, of the United States, Great Britain, and France) still resonate today. For example, the decision to move Israelis to Palestine (where there was supposedly, "more land than the Arabs could populate.") and how one diplomat characterized the move as a "great experiment." It is really incredible to think of the power the three heads of each country (Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau) had, not to mention the delicate and potentially dangerous risks they had to balance.

Macmillan does a wonderul job of making potentially dull material interesting. She writes of how the French, eager to bury the Germans no matter what the cost, made sure that the Germans' train ride to Paris (through the heart of Europe and her WWI battlefields and shattered towns) was ridiculously slow in order to allow the Germans to see what "they" had done to Europe. In addition, the French made sure the Germans' signing of the Treaty of Versailles was indeed a most humiliating experience.

An additional incentive to read this book is that I honestly learned more about the actual battles and goings on of World War I through this book than many other dryly written books on the war itself (see John Keegan's "The First World War"). We learn of many independent treaties signed between European countries prior to the war that not only played a part during choosing war alliances, but also in deciding what land should go to who and why after the war was over.

There were two main problems among many other minor ones that weighed on "the Big Three": because Germany was never really "defeated" in World War I (they signed an armistice on November 11, 1918), what was the proper punishment? Should the Allied forces militarily go into Germany and bury the country to the point where they couldn't become a future threat, or should they impose incredibly harsh "peace" sanctions on Germany regarding war reparations, loss of land, and a significant loss of munitions. Obviously, The Big Three opted for the latter. The other problem The Big Three had was that it was hard to draw nation-state boundaries when natives, nationalities, and religions were so spread out throughout Europe. As a result, major European countries (Germany, for example) were forced to deal with minorities that could not be geographically placed, and the result often lead to anti-semitism, extreme nationalism, and death or oppression for many.

The only difference I had with the book was in its conclusion. Macmillan's purpose is to show that the results and the mismanagement of the Peace Conference could not have led to World War II as some historians have claimed. To take on that thinking, Macmillan writes, would be to disregard every move from a diplomat, politician, ambassador, etc. etc. from 1919 to 1939. And while I agree with this assertion, I cannot agree entirely with her claim that had Germany been appeased by "The Big Three" and some of the more harsh penalties not been imposed on the Germans (such as war reparations), that Hitler still would have come to power and carried out his ideas for Germany. From all that I have learned about post-WWI Germany, Hitler's coming to power was a direct result of anger on behalf of the German people due to the harsh "peace" sanctions of the Treaty of Versailles. If you take away essentially what the Treaty of Versailles was attempting to do through its peace sanctions- if you appease Germany - I am led to believe that the German people would have been less inclined to provide a young, angry Adolf Hitler the political platform to stand on. The German people believed the Treaty to be incredibly unfair- and maybe it was - but if you take out the heart of what it was trying to do then, in my opinion, you take out the heart of Hitler's argument (and propaganda) he presented to the German people. Just an opinion.....

A very well-written book whose subject, though nearly eighty-five years behind us, still holds shocking relevance today. While reading this book I often thought of the circumstances some historical figures are put in and the incredible ramifications of how one (or in this case, three) man's decisions can effect millions. I also thought of how different the Conference (indeed, the world) might look today had Teddy Roosevelt represented the United States instead of Woodrow Wilson.

An interesting side-note that you may overlook (located in her bio) is that Macmillan is the great-grand daughter of Great Britain's Lloyd George.