Political Crossfire Forums

[MLBrandow]

I'm doing a research paper on this subject and about how it impacted the events that led to WWII. I'm concentrating on those effects and why/how Britain, France and Italy tried to prevent U.S. from working its way into the Treaty.

Any helpful advice on the subject or general thoughts about how I might best construct my paper would be very appreciated.

Or if you just want to discuss this subject, I'd be all for that as well.

[thundertaker]

France wanted to punish Germany both for WWI, and the Franco-Prussian war, and wanted to cripple Germany so that she could never threaten France ever again. Britain also to a lesser extent wanted to punish Germany and exact reperations, but also wanted a strong trading partner for the future, so was not quite as keen to utterly destroy Germany as France was. Italy for her part was disgruntled that she had sacrificed so much and got little in the way of territorial concessions in return.
Clemanceau of France was the main driving force behind the punitive terms of the ToV. He had seen his country ravaged twice within his lifetime by the Germans. The Germans had humiliated France in 1871 by exacting 5 billion francs in reparations, seizing Alsace-Lorraine, marching through Paris in a victory parade, and to add insult to injury, proclaim the foundation of the second Reich at the Palace of Versailles.
The French also paid the heaviest price in terms of lives lost, and the British and Italians also suffered heavily as a result of the war. The Americans on the other hand, could afford to feel more magnanimous towards the defeated Germans. She had come in late and suffered compartively little. A far lesser proportion of her population was mobilised for war, and of those, only 8% of American soldiers who fought in the First world war became casualties, compared to 26% in Italy, 44% in Britain and a massive 75% in France.
The sheer scale of the casualties of the European powers meant that almost every family had suffered loss as a result of the conflict, and this would only have served to increase popular pressure to make germany pay for the war they were perceived to have started.

http://europeanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/blww1castable.htm

America also gained economic prosperity as a result of the war (by filling the gap left in international trade by other nation's merchant navies having to concentrate on supplying the home nations with essential war materials, and also by supplying the allied nations with many of those materials), and her territory had remained untouched. Unlike the other European powers whose economies suffered greatly as a result of the war, France's in particular, who also suffered devastation on her home territory were most of the fighting took place on the western front.
Consequently, it would have been difficult for the leaders of European nations to get away with treating Germany too leniantly. Unfortunatly, the harsh terms would contribute towards a desire for revenge amongst the germans similar to what the French had experianced after the Franco-Prussian war, and this sense of humiliation contributed towards driving the people of germany into the hands of those who promised to make Germany great again....

Hope this helps. Good look with your paper....

[MLBrandow]

I'm really trying to narrow my paper down to a specific aspect of the U.S. involvement in the ToV. I'm not allowed (for the purposes of this paper) to argue what may or may not have happened, but mostly just have to detail a recount of the facts.

I originally was going to do the discussions on incorporation of Wilson's 14 points, but my professor said it wasn't a very good idea since most of them weren't used.

Any ideas?