by Morton Mcinvale

Created on: June 18, 2009

Whether viewed in the light of history, in the passion of 1919, or in the retribution of Nazi Germany a generation later, the Treaty of Versailles was not simply unfair - it would prove to be one of the most cataclysmic "mistakes" in diplomatic history. To even label it a "peace" treaty is stretching the bounds of credibility.

During the six months between Armistice Day and the final signing of the Treaty of Versailles, untold millions of women and children would perish - the young and the old - throughout Central Europe while the Allied Blockade remained in force, preventing food from reaching a starving populace that spread far beyond Germany. In the throes of this starvation and the great influenza epidemic, Bolshevik revolution spread from the Volga to the Elbe. Despite impassioned pleas from (of all people) British generals who could not stomach the site of starving children, American journalists, and countless others, the Allies held the blockade like a gun over the head of a broken Germany until she would submit to the terms of the Treaty. Nor did the representatives of Germany have input into the Treaty or even know of its exact terms until presented to them as an ultimatum. Should Germany not accept, the Allies would invade (and, in fact, did begin invading before the terms were finally signed at the last hour).

One of the greatest tragedies of the Treaty of Versailles is that - at least in the eyes of President Woodrow Wilson - it offered the hopes for a fresh new solution to the old ways of war. . .and held out the possibility of making this truly "A war to end all wars." Wilson's messianic dreams were rooted in his Fourteen Points, which included peace without victors or losers and self-determination of peoples. Sadly, the Treaty of Versailles, Woodrow Wilson, the Fourteen Points, and America's rejection of the peace reflect a long tradition of American naivety in foreign politics continuing to the present. "Woodrow Wilson thinks he is Jesus," said French Premier Georges Clemenceau unkindly. Perhaps Wilson was a new messiah, but when it came to practicalities he was a babe in the woods. . .the woods of a Europe he would never understand.

"There are old wrongs to be righted," Clemenceau commented. There were ancient hates, fears, the all too fresh memory of the millions butchered on the front, the landscape scarred, the demands of revenge. And while revolution marched across the eastern and central part of Europe, the blockade continued,

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