Posted on 02/23/2020 2:36:53 PM PST by NRx
Thank You
I don’t think that Versaille applied to the former Hapsburg Empire. Versaille was a treaty with Germany alone.
There were two other treaties that were for Austria and Hungary. The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the Treaty of Trianon.
Joseph Haydn’s composition from 1797 was adopted as the national anthem of Austria.
If you haven't read "DREADNOUGHT", by Robert K. Massie, I suggest that you do. Also, there are some fine books about the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Emperor Franz Joseph. If you'd like those titles, just drop me a FRmail note.
EXACTLY; Wilson was a “babe-in-woods”, in the Paris arena. Clemenceau and Lloyd George were the authors of the disasters that were yet to come.
Fall of Eagles - Great Series!
And whenever I see Patrick Stewart, I always think of him as Lenin.
Ok like I said - no historian am I.
“Wilson was too sick by then.”
And he suffered a massive stroke soon after returning to the United States from the Paris Peace Conference.
This stroke was kept hidden from the American public. His wife and Colonel House ran the Wilson Presidency for the last year and a half. FDR’s hidden polio infirmity pales by comparison.
Since the war reparations KILLED the German and its allies’ economies,though the later treaties hurt too, it all really began in Paris. And that was on top of the early onset of the world wide Depression, which began in the early 1920s and which Coolidge save American from being pitched into. Also, his put down of the police strike, in 1920, stopped the roiling here,unlike the many strikes in the UK.
SPOT ON!
You probably know “The Riddle of the Sands”. Either the movie or the prophetic 1903 book it’s based upon.
WWI is an obscure history to most people. Even 100 years later there’s no real agreement on why it erupted.
If you like to read Barbara Tuchman’s “The Guns of August” is excellent. She was an amateur historian and a very good writer.
I still believe had Britain, and subsequently America, stayed out of the fray in WWI, the world would have been much better off.
“Since the war reparations KILLED the German and its allies’ economies,though the later treaties hurt too, it all really began in Paris. “
John Maynard Keynes, whom most freepers think was a socialist although he wasn’t, was at the Paris Peace Conference and he immediately saw that the Reparations plan was setting up a disaster.
He first came to public attention with a little book about it titled “The Economic Consequences of the Peace” which essentially was a warning that the reparations were impossible for Germany to perform; not “too hard”, but rather “cannot be done”.
Reparations were probably to blame for the enormous inflation that plagued the postwar Weimar Republic. This impoverished the German middle class, embittered the German people, and left them receptive to the angry, vengeance seeking speeches of one Adolph Hitler.
Yes, I do.
“I still believe had Britain, and subsequently America, stayed out of the fray in WWI, the world would have been much better off.”
There’s some well respected historians who share that view.
Russia has a historic connection with the people of the Balkans so they were going to come to their defense when Austro-Hungary attacked. Germany apparently had been secretly egging on Austro-Hungary.
France and Britain joined in because of alliances with Russia. Beware of entangling alliances.
It seemed back then that a Britain-Germany alliance would have made more sense, but Britain was suspicious of Germany’s rise.
But were the Germans all that much worse than Britain’s traditional enemy, France? Why the sudden love affair between Britain and France? I guess the two neighborhood bullies, couldn’t stand having a new bully on the block.
In the years prior to the war Germany had begun building a blue water navy which Britain took as a direct challenge. This naval arms race is considered one of the causes of “The Great War”.
Thank you.
The reparations, though there were other things as well, set off the onslaught of the coming world wide Depression. And yes, it was impossible for Germany and its allies to meet those demands. And then there was the Sykes-Picot mess, conjured up in the very midst of WW I!
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