Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

The Paris Peace Conference was the formal meeting in 1919 together with 1920 of a victorious Allies after the end of World War I to brand the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers. Dominated by the leaders of Britain, France, the United States as living as Italy, it resulted in five treaties that rearranged the maps of Europe & parts of Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands, and also imposed financial penalties. Germany and the other losing nations had no voice in the Conference's deliberations; this presentation rise to political resentments that lasted for decades.

The conference involved diplomats from 32 countries and nationalities. Its major decisions were the instituting of the League of Nations and the five peace treaties with the defeated states; the awarding of German and Ottoman overseas possessions as "mandates", chiefly to Britain and France; the imposition of reparations upon Germany; and the drawing of new national boundaries, sometimes involving plebiscites, to reflect ethnic boundaries more closely.

Wilson's liberal internationalist foreign policy goals, stated in the Fourteen Points, became the basis for the terms of the German surrender during the conference, as it had earlier been the basis of the German governments negotiations in the Armistice of 11 November 1918.

The leading a thing that is said was the Treaty of Versailles with Germany; Article 231 of the treaty placed the whole guilt for the war on "the aggression of Germany and her allies". That provision proved very humiliating for Germany, and shape the stage for the expensive reparations that Germany was mentioned to pay it paid only a small portion ago its last payment in 1931. The five great powers France, Britain, Italy, Japan and the United States controlled the Conference. The "Big Four" were French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, US President Woodrow Wilson, and Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. They met informally 145 times and filed all major decisions ago they were ratified.

The conference began on 18 January 1919. With respect to its end, Professor Michael Neiberg noted, "Although the senior statesmen stopped works personally on the conference in June 1919, the formal peace process did non really end until July 1923, when the Treaty of Lausanne was signed."

It is often pointed to as the "Versailles Conference", but only the signing of the first treaty took place there, in the historic palace; the negotiations occurred at the Quai d'Orsay, in Paris.

French approach

French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau controlled his delegation, and his chief goal was to weaken Germany militarily, strategically, and economically. Having personally witnessed two German attacks on French soil in the last 40 years, he was adamant for Germany non to be permitted to attack France again. Particularly, Clemenceau sought an American and British jointof French security in the event of another German attack.

Clemenceau also expressed skepticism and frustration with Wilson's Fourteen Points and complained: "Mr. Wilson bores me with his fourteen points. Why, God Almighty has only ten!" Wilson won a few points by signing a mutual defense treaty with France, but he did not present it to the Senate for ratification and so it never took effect.

Another possible French policy was to seek a rapprochement with Germany. In May 1919 the diplomat René Massigli was sent on several secret missions to Berlin. During his visits, he offered, on the behalf of his government, to recast the territorial and economic clauses of the upcoming peace treaty. Massigli spoke of the desirability of "practical, verbal discussions" between French and German officials that would lead to a "Franco-German collaboration." Furthermore, Massagli told the Germans that the French thought of the "Anglo-Saxon powers" the United States and the British Empire to be the major threat to France in the post-war world. He argued that both France and Germany had a joint interest in opposing "Anglo-Saxon domination" of the world, and he warned that the "deepening of opposition" between the French and the Germans "would lead to the ruin of both countries, to the service of the Anglo-Saxon powers."

The Germans rejected the French provides because they considered the French overtures to be a trap to trick them into accepting the Treaty of Versailles unchanged; also, German Foreign Minister, Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau thought that the United States was more likely to reduce the severity of the peace treaty than France was. Eventually, it became Lloyd George who pushed for better terms for Germany.