The second-last episode on the Treaty of Versailles 1919 is about Keynes’s critique of the treaty, the Economic Consequences of the Peace. What he got right, what he got wrong, critics of him at the time, and the impact of his book on the way the Interwar period unfolded.
Tag: Interwar
Treaty of Versailles 12: German, English, American critics
Was the treaty too hard on Germany? German, English, and American reactions after 1919.
Treatyof Versailles 11: Ataturk wins again
Details of how Ataturk foiled the imperialists’ final plans to partition Anatolia. Once he secured Turkey, he modernized it and it became a model that other Central Asian countries tried to emulate (with varying degrees of success). Here’s why this secular leader is still revered in Turkey a century later.
Civ 1919 – Treaty of Versailles 10: England gives Palestine to the Zionists
On November 2, 1917, England’s foreign secretary sent a letter to an English Baron, declaring that the land of Palestine, which was in the process of being taken militarily from the Ottoman Empire by England, would be given to the Jewish people as their homeland. Known to history as the Balfour Declaration, the first draft was written by its recipient, Rothschild, and maneuvered by the Zionist movement’s secretary Chaim Weizmann. One Christian Palestinian warned in 1917 that “Politically, a Jewish State in Palestine, will mean a permanent danger to a lasting peace in the Near East.” How the British Empire and the Zionist movement, in the face of anti-Zionist dissent and objections on grounds of self-determination, set the region up for more than a century of war and the current genocide.
Civ 1919: Treaty of Versailles 9 – Carving up the Ottoman Empire
Mustafa Kemal foils the Great Powers’ plan to carve up Anatolia, but they do tear up the Arab lands. The fate of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, where local elites’ belief in the Fourteen Points were crushed by the Powers as they set the table for Zionism and neocolonial mandates.
Civ 1919: Treaty of Versailles 8 – Greece negotiates too well
The story of Greece’s negotiator Eleutherios Venizelos, and how his success at negotiating sowed the seeds of future disasters.
Civ 1919: Treaty of Versailles 7 – Japan and China
Japan takes a stand on the principle of racial equality, but it’s a non-starter with the white powers. The Japanese insist, and ultimately yield so they can take a piece of China.
Civ 1919: Treaty of Versailles 6: Italy leaves
Italy joined the allies late and wanted a lot of Yugoslavia. The dress rehearsal for Mussolini, Gabriele d’Annunzio, gathers Argonauts and makes a big move. Another seed of the next war planted at the conference in Paris 1919.
Civ 1919: Treaty of Versailles 5 – Eastern Europe
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Hungary’s fates are decided at the conference in Paris in 1919.
Civ 1919: Treaty of Versailles pt4 – Germany
The Anglo-Americans blamed the Germans for World War I, and won. Now they would impose terms. But if they sought too high an indemnity, Germany’s economy would collapse and they would never pay. If they helped Germany rebuild, what kind of punishment would that be? In the end, the Allies chose a path that guaranteed the next war.