also at 6:00 p.m. on american artifacts, a look at women, using artifacts from the selection in 1917 to stories about margaret j. smith, claire booth a booth. watch this weekend on c-span3. >> historian margaret mcmillin is the author of paris, 1919, six months that changed the world. next she examines the 1919 paris peace conference which sought to hammer out a peace treaty for world war i and the difficulties in reaching an agreement that satisfied all participating nations' territorial claims and adequately punish germany for its war-time actions. the world war i museum hosted the talk as part of the annual symposium last november.

>> good evening, ladies and gentlemen. what a day. a terrific event that we've had so far and thank you for being with us and i know there's a lot of excitement and thank you for taking time to be here. we are so delighted to have professor margaret mcmillin with us, and it really is a delight. thank you so much for traveling to be with us in this important conversation and who else but to help us with that is better equipped than margaret mcmillin an emeritus professor at oxford and professor of history in toronto. she serves in a varied role and more recently at the imperial war museum. may i offer that we are second only here at the national world

war i museum to the imperial war museum in terms of history they began collecting in 1917 and we began collecting in 1920, and we are furthy delighted that they're having their world war ii galleries reinstalled by the gallery designers of the national world war i museum and memorial. so they are very wise, i might say. margaret's research specializes in british imperial history and the international history of the 19th and 20th centuries and she's written many publications and books. i don't want to list those. one of which is particularly pertinent to the conversation tonight is paris 1919, six months that changed the world impeach which really puts her in a position of authority to have

the conversation with us this evening. she's been awarded distinguished prizes and award and she has the 2015 lectures on war and humanity which explore the tangled history of war and society and our complicated feelings toward it and those who fight which is sure to save the course that ladies and gentlemen, in the presence of a historical rock star tonight from '75 to 2002, dr. mill inwas a part of the history department in toronto where she also served as chair. she's a member of the royal society of literature and serves on various boards and editorial groups that focus on history and world war i studies, honorary college at oxford and has received recognition from a

number of honorary doctor ats. and he was arrested in the order of canada which for americans, that's sort of the very distinguished a board. and in 2016, she was appointed as a companion of the order of canada. 2018, the queen's new years honors list was appointing her the service for hire education history and the international affairs which in commonwealth countries is sort of a big deal. >> after professor mcmillin has given her lecture there will be an opportunity for question and answers and laura will facilitate that, and we have some microphones and we would invite you as we have in other sessions to frame your questions and, and laura will help facilitate that. it was almost five years ago

this we had the honor of welcoming dr. milwaukee into the auditorium stage. once again, we had the opportunity to do so again and as i say, we couldn't be more pleased and the excitement surrounding the keynote is evident when they started to gather here and it's culpable. if you haven't read "1919, what changed the world" i would encourage you. in fact the bookstore tomorrow will be open and you might want to take a copy with you. tonight, she'll expound on that topic and the research that she has undertaken and present the thesis of her argument. ladies and gentlemen, please join with me in welcoming our esteemed keynote speaker, dr. margaret mcmillin. [ applause ] that was extremely kind. thank you.

the commonwealth sticking together. it was much too kind, but thank you very much for that introduction. many thanks to the war museum for inviting me back again. this is my third visit here and i've enjoyed every one and i tell everyone that they must come to kansas city, and it's almost becoming a family thing and my colleague was here last fall and be careful the rest of the family might be following along. we've both been so enthusiastic. this is a good time, a hundred years later and anniversaries can be useful in taking stock in looking back and what happened at the end of the first world war as the whole of the first world war is something that has shaped the history of the 20th century and also shaped the world in which we live and so i think it's quite useful to use anniversaries to think about what that means and what those great events of the past meant

and what that might mean for us today and i think it's quite right that in your title you put 1919 piece question mark because there is a view widely shared that what happened in paris in 1919, this was the great peace conference that was summoned to wind up the first world war and try and set a structure for a lasting peace in the world after 1919. what happened in paris in 1919 has often been blamed for the outbreak of the second world war. there is a very simple version of history which is that the statesman and they were all pretty much men in those days and the statesmen met in paris in 1919 and they made such a mess of things that europe simply moved down a tramway with no escape to 1939. i, myself, find that much too simple and my short answer to people who say doesn't 1919 lead directly to 1939 is what was

everyone doing in those 20 years? an awful lot can happen in 20 years, and i think europe and the world faced many choices in that period. perhaps the most single influential book in creating that view of 1919 as the doomed piece attempt that set in motion the events that led to 1939 is the book by john maynard haines, the great economist who in 1919 was not yet so well known, but was very arrogant and very self-confident young man. i should point out he went to cambridge university. [ laughter ] so we are not surprised by that. he was in paris as an economic adviser to the british delegation and he got fed up with what he felt were the mistakes they were making. and he's going through something of a personal crisis in his life

and he, and in the summer of 1919 and wrote a book, and it's a very successful pol emic and it's transmitted, and it has a dull title and it's called the economic consequences of the piece and if you read the piece and i'm sure some of you have and it is condemning everything that is going on in paris. let me read you of it to give you a flavor. paris was a nightmare and it was morb morbid. a sense of catastrophe overhung the scene. the futility of the great events confronting him and the mingled significance and reality of the decisions, levity, insolence, all of the elements of ancient tragedy were there and the statesmen he claimed in this book were hypocritical or spell

binders and engaged in empty and arid intrigue. the treaty of versailles, the treaty with germany which was probably the most difficult one of all to set the template for the other treaties and the treaty of versailles said cane, was dishonorable, ridiculous and injurious. he wrote devastating portraits of the three key statesmen who were at the center of the decisions being made in paris. the french prime minister, he portrayed as an ancient and angry ape who sat ins this chair with hooded eyes thinking only of revenge. woodrow wilson, the american president he portrayed as a booby, someone like in one of those games that children play in england you call it blind

man's bluff and you put a scarf over their eye and you spin them around and he describes him being naive and foolish being spun around by the europeans. the british prime minister he portrayed as half man and half goat who came out of the welsh mist with no sense of moral sense whatsoever. his mother made him take some of the ruder passages out. [ laughter ] but this was a powerful piece of work and has set a picture ever since as what happened in paris as being futile and worse than futile, dangerous, condemning europe to the second world war. i will not deny not all of the decisions in paris were good. they did make mistakes, i think, in the division of the arab territories of the middle east and their treatment of the ottoman empire, i think, for example. the powers i met in paris showed a carelessness and short sightedness which has really

caused problems for much of the 20th century. so not all they did was good and i don't want to defend everything that happened there, but i want to say that what we need to do is try and understand what it was we were dealing with, what we have to ask ourselveses is wh ourselves is what would we do if we were in that position. it's easy to look at the past and said they should have known that there was a young corporal called adolf hitler that would seize on the treaty of versailles to use his nazis to come to power. when we think about history is what people actually had to deal with at the time. how much power did they have? what constraints did they have? what obstacles did they face? what is it that they were actually dealing with? >> and i think we need to look at the paris peace conference as a conference which came at the end of a great catastrophe and try and understand just what the

circumstances of that conference were what i'd like to do is ending wars because it is never easy because the level of destruction has been very high. apart from anything else, the greater the war, the greater the expectations and the greater desire that someone or something should pay for what happened and this was certainly the case at the end of the first world war. the world had shocked europe and indeed it shocked most of the world partly because the 19th century had been such a very good century for europe. europe has known terrible wars in its history, most centuries have been marked by dreadful wars in europe and the 19th century was one of the most peaceful and prosperous and progressive centuries in european history, perhaps the most peaceful, prosperous and progressive that europe had ever known.

there had been a number of short wars after the napoleonic wars ended in 1915, but those wars were short and usually fought between two countries like the franco-prussian war and europeans had begun to think by the beginning of the 20th century that they had somehow changed and their world had changed and that they would go on living in a peaceful world and they would go on living peaceful on and progressive and societies and this was going to spread around the world. we look back and see how foolish that was and this is something that many people in europe, the thinking before 1914 which made the shock of the first world war all the greater. european, after four years of war, a war which they had hoped would be short and decisive and after four years of a dreadful war they looked back and looked at the lives that have gone. 9 million men, possibly more, we

will never know quite how many people died and mostly it was men in the first world war, the loss of human potential, the loss of human talent and the money that had gone and the distraction that had been gone and the empires that had gone. three great empires disappeared as a result and the fourth disappeared after ward. russia which was an empire as well as the state fell to pieces in the course of the russian revolution. austria, hungary, that huge multinational empire in the center of europe which for better or worse had created a stability down through the centuries fell to pieces as the world was ending and germany and many polish land his fell to pieces as an empire in the world war. and the ottoman empire was going to clearly be falling to pieces and going to disappear, as well and so it was a very different political and social landscape that the europeans looked at in 1918 than they had seen in 1914,

and they'd done something more to themselves and they had shaken their position in the world. before 1914, europe had been the most powerful part of the world. dreb directly or indirectly, they had controlled most of the sur fats of the world. european finance was what you needed if you wanted to build anything. if you wanted fashion, if you wanted ideas you came to europe. by 1918 the europeans no longer had the sense that the civilization was in some way superior. the war, in addition to all of the other things it had done shaken european confidence in themselves tremendously. paul valerie, the great french writer said something is broken and we will never be quite the same again and we'll be like the empires of the past that disappeared and names that mean nothing like babylon, and we now know what it will be like to go into the abyss of history. when that war ended there was a

sense of doom. a sense of fear. a sense of apprehension and also, i think, a worry that the war was ended, but fighting hadn't ended and fighting went on in much of the middle east until the mid-1920s. there was also fear that the social upheavals which had taken place in russia were going to spread wecstward and that perhas they were going to be swept away and that was part of the atmosphere in which the peace conference met. what also, i think, affected, and that put tremendous pressure and they worried that unless they sorted things out soon, things might get much worse that unless they dealt with some of the pressing issues in europe, they would see revolution and more upheaval. what also, i think, put pressure on the peace makers were their own publics and this was a conference that was mostly engaged in by democratic powers and politicians were having to

think about what their publics wanted and what their publics demanded and they were having to think of the next election. at the congress of vienna which had taken place to wind up the napoleonic wars that was not something that the peacemakers there had to worry about. they represented oligarchies and monarchies and they had very few people to answer to and so the pressure from outside on them was much less than what they were going to be to be in paris and what the public wanted was not always compatible. the publics wanted partly on the winning side someone to pay and someone to take responsibility for the war. the french felt very strongly about this and often in the literature, we need to remember that the french had been invaded twice by german forces in the lifetimes of many people including clement himself and

very nasty battles had been fought on french soil and french had been defeated and had to pay a large fine indeed in french occupation. germany had declared war on fronts and in 1914 and the french didn't start the first world war with germany. the germans started it with france and most of the war on the western front was on french soil and belgian soil. the war wasn't fought on belgian soil. many of you have been to the western front. you can still see the damage. the damage this been done to belgium and france. belgium was stripped bare of much of its agriculture and much of its wealth. belgium historians will tell you that belgium has never really recovered from the first world war. they were the first industrialized parts of france. something like 40% of french

productive capacity was publicly destroyed in the fighting in the first world war and french minds were destroyed and french railways and bridges and you can understand why the french public looked over at germany which was largely unoccupied and largely unscathed by the war where it had not suffered that damage and looked at germany and why should we pay to do the damage and to pay for the damage that germany has done to us and so did the american public. the american president woodrow wilson was worried on what was the vehement anti-german feeling he was encountering among the american public and the pressure that he felt to inflict the harsh and attributed peace on germany. the allied publics wanted someone to pay and they looked at germany and thought germany was the proper country to pay. they had fallen into pieces and it was no longer an empire and only a tiny austria and hungary with other countries which

didn't see themselves as being on the losing side. the on themttoman empire wasn't to pay, but germany was and there was a desire on the publics which put real pressure on the states men in paris toic ma up for the damage of the war, but at the same time, you also had a willingness and a longing around publics and it was not just the allied publics and it was also on the defeated side and it was in the wider world and it was in asia and it was in africa and it was in australia and north america and a desire that out of this dreadful war that had caused such damage and suffering which consequences were clearly and momentous that out of this war, something better should come and so what allied publics and other publics also wanted was a new world, a new world order and a new peaceful order and some sorts of institutions or ways of doing things that would prevent the world from ever having a war like this again and this was not easy for the statesman to deal

with and they were pushed in different directions and of course, they had to think of their own national interests. it's a ca common place and the very important one where you have a number of countries fighting together and the coalitions tend to fall apart once peace is achieved. nations will come together in a great cause to save themselves from destruction or to defeat an enemy or to conquer other nations and once they've achieved their goals they began to think of their own interests and the coalitions began to fall to pieces and we saw that very clearly at the end of the first world war and at the end of the second world war and inevitably, the powers that met in paris began to think of their own interest. it is french were thinking of recompense and their own security. if you were french you knew that germany was still strong. it was just there on the other side of your borders. there were more germans being born every year than there were french being born which meant

there were more german soldiers and you wanted protection from germany as much as you wanted germany to pay for the war damage. what the british wanted was an end to the german fleet which had caused it so much concern because when the germans signed are the armistice which was more of a surrender than the armistice, they had surrendered the submarine fleet and both were in british ports and parts of the british empire were part of the colony and they had gotten a hold of those before it started ask so the british, unlike the french could come to the peace conference not asking for all that much for themselves and they were able to portray themselves as being less selfish and less grasping than the french were, and then you had the united states and its president and american diplomats said very clearly the united states has not come into this war and it very pointedly called

itself an associate and not an ally to show it was somehow different from the european powers and what the united states wanted was a better world. having said that the united states was also conscious of its newfound, economic and financial power and military power and wanted a greater stay and inevitably you get different national goals and different national interests, but also, i think, was putting pressure on the peacemakers and there were many pressures on them and there was a sense that time was not on their side and it was going to run out and there's a very real sense which i mentioned on revolution simply spreading through and they had very real evidence and hungary had its communist government for six months in 1919. there were communist and left-wing insurrections in italy in the center of europe and there was a strike in winnipeg of all places and canadians tend

not to get involved in revolutionary activity, but we had a general strike which concerned a lot of people because it had radical rhetoric and was clearly inspired by what was happening in russia and so there was a fear that the world was on the edge of revolution and another pressure that the peace mas peacemakers faced that they were on the edge of starvation. they found themselves having to act like government in ways they never intended and the conditions were disastrous when austria and hungary and others fell to pieces and economic units fell to pieces and vienna which used to get its call from the north and used to get wheat from the east suddenly had barriers because there was poland and czechoslovakia there and new borders were put up and there was now a much larger romania and an independent hungary which is where they once got their things and it became

more difficult to get the things that the viennese economy needed to survive and the red cross which was doing relief as other organizations were in vienna in the winter of 1918 and 1919 said that people were starving there and they were seeing illnesses among children which they had never expected to see in europe and their life times, illnesses caused by lack of food things like rickets which they associated with much poorer countries and there was a sense that they had to take on these responsibilities. they had to move quickly and what was also happening is that they were dealing with very powerful forces. the first world war did not end and did not suddenly result and did not end fighting and it did not result in peace. in addition to the forces of revolutionary socialism which were very strong. these were forces that people would get out into the streets for and fight and die for and very difficult to contain. the other force that they were dealing with was a game we heard this afternoon was nationalism and nationalism, ethnic

nationalism in particular in the center of europe whether it was beginning to spread further afield through the caucuses were these emotions and feelings which people are prepared to die for and prepared to get out and fight for, and the fall of the empires meant that different ethnic groups who had been pushing like the czechs for greater autonomy saw as one of them put it the prison doors had opened and they could establish their own countries. they thought, if we don't do it now, it was a bit like what happened after 1989. things will calm down again and we won't have a chance to get our own countries. you had ethnic nationalisms trying to mark themselves on the map of europe and elsewhere and poland was reconstituting itself. the peace conference recreated poland, they were in fact making themselves on the ground often through fighting with their

neighbors. one of the difficulties of the ethnic nationalisms which began appearing and began trying to create their own countries was that their claims overlapped because they based their claims on history and of course the ways that countries, borders had come in gone in the past meant that you had a choice of what sort of borders you want. but the trouble is, you would be choosing borders that incorporated land that somebody else wanted. in poland, there was a debate between those pols who said we should settle for a reasonable-sized poland, and there were others who said, no. and this caused trouble. this was going to be the source of a number of these small wars that were going to break out. and you can imagine what a country such as greece did. greece and italy went right back into the classical age and said, we want empires. the greeks looked at their maps and the prime minister looked at the maps from the classical age and said we once controlled the

coast of asia minor, all of those islands, istanbul, we controlled a whole swath around the black sea. that's what was happening in 1919 as people began to see the possibility of expanding their borders or reconstituting countries or creating new countries. and the final thing, and there were many other things. the final thing we have to remember when we think of what those statesmen were trying to deal with was that their own power was shrinking. these were representing very powerful countries, and some of the most powerful countries in the world were in paris and there were some 30 nations there, japan was there, china was there, thailand was there, a number of latin america countries were there, other european countries were there, countries which were becoming independent like my own country, canada where there. but the real power was with britain, france and the united states, italy and japan were seen as slightly junior partners. but that represented a lot of

power. but it wasn't unlimited. there's always a danger, i think, that powerful nations have that they look at their own power and they think they can do what they want. they think they can adjust the pieces on the maps. and the power that the allies actually had was shrinking. they had built massive armies and massive navies and the beginnings of air forces to fight the war. once the war ended and as far as allied publics were concerned, it ended in november 1918, once the war had ended, soldiers who had survived that war didn't want to go on fighting and they didn't want to be send to places they had never heard of or possibly afghanistan to fight the series of wars that were breaking out. and their families didn't want them there and their treasuries didn't want them there and so under -- the allies knew they could not afford to keep these vast forces in the field. what's more, they couldn't depend on them.

and soldiers and sailors said we want to go home. and so the capacity of the allies to actually influence what was happening was diminishing month by month, week by week, as the peace conference dragged on. by june 1919, when the question of the german treaty came on and whether or not germany would sign it, the allies and their military advisers were concerned about whether or not they would be able to enforce the treaty on germany if germany refused to sign it. that was another factor. they found increasingly that their capacity to do what they wanted, especially the further away the places were and the more difficult the communications were, was limited. there was a famous occasion when lloyd george was sitting around and there was fighting, i think if i'm right, between poland and check s other countries and they were starting to fight about it and

they said, lloyd george clemson said this is dreadful. and they called in the supreme allied commander and said, we have to do something. and he said, of course, tell me what to do. they said you have to get troops over there and stop them fighting. he said, absolutely, but i don't think i can do it because the railways aren't running and there's no way i can get troops over there. they all look at each other and george who was always optimistic said i have it. and they turned to him with a certain amount of hope, and he said we will send both sides extremely strong telegrams. [ laughter ] i'm trying to give a sense of what it was they were dealing with and the context that they were dealing with. and the world with which they were dealing. this was not a world that was easy to settle because things were changing very quickly. it was a world in which you have these forces, forces of

revolutionary socialism, forces of ethnic nationalism, publics which were putting terrific pressure on their governments which were pressured to do contradictory things. many of the books that are written on the paris peace conference tend to assume that there was a polish question constantly before the peacemakers or a bulgarian question before the peacemakers. but of course they were dealing with about ten different things a day or more and they were getting getting petitions and demands coming in. and so i think if they made mistakes, and of course, they made mistakes, it can at least partly be explained by the pressures under which they were dealing and by the range of problems with which they were dealing. the congress of vienna was much quieter by comparison and they had a very clear agenda and they were able to sit down with the

defeated nations. this is one of the great problems later on with the paris peace conference. one of the reasons the germans came to resent it so bitterly. there was no negotiation between the winners and the losers in paris. there was meant to be -- the allies thought they would have a peace conference on the lines of the congress of vienna or later congresses in europe and they thought they would meet briefly in paris in january of 1919. they called it a preliminary peace conference until they realized they had slipped over into the real thing. they came up with agreed terms. they would all sit down as they had done in vienna and hammer out a settle. it took them from january to may to get an agreement on their peace terms. there were so many issues and so many difficulties and so many moments when the peace conference looked like breaking up. at one point, the italians walked out because they weren't

getting everything they wanted. the chinese were threatening not to sign the treaty and didn't. the japanese were complaining and threatening to walk out. the belgians were saying they might walk out. by the time the allies actually agreed on the peace terms to be offered to germany, they didn't dare sit down with germany and reopen all of the discussions again. it was to be something that germany resented bitterly. but it had been so difficult to get to this point, they didn't risk doing it. and so what they did, they cobbled together by may a peace treaty. there was the treaty of versailles. it was probably the most difficult one. but the treaty of versailles which is one that most people remember and formed a template for the others and it's an odd treaty. it's 440 clauses. it was put together and no one actually read it through before they sent it to the printers. what you get is everything from

a very grand scheme, the first part of the treaty, the first section of the treaty is the league of nations. that was something woodrow wilson had insisted upon. the first part of the treaty is the covenant, the founding document of the league of nations which sets out how it's to be set up and then you get a whole section on reparations that germany was to pay, a section on disarmament that germany was meant to undertake. you get various other things about trying those who were guilty for starting the war, there was talk at some point about trying the kaiser and talk about sending him into exile like they had done with neapolitan. the british offered the falkland islands which would have been interested if he had gone there. in but in the end that i didn't happen. it was a treaty that encompassed a vision of a better world but also the punishment and the attempts to limit the power of

germany in the future. but it also contained very specific clauses. there was one clause which i remember about how the german museum in berlin must hand back the skull of an african chief. and so it was a grab bag into which foreign offices threw things that they had been brooding about for some time. it was understandable that the germans were not going to be pleased by the process or the treaty that they got. but the attempt, i think, to build a better world was a genuine one. it's often been said that woodrow wilson came with his vision of the league of nations to europe bearing this great gift of a promise of a better world and the europeans simply spurned it. that's like the portrait of the whole peace conference, simply not how it was. many europeans supported the league of nations. they knew very well what a war had done, many of them had

survived it, members of their families had died. and you could see, if you chose to, you could take a day trip north of paris and see what war had meant and seen just something of the destruction of war. and so i think a lot of europeans supported the league of nations every bit as much as americans did. and indeed many of the ideas in the league of nations came from things that europeans and others had been talking about before 1914. an attempt to build international law, an attempt to promote free trade and build a community of nations. these had been -- such things had been mentioned as far back as 100, 150 years previously. the great german philosopher had talked about a league of nations that would work together to make war impossible. i think the league was real in the support that it gained.

but it was not a treaty that that was going to satisfy germany. i think there were a number of reasons for this. and i don't think it was just that some of the treaty was unfair. there were things that germany rightly resented. it was supposed to sign a treaty setting up the league of nations which it wasn't going to be allowed to join, or at least not yet. it was not given a chance to negotiate the terms of the treaty. he handed the terms of the treaty to germany in late may 1919 and said, here you are. you have two weeks to look at them and you can put in any reservations in writing. there will be no negotiations. that i think the germans resented. if you look at what germany actually lost in that treaty, it did lose its fleets. it did lose its colonies. it had lost those by the time of the peace conference. it did lose territory in europe. mostly territory that was

inhabited by non-german speakers. you could also argue that germany came out of the first world war -- of course germans didn't feel this, that germany came out of the first world war in a stronger strategic position than before the first world war. there was no more common border between russia and germany. there was poland in between them and there was no austria/hungary which had been a rival to germany and had been a very uncertain ally. it had fallen to pieces. and so what had once worried the german high command and with reason, which was the power of russia to move troops up to the common border, that had a barrier between germany and russia. russia was plunged into a civil war. but part of the threat had been removed and instead of an

austria/hungary, there were a series of nations. what always matters i think is perception. and i think the germans were not going to accept pretty much any treaty that they were going to have to sign in 1919 and in the end, of course, they did sign it. because they didn't feel that they had lost the war and increasingly they came to feel that they hadn't started it either. perception is very important in human affairs and in international relations. the germans surrendered in 1918. if you look at the terms of the armistice, it is a ser runder. it's more than a cease-fire. in the armistice, germany lost all its heavy equipment. it lost its high seas fleets, it

lost its submarine fleet, aircraft, tanks, field artillery. as one german officer who was negotiating in that famous railway carriage said, could you please leave us a few machine guns. germany lost its capacity to make war. and german troops were obliged to evacuate and move back into germany. the high command and other supporters began to argue that germany hasn't lost and it shouldn't have signed the armistice. the high command in particular and hinden berg had established a military dictatorship by 1918 and they had kept the civilian government and the german public in the dark about how germany was doing on the battlefield. and germany by the summer of 1918 was doing very badly on the battlefield. it was beginning to fall back. german troops were increasingly

finding it difficult to fight on because they didn't have the equipment they needed. endless pleas from german officers in the field from german generals and so on for things like fuel, ammunition, for things like guns. german regiments, battalions were under strength and their numbers are being filled up by very young or very -- quite old men. germany was not able to fight on and the armies were retreating back and back and back. there was a series of defeats. and the high command actually suddenly turned to the civilian government and said, by the way -- they never admitted they were wrong. but they said, things aren't going all that well, can you get an armistice immediately? and so at the time the german high command recognized it was being defeated and wanted to salvage something out of this. the civilian government appealed

to woodrow wilson. he publicly with an exchange of notes they came to an agreement. and the armistice was signed. the high command switched its tune and said we could have fought on, it was the civilian government that didn't want to fight on. they began saying that they're traitors at home, we could have fought on. and very, very ominously he began and others of his supporters began to use the canard that germany was stabbed in the back. they could have fought on if it hadn't been for the civilians who are out demonstrating against an increasingly futile war and those enemies who had stabbed germany in the back were the socialists, the liberals and the jews and this was going to become part of the political rhetoric of the 1920s and into the 1930s. if you don't think you've lost

the war and that's increasing what german public opinion began to feel, you don't think the treaty is going to be fair. does anyone know someone who has gone to civil litigation in a court and has come out saying, the judge was fair, i lost. but it was right that i lost and i would have to pay a fine. germany, like anyone who loses, who doesn't feel that they should have lost, did not feel they'd lost the war. what also began to happen is increasingly germany and others came to feel that germany hadn't started the war. and the allies were clear in their own minds in paris in 1919 that germ aany and its allies started to create the war. certainly in the english-speaking countries, that maybe germany hadn't really started the war. maybe the war had been an accident or maybe the french had egged the russians on. and the germans -- not all germans, but the german foreign

ministry set up a special unit and funded organizations to attack the per vailing view that germany had started the war. they invited american academics to come and look at archives to show that germany wanted peace and the war had happened. by the end of the 1920s, the view in the english-speaking countries, the war had not been germany's fault. it had been no one's fault or everyone's fault. that undermined the treaty. it undermined the validity of the treaty. if germany hadn't lost the war, why should it be paying reparations, any form of -- any form of reckon pence for the war. and you get, i think, a treaty which the party that signs it doesn't want to sign it and you get the allies who should have been enforcing it, particularly britain and the united states not wanting to enforce it.

and i think that is what helped to make the situation so difficult. what you also got is allies who felt that they hadn't got everything they wanted, the ital italians who had joined hoping to get unification, came to call the peace a mutilated peace. and that helped to fuel mous mossaleni's rise to power. the british, the french and the americans, for their own reasons were going their separate ways. the united states didn't ratify the treaty and didn't join the league of nations and turned away from europe, understandably, and began to preoccupy itself more with what was going on in its own hemisphere and japan and asia. the british turned to their empire and began to turn their backs on europe and that left

the french who were left feeling defenseless and worried about their security who tried to find allies on the other side of state made germany feel surrounded and tended to reinforce the nationalistic feeling in germany. having said that, that it wasn't a perfect piece, and it left all sorts of bitterness behind it, i think we can also look at the 1920s and see there were signs of hope. we have seen the 1920s as a brief brooeathing space before e second world war. if they had loster, i think you could see real signs of hope. europe did get back onto an even footing. revolution was contained and the democracies proved to be more resilient than i think they and many others had thought. european production was back to what it had been before the

first world war and europeans were beginning to live reasonable and prosperous lives again. i didn't mean in every country. in germany there were memories of the inflation of the 1920s. the league of nations did come into existence. did not have the united states as a member, but nevertheless it got up and running and it began to set up a number of institutions which did indeed begin to do something to improve the international environment. the international labor organization, international health organizations, international organizations to try and deal with human slavery, many of which is still with us today, was set up in the 1920s and did make a good deal of progress and there was a lot of support for the league of nations around the world. and in the united kingdom there was a league of nation society which had 25 million members. this was something that i think people put a great deal of hope in. and the league also sponsored

disarmament conferences. there seemed to be progress in the 1920s towards dealing with some of the things that people felt had helped to cause the first world war. the washington naval conference was very important in averting a naval war in the pacific and countries agreed to limit the size of their battle ships and they're other naval craft and they agreed not to fortify certain islands. the league of nations sponsored big disarmament conferences in geneva which people hoped would move towards getting rid of some of the weapons and limiting some of the weapons. it was in 1928 seen as a great sign of hope that the united states and france came together to create something called the pact of paris named after the two men who created it in which those who signed on and eventually some 61 countries signed on, promised not to use war as an instrument of state. and so people really thought maybe we're making some progress

after the first world war setting up international organizations to dealing with the scourge of arms races and trying to move beyond that and outlaw war. germany settled down and became a participant in the international community. in 1925 it signed a series of agreements agreeing it would not try and change its borders in the west by force. it joined the league of nations. russia, at it remained a revolutionary power, began to behave like an ordinary power. you could see signs in the '20s that things were getting back to some sort of more stable order and maybe the world was moving beyond what had existed in 1914. i think the real problem to me is that in 1929 you had the beginnings of the great depression. i think without the great depression, without those years when production fell off, when world trade dwindled precipitously then millions of people were thrown off work, 25%

or more of the american labor force was thrown off work, what those years did was shake people's faith in capitalism and in democracy and it turned them in many countries towards more radical parties which promised easy and painless solutions. it turned them towards the radical parties of the left, the communists in particular, and the radical parties of the right. and so i think to look at the paris peace conference is something just to go back to my original point led to the second world war. we need to look at what happened in the 1920s and we need to look what happened with the great depression. we had a second world war, as we know, even more dreadful and more far-reaching than the first world war. we did get a sort of peace. we had no comprehensive peace settles. you could argue that big peace conferences are part of the

problem. what's also interesting is that the defeated nations were treated even worse than how they were treated after the first world war. they were obliged to surrender unconditionally because the allies didn't want any doubts this time about who had lost and why. both were occupied. both were treated harshly indeed. but we don't hear complaints about the settlements at the end of the second world war. we seemed to have moved on. what happened at the end of the first world war is seen as a very bad example. i'm not going to defend it all, but i would like to leave you with a question, are we any better at making peace today? thank you. [ applause ] [ applause ] know that you are used to a

ten-minute period of q&a, but you'll notice that it's a bit longer than that. i'm not going to keep to my normal scheduling for these things. there are two microphones down here. it's first come, first serve and we're looking forward to this continued conversation. >> you want to say a few words about bravarin separatist movement? >> there probably still is -- certainly they feel themselves to be different from the rest of germany and the seven states that went into making up modern germany did not come in willingly. prussia was the dominant one. and they felt they had very

little choice but to join in. and those states that came in did not come in necessarily willingly. they felt they had no alternative. and there was talk among the allies of reducing germany, again, to its component states after 1919. the french certainly thought this might be a good idea. but lloyd george, the british prime minister, said we had trouble -- german nationalism caused turmoil in europe before germany became united. if we divide germany up into its component parts, we will see the same thing happening again. even though you got a bravarian feeling, i think there was also a very strong german nationalism. i don't think separatism was that much of a force. they feel themselves to be different, but that's not the same as wanting to be independent again.

and german nationalism was a powerful force that affected all parts of germany. >> wonderful talk. i think it's a good point that you make about the great depression being a turning point, you know, in the evolution of thought in europe and elsewhere about the peace -- about everything. i'm wondering in our own era, we've seen trump, we've seen boris johnson, we've seen a turn towards nationalism and isolationism and i don't really see a big earth-shattering event like the great depression. i was wondering what you attribute this latest round of 1930-style nationalism and isolationism? >> we had something which could have been as earth-shattering and that was the 2008 financial crisis. and catastrophe was averted

because governments had learned from the great depression. it's interesting that ben bernanke who played a part in trying to negotiate the bailout of the banks had written his thesis on the great depression. it seems to be a good example of where history can be helpful. what they understand was that they couldn't -- they couldn't allow bankruptcies to take place. after lehman brothers, i think they realized this whole situation. they realized it had to be international. what went wrong with the great depression is that governments adopted national policies and any attempt to get an international agreement to deal with the great depression failed. and i think that made it much worse. what governments did is to protect their own industries and their own agricultural. they put up tariff barriers. which meant that world trade dropped off sharply indeed and everyone suffered. what i think we're seeing today is what was happening before the

first world war, globalization. the period before the first world war was a great period of globalization. it was a period in which people's moved around the world, money moved around the world, trade moved around the world, communications expanded. we think the internet is something extraordinary. think what telegraphs meant. you could find out what was happening on the other side of the world almost instantaneously. lovely maps of telegraph lines joining the world. it's extraordinary. it's a spider's web around the world. and that was important. but what it meant and i think this is what's been happening with globalization today, is in some ways, we benefit, we get cheaper goods. but those who made those goods in the past suddenly find they don't have jobs. and so in vienna, for example, small shopkeepers were thrown out of -- their businesses failed because there were big department stores and people liked going to big department

stores and shoe makers, tailors suddenly couldn't work and their livelihoods became meaningless. and what happens in vienna is happening elsewhere. but vienna is a good example. a lot of the people were dispossessed by globalization joined anti-semitic parties and they blamed -- the jews in europe got blamed for being too rich or too poor. they couldn't win. they were too poor and they came and took our jobs or they were too rich. in the same way, i think we're blaming immigrants today without necessarily understanding that they may not be the source of why these jobs are disappearing. and jobs were also disappearing through mechanicization and i think the world failed to realize that there's a great deal of public unhappiness. globalization was not good for everyone.

and there were parts -- we all know, we know that -- in the rust belt which includes parts of my own southern ontario, the people who had looked forward to satisfying jobs the rest of their lives didn't have them anymore and were scrambling to try to make ends meet. i think this is what was happening in europe before the first world war and i think it's what's happening now. when that sort of thing happens, people who come along with solutions are welcomed. there's nothing worse than having people saying, it's complicated and we can't do anything much. and so people come along with solutions tend to get support. these solutions are simplistic and are not going to work terribly well. but they seem to offer hope and the messages that people were offering or hitler were offering, it gave people confidence and they feel full of energy.

and it was very dangerous indeed. and in the case of -- you know, i think in the case of hitler, this is where i think sometimes the individual really does matter in history. i think if hitler -- this is a long-winded answer. if hitler had been killed in the first world war, the nazi party would have been different and what happened to the nazi party once it got into power would have been different. he still didn't have to get into power. i think we should remember this in our own times. the nazi share of the popular vote was going down by 1932 and they never had an outright majority. he was invited into power by right-wing industrialists and people around the president who thought they could use him. they thought he was someone who didn't know very much about anything. there was a class thing. he was a little corporal and

they invited him to become chancellor. there's a limerick about the lady who road on a tiger and ended up inside the tiger. they didn't know what they were dealing with. so i think the parallels with our own time are never exact. but i think the reaction to globalization is rather like what happened before the first world war and the concern -- or the looking for simple solutions and the blaming of others, it's easier -- we all find it easier to say, yes, i blame you for my problems rather than to say, well, it's a complicated situation, and that's i think what's dangerous about the trouble at the present time. not very cheery. >> thank you. i teach high school history, u.s. history and something i've noticed american textbooks tend to focus on is particularly the

war guilt clause. i was wondering how -- two-part question, how unprecedented that was for a treaty like this and secondly, how much of an impact it did have on germany because i think the textbooks and the way it's taught seems like that's the thing that created the stab in the back -- and everything like that. >> it lies at the heart of a lot of the controversy about the treaty of versailles. article 231 says germany and its allies accepts responsibilities for starting the war. i think the allies were implying guilt, but it never said it anywhere. and the other treaties contained similar clauses but they chose not to make a fuss about it. the clause was written by a young american lawyer who wanted to establish a legal basis for claiming reparations for

germany. john foster dulles was the young lawyer. and the second clause, article 232, says that germany's payments will depend on its capacity to pay. the figure was not set in the treaty which was something that germany resented. the argument was -- the argument was that they couldn't set a figure for german reparations. reparations were payments for damage done by the war and its allies. they couldn't set a figure for reparations until they had done a survey for all of the damage. and american engineers were trying -- how do you count --

how much do you count -- and britain had been -- and germany had been each other's biggest trading partners before the first world war. the war is over, we may not like the germans but we have to trade with them. and so it was a fudge. now, what the reparations were meant to do was pay for war damage. and there was a big argument among the allies about how you actually define war damage. the french and the belgians had clearly suffered the most damage and they had the greatest claim and the british then realized that this wasn't so good for them because they wouldn't get as much. it gets very complicated. but the british needed some funds because they had lent a lot of money to the french and the italians and the russians. and they had borrowed a lot of money for the americans. they had to pay back the money to the americans.

they were going to lean on the french and italians. no point in leaning on the russians because they had had a revolution. they put pressure on the french and italians to pay up their war debts which meant that the french and the belgians needed the reparations from germany even more. in then end, it got -- in the end, there was an arrangement by which the united states lent money to germany which then paid reparations to france and belgium which paid its war debts to britain which paid its war debts to the united states. the american point of view was, you borrowed the money, you pay it back. which you can understand. the idea that a defeated nation should pay something was not knew at all. if you look through history, defeated nations have paid huge fines. half of the treasures in the louvre were carried off by france.

it was expected. when the french were defeated by the german confederation in 1871, france was -- it was called an indemnity. it was more like a fine than reparations. so it was called an indemnity and the french had to pay a huge amount and pay the cost of a german army until they paid it. under one estimate, the french may have paid more proportionately -- in proportion to their economy than the germans ever paid in reparations. but the germans didn't want to pay reparations because they felt the treaty was illegitimate. as more and more people in germany came to think that they hasn't started the war and hadn't lost it, why should they pay for war damage. and there was no willingness to pay them, really. and they were resented. a journalist was traveling in germany in the mid 1920s and --

she met two sisters, middle class sisters who lived in the area, they said before our war, we could send our war out every week, and now we have to do it two weeks. it's all those reparations. it became a thing that the germans resented. but it did really help to poison relations in europe. in the end, germany never paid all that much. it paid enough. it paid -- it paid in three tranches. this is probably much more than you want to know. the first bit they paid in kind and had paid by 1921. that was the smallest bit. and then the figure was set. and the next bit, they were going to have to pay by bonds issued by the german government backed by the german government and that was not that big of a slice. the much bigger slice was the third slice, the third tranche which they would not be liable to pay until they made the

second slice. they dragged their feet. in 1924, the total amount was negotiated down with the help of american statesmen and bankers and it was negotiated down in 1929. and then when hitler came into power, he canceled the whole lot and that was in. britain continued to pay its debt from the first world war until 1980. so, you know, the idea of canceling the lot was a good one, but impossible -- >> did germany restart paying the reparations? >> never. after the second world war russian extracted reparations. it took things out of germany and germany paid reparations to israel for the holocaust. and that never caused -- there's been no political outcry about that in germany. the attempt to get money out of germany was something that -- in retrospect, they would have been better to concentrate on getting

europe's economy going again. but the key was the united states. and most of the lending was private. it was big consortium of banks and the americans didn't see why they shouldn't get their funds. in retrospect, of course, it's easy to say, it would have been much more statesmen like to get europe's economy going again and avoid the misery of the 1920s and the resentments. it was just -- like most of the clauses of the treaty, germany really wasn't prepared to adhere to them simply because it doesn't see why it should. >> thank you. it was a long answer. but it's such a tricky -- >> you have a really warm, receptive audience. >> don't encourage me. that's very dangerous. [ laughter ] >> you spoke about one of the pressures for the big three during the whole process being

the public. what's your perspective on the public opinion on the allied american and even commonwealth sides on the major components on the treaty such that they knew much about them? it's a two-part question. did the general public appreciate the major components of the treaty as it was finalized and secondly did that satisfy them very much in the various countries? >> it depended very much on the country. i think the french felt that the treaty probably -- a lot of french felt the treaty could have been haesher. and they tried to -- certainly plots, i think within them to

stir up sentiment. there was a wonderful thing i read by a french officer who was part of all this saying, of course, he said, the people who live in the rhine are french but they have a love for wine which the germans don't have. there were french who felt very strongly about germany and you can understand it. it was memory of the past and fee fear of the future. it was said that he asked to be buried when he died facing -- he asked to be buried standing up facing germany and he became prime minister in the dark days of the first world war when it looked like france might be defeated. and he and others knew that germany remained a very real

threat to french security because it was that much more powerful. it had a bigger population, bigger potential armed forces. i think that was a very real fear. so in france, no one the treaty was not -- never came to be seen as illegitimate. what began to happen in the english speaking countries. there was a sense that if french were being ridiculous. there was a lack of sympathy for french which i think was unfair, actually. i think you also got a sense th that the germans were right. the treaty wasn't fair. they hadn't started the war, why don't we get on with things. it helped to divide the allies, i think. and -- even today i think in france, you'll probably get more of a feeling the treaty wasn't that bad. one of the chief attacks or

counterpart -- was written by two frenchmen. he says canes simply doesn't get it. i don't know if that answers your question. >> given the fact that there were treaties of mutual assistance between britain and france and britain and belgium and the serbians and the russians, what did that contribute, do you think, to the inevitability of world war i? a little off your subject, maybe, but i have a followup question, maybe too. >> well, i can talk about the origins of the first world war until the cows come home. but i think it used to be said that the alliance system, the sort of notion of a balance of power where you had roughly balanced powers of a way to keeping the peace and systems had created the first world war.

it meant if any -- the balance of power was inherently unstable and a tight alliance system meant if you got into a dispute, it would drag in a trail, all the allied nations. i don't think that really is the case, myself. i think the alliances before the first world war were much looser than they've been portrayed. they were defensive alliances and in the case of britain, france and russia, the only defensive alliance was between russia and france. and what a defensive alliance means, you don't have to go to war unless your partner is attacked. you don't support your partner if it goes to war and the british never signed an alliance. it was looser than it might appear on the surface. and the triple alliance was a defensive alliance. and the thing about alliances, it seems to me, is who enforces them. you can't go to a court of

international judgment and say, my par failed to come to my defense. and the italians got out of their -- they simply avoided their obligations to go to war when austria and hungary went to war. the defensive alliance doesn't work. so i've always thought the alliance system was much looser than it might appear and people said it was. and i don't think it did cause the first world war. i think other things did. but i don't think the alliances were the chief culprit. >> in view of the fact that we're involved with nato and britain, with the demise of the soviet union, do you see a continued role for nato? >> well, you're getting far ahead of my field. but i also wondered at the end

of the cold war whether nato shouldn't have been wound up. it was a cold war institution to provide security for the members of nato. it began to move further afield, afghanistan was a nato operation. i also did wonder about that. on the other hand, nato was designed partly to contain the soviet union and it seems to me that russia still needs a bit of containing. having something like nato in which nations do cooperate and share military planning and so on seems to be not a bad idea. >> last two weeks will come from the other side of the auditorium. >> i think we all sympathize with the difficulty of ironing out this piece. could you talk about one or two specific things that you think they could have and should have done better? >> well, i think they perhaps

should have been more direct with their own publics about reparations and i think they should have explained to mare publics they weren't going to get everything they wanted and everything they had been promised. but they would do their best to get europe's economy going on. politically, i think that would have been very difficult. we may disapprove of it, but democratic politicians have to think of getting re-elected. and sometimes coming clean with your own people is not a good idea. but i think possibly they could have -- certainly britain could have. i think lloyd george could have. the evidence is that british opinion was getting much less vehement against germany by the summer of 1919 than it had been nine months previously and it might well have been the case if george said, look, we're really going to go easy on the reparations or give more to france. if the british had been prepared to give more to france, it might have done it. but it was politically difficult. i'm not sure they could have

done much more with germany. i think they felt that germany had lost. they felt that they had a good -- they had every right to punish it. and they also looked at what -- this is not -- my mother always told me, two wrongs don't make a right. but they did look at what germany had done to france after -- in 1871 and they looked at what germany had done to russia in march 1918. if you want to look at savage treaties, that one was savage. i detached huge chunks of russia and the boso i think there was e that germany should have paid some penalty. the trouble was, as a french commentator said, the treaty was neither harsh enough or soft enough.

if they had been prepared to be really tough and if they had been prepared to take troops into germany to make it clear to the germans who had lost, very few germans ever saw a foreign soldier and never -- that sense of having lost the war was never properly -- properly is the wrong word. it wasn't the case after 1945. if they had been prepared to do that, it might have been better. or if they had been prepared to really say to their own publics, look, the war has been a ca catastrophe, but we're not going to make it worse by trying to exact reparations from germany. i think their political choices were limited by public opinion. it was difficult for them to do it. it was said, i cannot do -- i have to have reparations. i cannot face my electorate, the french public and say we won't have reparations. he said it's impossible. and so it's very, very difficult. i think ending wars which can

raise these great expectations is a very difficult problem. and we might not have ended the second world war so successfully. we might not have had the united states staying in europe if the united states and the soviet union hadn't fallen out. there's many ifs. and one of the reasons the u.s. was much more committed to europe and the revival of the europe and the revival of world trade and investment generally after the second world war and was prepared to put money into it was because of fear of the soviet union. and after the first world war, the united states didn't have that feeling. and so i think the circumstances were not in place to make good peace 1918. where they could have done things better was in the middle east. it's another subject. but i think the british and the french who were responsible for the middle east settlements carved it up to suit themselves and treated the peoples of the middle east as if their opinions

didn't count, as if they were negligible. i think they did very badly indeed, actually. >> first of all, thank you very much for your presentation. secondly, we know about the hardships that the french suffered and how the americans faired at the end of the war. what kind of hardships did great britain face at the end of the war that kind of influenced what they brought to the table? >> well, i think they certainly knew that they -- they hasn't come close to bankruptcy but they had lost enormous ground economically. it was clear by about 1916 the lending power in the world had moved across the atlantic from london to new york. the united states had become the world creditor nation. i think they had lost power and

were very much aware of that. and they had also expanded their empires as a result of the first world war, going to put additional burdens on them. they were finding the burden of empire beginning to weigh heavily. but i think what the british lost was the sense of -- i mentioned earlier, european civilization was improving. they had lost -- the french lost the most men of military age, i think, in europe except -- in proportion to the number of men in france more than any other country in europe except serbia. and i think germany came a close third. but the british lost a huge number of men. and the loss that meant for families, societies, wives, for people who might have got married, for children, i think was something that was going to go on reverbuating through the generations. there are going to be children who never knew their fathers or

had fathers who came home from the war who were never capable of being parents to them because they were so psychologically damaged and i think the women lost a lot as well. i think it was -- it was a society that was damaged by the first world war and i think a country that was -- not impoverished. that's too strong of a word. but economically strained by the first world war. it marked the beginning of the end for the british empire, even though britain's empire was bigger after the first world war. the empire was getting less willing to be part of the empire. increasingly the british were dealing with peoples who wanted to rule themselves in india, gandhi had appeared and taken what was a middle class independence movement and turned it into a mass movement. the british had an uneasy feeling that the world was becoming difficult for them as it was. >> ending the evening on a question of the generational

impact, the geographic impact and the continued impact of 1919 on today seems a very appropriate place for end -- to end this evening. if you would please join with me in thanking the doctor. >> thank you very much. [ applause ] >> we can nights this month, we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span3. tonight from american history tv's history bookshelf series, authors discussing american presidents starting with "the rise of andrew jackson" it examines the 1828 election. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 eastern and enjoy american history tv this week and every weekend on c-span3. and now harvard professor talks about how woodrow wilson's american upbringing and

education shaped his outlook on foreign policy as president, especially his vision for the league of nations in the aftermath of world war i. he discusses how woodrow wilson championed self-determination and reform as bulwarks. this takes place in kansas city, missouri. >> a professor of history at harvard university where he teaches international history and the history of the united states and the world. he serves as director of graduate programs at harvard's weatherhead center. he is coed t-editor for cambrid university press. the volume "empires at war" which reframes the history of the great war as a global w