Transcripts For CSPAN3 1919 Paris Peace Conference 20240712

And i know that theres a lot of excitement as there ought be for this evenings conversations so thank you for taking time to be here. Were so delighted to have professor margaret macmillen with us today. Thank you for traveling to be a part of this important conversation, and who else to help us with that is better equipped than margaret macmillen and a professor of history at oxford, at the university of toronto. Serves in many varied roles. A trustee of the university and more recently at the Imperial War Museum. Might i offer that we are second only here at the National World war i museum and memorial to the Imperial War Museum in terms of history. They began collecting in 1917 and we began collecting in 1920. And were further delighted that theyre having their world war ii galleries reinstalled by the gallery designers of the National World war i museum and memorial. So theyre very wise i might say. Shes written many publications and books. I dont want to list those. One of which is particularly pertinent to the conversation tonight is paris 1919, six months that changed the world which really puts her in a position of authority to have the conversation with us this evening. Shes of course been awarded with many distinguished prizes and awards, gave the bbcs 2018 brief lectures on war and humanity which explore the tangled of war in society and the complicated feelings toward it and those who fight, which is short to say of course, ladies and gentlemen, were in the presence of a historical rock star tonight. From 75 to 2002 dr. Macmillen was a member of the History Department at toronto, served on various boards and editorial groups that focus on history and world war i studies, at oxford and has received recognition from a number of academic institutions by being awarded honorary doctorates. In 2006 professor macmillen was invested as an officer of canada, which for americans thats sort of a very distinguished award. And in 2016 she was appointed as companion of the order of canada. 2018 the queens new years honor list appointed her the companion of honor for service to Higher Education history and International Affairs, which in countries is sort of the big deal. After professor macmillen has given her lecture therell be an opportunity for question and answers and laura will facilitate that. So we have some microphones and well invite you as we have in other sessions to move to those and frame your questions. Just indicate and laura will help facilitate that. It was almost five years ago we had the honor of welcoming dr. Macmillen to our auditorium stage and we have the opportunity to do so. The excitement surrounding the keynote is evident when you started to gather here, and if you havent read paris 1919, 6 months that changed the world wed really encourage you to do so. Move it to the top of your queue. In fact, the bookstore tomorrow will be open. You might want to talk a copy with you. Tonight shell expound on that topic on the research 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 macmillen. That was extremely kind. Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much. I think thats an example of the commonwealth sticking together. It was much too kind but thank you very much for that introduction. And many thank tuesday the war museum for inviting me back again. This is my third visit here and ive enjoyed everyone, and i tell everyone they must come to kansas city and see your museum and also see your beautiful city. My nephew was here last fall talking so be careful the rest of the family might be following along. Weve both been so enthusiastic. This is a good time a hundred years later. An anniversary can be useful just for taking stock and 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 its quite useful to use anniversaries of what that means, what the anniversaries of the past meant and what it means for us today. In your typo you put 1919 peace, question mark because there is a view what happened in paris in 1919 this was the great peace conference it was summoned to wind up the First World War and try to set a structure for lasting peace in the world after 1919. What happened in paris in 1919 has often been blamed. And theres a simple history which is that the statesmen and they were pretty much all men in those days, the statesmen met in paris in 1919. They met such a mess of things they 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 doesnt 1919 lead directly to 1939 is what was everyone doing in those 20 years. You know, 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 of creating that view of 1919 as the doomed peace attempt that set in potion the events that led to 1939 is the book by john maynard canes, the great economist who in 1919 was not so wellknown but an arrogant and selfconfident young man. I should point out he went to cambridge university, so we are not surprised by that. He was in paris as an Economic Advisor to the british delegation, and he got fed up with the mistakes he was making. He was also i think going through something of a personal crisis in his life, he went back to england in the summer of 1919 and wrote a book which took him 6 weeks. It is a polemic, its very successful and been in print ever since and translated into many languages. For such an exciting little book it has a rather dull title. Its called the economic consequences of the peace. But if you read the book and im sure some of you have, it is condemning everything that was going on in paris. Let me just read you a little bit of it to give you the flavor. Paris was a nightmare and everyone there was morbid. A sense of impending catastrophe over hung the frivolous scene. The mingled squins and unreality of the decisions, levity, blindness, insolence, the statesmen he claimed in his book were hypocritical spell binders engaged in empty and arid intrigue. The treaty with germany which was probably the most difficult 1 of all to negotiate and which helped to set the template for the other treaties, the treaty of versailles was greed, dishonorable, ridiculous and injureious. He wrote devastating portraits of the three key statesmen who were at the center of the decisions they made ipparis. The french Prime Minister he portrayed as an ancient and angry ape who sat in his chair with hooded eyes thinking only of revenge on germany. Woodrow wilson, the american president he portrayed as a booy, where you put a scarf on someones eyes and they dont which way theyre going in. This is how he described him. And the british Prime Minister he portrayed as half man and half goat who came out of the welsh mist with no moral sense whatsoever. His mother actually made him take some of the ruder passages out. But this was a powerful piece of work and like i said this helped set a picture ever since of what happened in paris as being futile and worse than futile. Now, i will not deny not all 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 Empires, for example. It shared a carelessinize and shortsightedness which has really caused problems for much of the 20th century. So not all he did was good, but i want to say what we need to do is try to understand what it was they were dealing with. Because when we write history and when we look at history i think what we must do is ask ourselves what would we do if we were in that position, what would we be facing . Its all very well to look back. They should have known there was a young german corporal called Adolph Hitler coming along to seize on the treaty of versailles and help his nazi come into power. What people actually had to deal with at the time, what constrapts they have, what is it 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 the great catastrophe and try to understand just what the circumstances of that conference were. Now, what id like to do is make a few general points about wars because ending wars is never easy especially if those wars have been great and 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 for the end of the First World War. The war had shocked europe and indeed it shocked most of the world partly because the 19th century had been such a 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 actually one of the most peaceful and prosperous and progressive centuries in history. There had been a number of very short wars in the 19th century after the napoleonic wars ended. But those wars were short and usually fought between two countries. And they usually resulted in a clear result and then peace was reestablished. And so europeans had come to think by the beginning of the 20th century that they had somehow changed and their world had changed and that they happen going to go on living in a peaceful world, and they were going to go on building peaceful and progressive and pragueporous societies. This peace and prosperity and progress was going to spread around the world. We look back and say how foolish that was, but this is something many people eneurope were thinking before 1914, which made the shock of the First World War all the graduator. Europeans after four years at war, a war which they had hoped wrongly would be short and decisive, up to four years of a dreadful war they looked back and looked at the lives gone, 9 million men, possibly more. We will never know quite how many people died and it was many in the First World War. The loss of human potential, the loss of human talent, the money that was gone, the destruction had been gone, the empires that were gone. Three great empires disappeared as a result of the First World War and a fourth disappeared afterwards. Russia which was an empire as well as a state fell to pieces in the course of the russian revolution. Austria, hungary, that huge multinational empire at the center of europe who for better or worse had created a civility fell to pieces as the war was ending, and germany also fell to pieces as an empire at the end of the First World War. And months after the war the Ottoman Empire was going to be clearly falling to pieces and was going to disappear as well. And so it was a very difficult political and social landscape that the europeans looked at into 1918 than they had seen in 1914. And theyd done something more to themselves, they had also shaken their position in the world. Before 1914 europe had been the most powerful part of the world. Directly or incorrectly europe had controlled most of the surfaces of the world. European finance was what you needed if you wanted to build anything, if you wanted technology you came to europe, if you wanted education you came to europe. If you wanted fashion, ideas you came to europe. And by 1918 they had no sense that civilization was the great french writer i think said something is broken and we will never be quite the same again and we will be like those other empires of the past that disappeared. Names now that mean nothing to us like babylon. We now know what its going to be like to go into the abyss of history. When that war ended then there was a sense of doom, sense of fear, sense of haphension and also i think a worry that the war was ended but fighting hadnt ended, as we heard this afternoon fighting went on in the center of europe and much of the middle east until the mid1920s. There was also fear that the social upheavals which had taken place in russia were going to spread westwards and perhaps european societies were simply going to be swept away. So that was part of the atmosphere in which the peace conference met. What also i think affected the decisions of those and that put trumepd s pressure on the peace makers because they worried unless they got peace soon, unless they saw things out soon things might get much worse. Unless they dealt with some of the pressing issues in europe they would see revolution and even more upheaval. What also i think put pressure on the peace makers was their own publics. This was a conference that was mostly engaged in by democratic powers. And politicians were having to think about what their publics, wanted, what their publics demanded and of course the next election. At the congress of vienna which had taken place a hundred years previously that is not something they had to worry about. The pressure is on them from outside i think were much less than they were going to be in paris. And what the public wanted was not always compatible. The publics wanted partly on the winning side someone to pay, someone to pay and someone to take responsibility for the war. The french felt very strongly about this, and, you know, often in the literature later it said how unreasonable the french were, but i think we need to remember the french had been invaded twice by German Forces in the lifetimes of american people. In 1870 the German Confederation had invaded france and very nasty battles had been fought on french soil and the french had to be defeated and had to pay a very large fine indeed. Germany had declared war on france and invaded france in 1914. The french didnt start the war are and most of the war on the western front was fought on french soil. The war wasnt fauts on german soil, and the damage done by that war, and im sure many of you have been to the western front where you can still see some of that damage. The damage that had been done had been done to belgium and to france, done to their economies. Belgium was strict there for much of its agriculture and welt. The war in france was fought in what had been the most industrialized parts of france. French factories were destroyed, Something Like 40 of french productive capacity was probably destroyed in the fighting in the First World War. French mines were destroyed, french railways, french bridges. And so you can understand why the French Public looked over at germany which was largely unoccupied, largely unscathed by the war where the infrastructure had not suffered that sort of damage and looked at germany and said, well, they can pay, why should we pay . Why should we pay to pay for the damage which germany has done to us . And the British Public felt much the same and the american president Woodrow Wilson was in fact worried at what he felt to be the vehement antigerman feeling he was encountering among the American Public. The pressure he felt to inflict a harsh and peace on germany. So the allied publics wanted someone to pay and thought germany was the proper country to pay. Austria and hungary couldnt pay because they had fallen to pieces. It was in a revolution than other new countries which did want see themselves as being on the losing side. Bulgaria which was another of the defeated nations wasnt able to pay, but germany was. And so there was a desire on the part of the publics which put real pressure on the states and enparis to get something out of germany to make up for the damage of the war. But at the same time you also had a willingness and a longing among publics and it was not just the allied publics but on the defeated side and also in the wider world. It was in asia, africa, in ostrill you, north america. A desire out of this dreadful war which had caused such damage and suffering whose consequences were clearly so momentous but out of this war Something Better should come. What the allied publics also wanted was a new world, a new peaceful order, some sorts of institutions and ways of doing things which would prevent the world from ever having this again, and this was not easy for the statesmen to deal with. They were pushed in Different Directions and of course they had to think of national interests. Its a commonplace but a very important one, but at the end of a coalition of wars where you have a number of countries fighting together the coalition tends to fall apart. Nations will come together in a great cause to save yourself from destruction or defeat an enemy or in some cases to conquer other nations. But once theyve achieved those goals they tend naturally to think of their own interests and the coalitions begin to fall to pieces. We saw that very cheerily at the end of the First World War and the end of the Second World War. And inevitably the powers began to think of their own interests. The french were thinking of recompense and the french were think of their own security. There were more future german soldiers and what you wanted was security and 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 before the First World War, and theyd already got that by the time the paels conference met because when the germans signed the armistice which was really a surrender than an armistice they had surrendered and the british or at least parts of the empire got hold of those before the peace conference started. The british should come to the peace conference not asking for much for themselves and i think should portray themselves as being less selfish and grasping as the french word. And then you had the United States as the president and american diplomats said clearly the United States has not come into this war to fight for itself. It very pointedly called itself an associate and not an ally to show it was somehow different from the european powers. Having said that i think the United States was also conscious of its newfound economic and financial power and military power and wanted a greater say in World Affairs than it had before. And so you get Different National inevitably you get Different National goals and Different National interests. What also i think was putting pressure on the peace makers and there were many pressures on them was a sense that time was not on their side, that if they werent careful time was going to run out. And this very real sense which i mentioned of revolution simply spreading through, and they had really worrying evidence. I mean hungary had its communist government for 6 months in 1919. There were communists or left wing insurrections, armed or violent insurrections in italy, in the center of europe. There was a strike in winnipeg of all places. But we had a general strike which concerned a lot of people because it had very radical rhetoric and clearly was inspired of what was happening in russia. So there was a fear the world was on the edge of revolution. But another pressure the peace makers faced was the world was on the edge of revolution or parts of it were. They found themselves starting to act as a world government ipways they hadnt intended because conditions, economic units fell to pieces. And so just to give one example vienna which used to get its coal from the north, used to get wheat from the east suddenly found there were barriers because there was no poland or czechoslovakia there, new borders were put up and there was an independent hungary where they once got their wheat. So suddenly it was difficult to get the things the government needed. And the red cross doing work in vienna said people were starving there and they were seeing illnesses among children they had never expected to see in europe in their lifetime which they associated with much poorer countries. So there was a sense 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. You know, the First World War did not end and did not suddenly result and did not result in peace. In addition to the forces of revolutionary socialism which were very strong, i mean these are forces people would go out in the streets for and fight and die for and very difficult to contain. The other force which they were dealing with which as again we heard this afternoon was nationalism. And nationalism, ethnic nationalism in particular in the center of the europe, and it was beginning to spread further afield again was one of these emotions and feelings which people were prepared to die for and prepared to go out and fight f for. And the fall of the empires meant different groups who had been pushing like the czechs for greater atonomy suddenly saw the doors had been opened. If you dont do it now things will calm down again, we wont have a chance to get our own countries. So you had ferocious ethnic nationalisms trying to mark themselves on the map and elsewhere. And people often talk as if the peace conference recreated poland and made czechoslovak cuaczechoslovakia and yug yug slavia. Their claims overlapped because they based their claims so often on history. And the way the countrys borders had come and gone in the past you had a choice what sort of borders you wanted. But often youd choose borders that Incorporated Land someone else wanted. In poland there was a debate between poles who said we should settle and there was those who said lets go back to the poland lithuania commonwealth. And you can imagine what a country such as greece did. Greece and italy too went right back into the classical age and said we once had empires. The greeks looked at their maps and the venezuela Prime Minister looked at the maps of the classical age and said we want to control the coast of asia minor, all those islands, istanbul, constantinople. And i think the final thing we have to remember when we think of what those statesmen were trying to deal with was their own power was shrinking. You know, these were representing very powerful countries and the most powerful countries in the world were there in paris. And there were some 30 nations there. Japan was there, china was there, tilpd was there, a number of latinamerican countries would there. Other European Countries are there. Countries becoming independent within the British Empire like my own country canada was there. Italy and japan was seen as slightly junior partners but that represented a lot of power. But it wasnt unlimited, and theres 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, adjust the pieces on the maps and those pieces will stay where theyre put and of course they dont. And the powers the allies had actually were shrinking. They had built massive armies and navies to fight the war. But 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 didnt want to go on fighting, and they did want want to be sent to places they had never heard of in the middle east and possibly afghanistan to fight the series of wars that were breaking out. And their families didnt want them there and the treasuries did want want them there. The allies knew they could not afford to keep these vast forces in the field. And there were a number of them who said we want to go home. We dont see any point in staying here anymore. 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 moved on. But june 1919 when the question of the german treaty came up and whether or not germany would sign it the allies and their a military advisers were really concerned about whether or not theyd be able to enforce the treaty on germany if germany refused to sign it. So that was another factor. They found increasingly their capacity to do what they wanted especially the further away the places were and difficult the communications were were limited. There was a famous occasion when george clemmenson wilson was sitting around and those fighting i think between poland and czechoslovak cuabout a rich duchy that contained Railway Junctions and coal mines and so on, and poland and czechoslovak cuwe czechoslovakia were starting to fight about it, and they called in a supreme allied commander and said weve got to do something, and he said of course ill follow orders which is what he intended to stay and they said youve got to call troops. And he said absolutely because i dont think i can do it because the railways arent running. And george who say always optimistic said i have it, and they turned to him with a certain amount of hope and he said well send both sides extremely strong telegrams. So im just trying to give a sense of what it was they were dealing with and the context they were dealing with and the world of which they were dealing. And this was not a world that was easy to settle because things were changing very quickly. It was a world in which you had these forces, forces of revolutionary socialism, forces of ethnic nationalism. Publics which were putting terrific pressure on their governments which in some cases were pressured to do contradictory things, and they were dealing with a great many things at once. Many of the books written on the paris peace conference tend to assume when they can do it there was a sort of polish question constantly before the peace makers or a bulgaria question before the peace makers. Of course they were dealing with about ten Different Things a day or more and constantly getting petitions or demands coming in, plus pressures from home to get settled quickly. So i think if they made mistakes and of course they made mistakes it can at least be partly explained by the pressures under which they were dealing and by the range of problems of which they were dealing. The congress of vienna at the end of the napoleonic wars was much quieter by comparison, and they were able to sit down with the defeated nations. And this was one of the problems later on with the paris peace conference and one of the reasons the germans came to resent it so bitterly. Is there was no negotiation between the winners and losers in paris. There was meant to be. The allies thought that they would have a peace conference on the lines of the congress of vienna or later congresses in europe. And they thought what theyd do is meet briefly in paris in january 1919. They actually called it a preliminary peace conference until they realized theyd slipped over into the real thing. And they would come up with some agreed terms and offer germany, and germany would negotiate and theyd all sit down as they had done in vienna and hammer out a settlement. It took them from january to may to get agreement on their peace terms. There were so many issue and difficulties and so many moments where it peace conference looked like breaking up. At one point the italians worked on it because they werent getting everything they want said. The chinese threatened not to sign the treaty and in the end didnt. The japanese were complaining and threatening to walk out. The belgians were saying they might walk out. And so by the time the allies actually agreed on the peace terms to be offered to germany they didnt dare sit down with germany and reopen all the discussions again. It was to be something germany presented bitterly but i think from the allied point of view had been so bitter to get to this point they didnt dare risk doing it. So what they did is cobbled together by may a peace treaty, and it was the treaty of versailles. It was probably the most difficult one although some of the others the treaty with the Ottoman Empire was going to be difficult. But the treaty of versailles was the one most people remember which as i say formed a template with others and it is a very odd treaty. Its Something Like 440 clauses and it was put together and no one actually read it through before they sent it to the printers. And so what you get is everything from a very grand scheme, the first section of the treaty is the league of nations. And that was something Woodrow Wilson had insisted upon and others had supported him. The covenant, the founding document of the league of nations which sets out how it is to be setout, and then you get a whole section of reparations that germany was to pay, a whole section on disarmament that germany was meant to undertake, but then you also get various other things about trying those who were guilty for starting the war and there was talk at some point of trying the kaiser, and there was talk of sending him into exile like theyd done with napoleon. But also the punishment and attempts to limit the power of germany in the future, but it also contained really very specific clauses how the German Museum must hand back and so it was a sort of grab bag into which foreign offices strew things which theyd been brooding about for some time. So it was understandable the germans were not going to be pleased by the process or treat ate that they got. But the attempt i think to build a better world was a genuine one. Its 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 blackhearted as usual simply spurred it, and that is rather like haines portrait of the whole peace conference is simply not how it was. Many europeans supported the league of nations. They knew very well what a war had done. Many had survived it or members of their family had died. If you chose to you could take a day trip north of paris and you could see what war had meant and seem to see 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 europeans and others had been talking about before 1914, an attempt to build international law, an attempt to promote free trade and an attempt to build a community of nations that would provide collective security for each other. Such things had been mentioned in some cases as far back as 100 and 150 years previously. Emmanuel cant, the great german philosopher had talked about a league of nations that would make war possible. And so i think the league was very real ints support that it gained, but it was not a treaty going to satisfy germany, and i think there was a reason for this. There were things germany rightly resented. It was supposed to sign a treaty setting up the league of nations which it wasnt going to be allowed to join or at least not yet. It was not given a chance to negotiate the term for 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 and that i think the germans resented. But if you look at what germany actually lost in that treaty it did lose its fleets, it did lose its colonies that had already lost those by the time of the peace conference. It did lose its territory in europe. Mostly territory inhabited by nongerman speakers which germany had seized from other countries in the past. And you could argue and many did at the time that germany did not lose all that much. You could also argue that germany came out of the First World War, and of course the germans didnt feel this, but if you look back you can certainly see it. That germany came out of the First World War in a stronger strategic position than it had been because after the First World War ended there was no more common border between russia and germany. There was no poland in between them, and there was no austriahungary which had been a rival to germany and even as an ally had been a very uncertain ally. It had fallen to pieces, and what had once worried the German Allied command and the capacity of russia increasingly to move troops up to the common border, that now had a barrier between germany and russia. Russia, of course, was plunged into civil war but part of the russian threat had been removed. And there were a series of small and kwarling nations and in fact it was relatively easy for germany to play off one against the other. Of course it didnt feel like that to germany at the time. And what always matters i think is perception. And i think the germans were not going to accept pretty much any treaty they were going to have sipe in 1919 and in the end of course they did sign it because they didnt feel they had lost the war, and increasingly they came to feel they hadnt started it either. So ill explain what i mean by this because perception is very important in Human Affairs and international relations. The germans surrendered in 1918. If you look at the terms of the armistice of november 11th, 1918, it is a surrender. Its more than a ceasefire. Its more than most conventional armistices. In the armistices germany lost all its heavy equipment. It lost its submarine fleet. It lost its aircraft, its tanks, its field artillery. As one german officer who was negotiating in that famous Railway Carriage said, could you please leave us a few machine guns because we may need them against the revolution in germany . And so in other words germany lost its capacity to make war. It lost its equipment, and german troops were obliged to evacuate all occupied territory and move back into germany. But as time went by the high commander and others their supporters began to argue germany hadnt lost and it shouldnt have signed the armistice. The background to this is the high command in particular lewden dorfer and hiddenbering had established a relationship by 1918 and kept the American Public in the dark how germany was doing on the battlefield. And germany by the summerer of 1918 was doing very badly on the battlefield. German troops were increasingly finding it very difficult to fight on because they didnt have the equipment they needed. Their endless desperate pleas for things like fuel, ammunition, for things like guns, german regiments, german battalions were under strain and their numbers had been filled up by very young or quite old men. So germany was not able to fight on and german armies particularly august 8, 1918 were retreating back and back. There were a series of defeats. And the high command actually suddenly turned to the civilian government and sds, by the way, they never admitted they were wrong. But they said actually things arent going all that well, can you get an armistice immediately, please appeal to the american president to make an armistice. 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 came to an agreement for an armistice. And the armistice was signed. The high command then switched its tune and said we could have fought on. The same ludendorf who had panicked said they were traitors at home, we could have fought on and very, very ominously he began and other of his supporters began to use that germany was stabbed in the back, it could have fought on if it hadnt been for the civilians and not just the civilian government but those out demonstrating against an increasingly futile war. And those enemies who had stabbed germany in the back were the socialists, the liberal and the jews, and this was going to become part of the political rhetoric of the 1920s and into the 1930s. So if you think you havent lost the war then you dont think the treaty is going to be fair. Does anyone know someone whos gone to civil litigation in a court and has come out saying the judge was absolutely fair, i lost. But it was right that i lost and it was right i would have to pay a fine . You know, germany like anyone who loses who doesnt feel they should have lost did not feel the public german opinion did not feel theyd lost the war. What also began to happen is increasingly germany and others began to feel germany had started the war. And the allies were clear in their own minds in paris in 1919 that germany and its allies had started the war, but doubts began to creep in the English Speaking countries, not so much in france. But certainly in the English Speaking countries maybe germany hadnt started the war, maybe the war had been an accident. And the germans, again not all germans but the German Foreign ministry setup a special unit and funded organizations to attack the prevailing view that germany had started the war. And they invited academics, american academics in particular to come and look at archives carefully selected to show germany had really wanted peace and somehow the war had happened. So by the end of the 1920s the view certainly as i say in the English Speaking countries is the war had not been germanys fault. It had been something that had happened in europe, no ones fault or everyones fault. Again, that undermined the treaty. Because if germany hadnt started the war and if it hadnt lost the war why should it be paying any form of recompense for the war . So you get i think a treaty of a party that doesnt want to sign it, and you get the allies who should have been enforcing it, and i think that is what helped to make the situation so difficult. What you also got is allies who felt they hadnt got everything they wanted, the italians who had joined on the ally side, the Italian National unification came to call a peace, the mutilated peace because they felt they http got what theyd been promised and that helped to fuel mussolinis rise to power. It left behind a great deal of resentment and dissatisfaction. And those who should have thin bi thinking of enforcing them were going their separate ways. The United States therefore didnt ratify the treaty and therefore did want join the league of nations and began to turn away from europe and became preoccupied with what was going on in its own rem s fear. And the british began to turn to their empire and began to turn their backs on europe. And that left the french feeling defenseless and worried about their security, who tried to find allies in some of these new states in the center of europe which of course made germany feel surrounded and intended to reinforce the nationalistic feeling in germany. Having said that, that it wasnt a Perfect Peace 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, that we have often i think too much seen the 1920s as a brief breathing space and a slide down towards the Second World War. But if you actually look at the 1920s if that period had lasted longer i think you could see real signs of hope. Europe did get back on sort of even footing. The revolution was contained and democracies proved to be more resilient than i think they and many others had put. Europeans were beginning to live reasonable and prosperous lives again. Didnt mean in every country, and of course in germany there were memories of the dreadful inflation of the early 1920s which began to affect Public Opinion. The league of nations did come into existence. It did not have the United States as a member, but nevertheless it got up and running and began to setup a number of institutions which did indeed begin to do something to improve the international environment. The International Labor organization, the International Health organizations, International Organizations to try and deal with human slavery, many of which are still with us today were setup in the 1920s and did i think begin to make the deal of progress. And there was a lot of support for the league of nations around the world. In the United Kingdom there was a league of Nation Society which had Something Like 25 million members. So this was something i think people put a great deal of hope in. And the league also sponsored and other countries sponsored disarmament conferences. So the progress in the 1920s towards dealing with some things people felt had helped cause the First World War. The Washington Naval conference was very important, and countries agreed voluntarily to limit the size of their battleships and other navy craft. And they agreed voluntarily not to fortify certain islands. The league of nations sponsored big dig armament 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 it was seen as a great sign of hope that the United States and france came together to create something called the pact of paers or the kaling pact named after the two men who created it in which some 61 countries signed on promised not to use wars as instruments of state. So people really thought maybe were making some progress after the First World War in setting up International Organizations to dealing with the scourge of arm races and trying actually to move beyond that. Germany settled down and became a participant in the international community. In 1925 it signed a series of agreements agreeing it would not try to change its borders in the west by force. It joined the league of nations, russia although it remained a revolutionary power began to behave like an ordinary power. And so if you looked around the world you could see signs of things getting back more stable and in fact maybe the world was moving beyond what it 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, when thousands of millions of people were thrown out of work, 25 or more of the American Labor force were thrown out of work what those years did was shake peoples faith in capitalism and democracy and turned them in many countries toward more radical parties which promised easy solutions. It turned them towards the radical parties of the left and radical parties of the right. I think to look at the peace conference as something to go back to my original point as something that led directly to the Second World War we need to look at what happened in the 1920s and we need to look at what happened with the Great Depression. Well, we had a Second World War as we know even more dreadful and more far reaching in its effects than the First World War. Finally in our First World War we did get a sort of peace. Possibly you could argue big peace conferences are in themselves are part of the problem. I think whats also interesting after the Second World War is that the defeated nations were treated even worse than they were treated after the First World War. Germany and japan were going and that was partly because the allies didnt want any doubts this time who lost and why. And both were occupied, both were treated harshly indeed and in reparations were squeezed out, particularly in the soviet zone, but we dont hear complaints about the settlements at the end of the Second World War. We seem to have moved on. For some reason, what happened at the end of the First World War is seen as a very bad example. Im 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 ] ladies and gentlemen, know that you are used to a tenminute period of q a, but youll notice on our schedule that its a bit longer than that. Im not going to keep to my normnorm normal prussian scheduling for these things. Theres a microphone down here, so its first come first serve and were looking forward to this continued conversation. You want to say a few words about the bavarian separatist movement . Did it have a chance at all . Its a good question. I mean, there was there probably still is, well, certainly, bavarians feel themselves to be different from the rest of germany. And the seven states that went to making up modern germany did not all come in willingly. Prussia was the dominant one. It was the dominant political and economic force, and i think they felt that they had very little choice but to join in and germany was formed as you know in 1871. And those states that came in did not come in necessarily willingly, but 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, and i think Woodrow Wilson agreed with him, said we had trouble, german nationalism caused turmoil in europe before germany finally became united. If we divide germany up into its components parts, well see the same thing happen again. Even though you have a bavarian or a separate feeling, i think there was also a very strong german nationalism. I think, i dont think bavarian separatism was that much of a force. You know, the bavarians feel themselves to be different, but thats not the same as wanting to be independent again. And german nationalism, i think, was a very powerful force which affected all parts of germany. Wonderful talk. Thank you. I was wondering, i think its 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 war and everything. Im wondering, in our own era, we have seen trump, we have seen boris johnson, we have seen a turn toward nationalism and isolationism. I dont really see a big earthshattering event like the Great Depression, so i was wondering what you attribute this latest round of sort of 1930s style nationalism and isolationism. Well, we may not have had we had something which could have been as earth shattering. That was the 2008 financial crisis. And catastrophe was averted there, i think partly because governmented had learned from the Great Depression. I think its interesting that benber nan bernanke who played big part in the bailout of the banks had written his thesis on the Great Depression. What they understood, i think, is they couldnt allow bankruptcies to take place. After the leemahman brothers, t understood that. What went wrong with the Great Depression is 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, because, well, what governments did is to protect their own industries and their own agriculture, they put up Tariff Barriers which meant the world trade dropped off very, very sharply, indeed, and everyone suffered. What i think were seeing today is what was happening before the First World War, perhaps even more than its a different sort of thing, thats globalization. The period before the First World War was a great period of globalization. It was a period in which peoples moved around the world, money moved around the world, trade moved around the world. Communications expanded enormously. We think the internet is something extraordinary. Well, think what telegraphs meant. Suddenly, you could find out what was happening on the other side of the world almost instantaneously. Theres lovely maps of telegraph lines joining the world. Its just extraordinary, like a spiders web around the world, and that was important. But what it meant, and i think this is whats been happening with globalization today, is in some ways as consumers we benefit because we get cheaper goods, we get cheaper consumer goods, but those who made those goods in the past suddenly find they dont have jobs. In vienna, for example, small shop keepers were thrown out of, their businesses failed because there were Big Department stores and people like going to Big Department stores and the goods were cheaper. Shoe makers, tailors, people who had made things by hand suddenly couldnt work and their livelihoods became meaningless and their skills became meaningless, what happened in vienna and elsewhere, but vienna is a good example, is a lot of those people were dispossessed by globalization and the changes in production, joined rabidly antisemitic parties and they blamed well, the jews in europe got blamed for being either too rich or too poor. They wouldnt win. Theyre too poor and they took our jobs or they were too rich. They were handy scapegoats. In the same way were blaming immigrants today, without necessarily understanding they may not be the source of why these jobs are disappearing. And jobs are also disappearing through mechanization and changes in technology as they are today. And i think collectively, the world failed to realize and those in charge of the world failed to realize theres a great deal of public unhappiness. That globalization was not good for everyone. And that there were parts, you know, well, we all know, we know that in the rust belt, which includes parts of my own southern ontario, you know, people who had looked forward to satisfying jobs the rest of their lives suddenly didnt 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 its whats happening now. When that sort of thing happens, and again, it happened in the depression. People who come along with solutions are welcomed. Theres nothing worse than having people say, well, its really complicated and we cant do anything much. Its very disheartening. So people who come along with solutions tend to get support. Those solutions are often very simplistic. And are not going to work terribly well. But they seem to offer hope. And the messages that people like mousseli like mousse a mussolini or hitler were offering, seemed hopeful. It was very dangerous indeed, and in the case of, you know, i think in the case of hitler, and this is where i think sometimes the individual really does matter in history, i think if hitler im sorry, this is a very longwinded answer, but if hitler had been killed in the trenches in the First World War, the nazi party would have been different. And what happened to the nazi party once it had got to power would have been different. He still didnt have to get into power. I think we should remember this in our own times. The nazi share of the popular vote was actually going down by 1932. And they never had an outright majority. He was invited into power by rightwing industrialists and people around the president hindenburg who thought they could use him. They thought he was someone who didnt know very much about anything. And there was a class thing. He was a little corporal. They were all from ancient noble families and they had all been generals. And they thought they would use him and use his support, so they invited him to become chancellor. Theres an old limerick about a lady who rode on a tiger and ended up inside the tiger. They didnt 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, you know, its easier, i think we all find it easier to say yes, i blame you for my problems rather than to say, well, its a complicated situation. And thats, i think, whats dangerous about the present time. Not very cheery. Thank you. I Teach High School history, u. S. History mostly, and something i have noticed american textbooks tend to vokes on with the treaty of versailles is the war guilt clause. I was wondering how well, first, twopart question, how unprecedented that was for a treaty like this inand then secondly, how much of an impact it did have on germany along with ludendorff, because i think the textbooks and the way its taught seems like thats the thing that created the stab in the back method and everything like that. I was wondering your opinion. It lies at the heart of a lot of the controversy about the treaty of versailles. Article 231 said germany accepts and its allies accept responsibility for starting the war. The germans nicknamed it immediately the war guilt clause. I think the allies were implying guilt, but it never said it anywhere. And the other treaties contained similar clauses but those nations chose not to make a fuss about it. The clause was written by a Young American lawyer in the american going delegation who wanted to establish a legal basis for claiming reparations from germany. John foster dulles was the young lawyer. And the second clause, which comes the article which comes immediately afterwards, article 232, says germanys payments will depend on its capacity to pay. This figure, the absolute figure was not set in the treaty, which was something germany rezensent. The argument was that they couldnt set a figure for german reparations. Reparations were payments for damage done by the war. Done by germany and its allies. They couldnt set a figure for reparations until they had actually done a survey of all the damage, and American Engineers and others were in the north of france. How much do you count a ruined village . How much is a ruined cathedral worth . How do you actually assess all that . That took them about two years. They also had to work out how the payments could be made and so on. But what really, i think the real reason they didnt want to put a figure in the treaty is because they didnt want to let their own publics know they probably werent going to get that much. I think they knew that if they drove germany into economic misery by trying to squeeze resources out of it, it would hurt the whole of the european economy, and britain had been, and germany had been each others biggest trading partners before the First World War and there were a lot of people in britain saying lets get trade going again. The war is over. We may not like the germans, but we have to trade with them. 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 this wasnt so good for them because they wouldnt get as much. And so 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 from 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 a revolution and they werent going to pay anything. The british put pressure on the french and italians and the belgians to pay up their war debts, which meant that the french and belgians needed the reparations from germany even more. In the end, i mean, it got desh in the end, there was an arrangement by which the United States lent money to germany which then paid reparations to france and belgian which paid its war debts to britain which then paid their war debts to the United States. They said we should cancel the whole lot and then we wont need reparations. The American Point of view is you borrowed the money, you pay it back, which you can understand. The idea that a defeated nation should pay something was not new at all. In fact, if you look through history d feeted nati ed, defeae paid huge fines. It was expected. When the french were defeated by the German Confederation in 1871, france had to pay what was called an indemnity, more like a fine than for reparations because the french hadnt actually done much damage to germany, so it was called an indemnity, and the french had to pay a huge amount and the cost of a german army of occupation 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 didnt want to pay reparations because they felt the treaty was illegitimate and as more and more people in germany came to think they, a, hadnt started the war, and b, hadnt lost it, why should they be paying for war damage . Reparations were very unpopular in germany right across the political spectrum. And there was no willingness to pay them. Really. And they were resented. An english journalism was traveling in germany in the mid19p 220s, and she met two sisters who lived, and they said to her very bitterly, before the war, we could send our laundry out every week, and now we have to do it every two weeks. Its all those reparations. So it became a sort of thing that the germans just resented. They didnt think it was fair. They didnt see why they should be paying them. 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, so probably much more than you want to know, but the first bit, they paid in i think kind. Had paid by 1921. That was the smallest bit. 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 a slice. The much bigger slice was the third slice, the third tranche, which they would not be liable to pay until they paid the second slice. You can imagine what happened. You know, they dragged their feet. They didnt pay. In 1924, the total amount was negotiated down with the help of american statesmen and bankers. Then it was negotiated down in 1929. When hitler came into power, he simply canceled the whole lot, and that was it. Although britain continued to pay its war debt from the First World War to the u. S. Until i think 1980. So, you know, kaines idea of canceling the lot was a good one but impossible. Did germany restart paying the reparations after hitler . Never. After the Second World War, russia extracted reparations. It simply took things out of germany, and germany paid reparations to israel. For the holocaust. And that never caused any you know, no political outcry about that in germany, but the attempt to get money out of germany was something, you know, in retrospect, he was right, they would have been much better to concentrate on getting europes economy going again, but the key was the United States, and most of the lending was private. It was Big Consortium of banks headed by morgans, and the americans didnt see why they shouldnt get their funds. In retrospect, of course, its easy to say it would have been much more statesmanlike to get europes economy going again and avoid some of the misery of the 1920s, and the resentments, but you know, it was just it was like most of the clauses of the treaty, germany really wasnt prepared to adhere to them, simply because it didnt see why it should. Thank you. Sorry, it was a rather long answer, but it is such a tricky you have a really warm, receptive audience. Take as long as you want with the answers. Dont encourage me. Thats very dangerous. A question from the other side. Okay. You spoke about one of the pressures for the big three during the whole process being the public. Mmhmm. Whats your perspective on the Public Opinion on the allied american, even commonwealth sides on the major components of the treaty such as they knew much about them. Such as . Such as the public knew much about them . First, i guess its a twopart question. One, did the general public appreciate the major components of the treaty as it was finalized, and secondly, did it satisfy them very much in the various countries . It depends very much on the country. I think the french felt that the treaty probably a lot of french felt the treaty could have been even harsher. There were those in france who wanted to take hold of the rine land. There were plots within the German Military and german rightwing parties, sorry, French Military and french rightwing parties to stir up separatist sentiment, and there was a lot of ridiculous 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 reineland are really french, they may speak german, but they have a love for wine, which the germans dont have. So you got this sort of thing. No, there were certainly french who felt very strongly about germany. And you can understand it. I mean, it was both memory of the past and fear of the future. I mean, the french Prime Minister when the germans besieged it in 1870, had seen what happened. He said, i dont know if it was true, 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. It had bigger potential forces. So that was a very real fear. So in france, you know, the treaty was not never came to be seen as legitimate. What began to happen in English Speaking countries is where there was a sense the french were being ridiculous, there was a lack of sympathy for france, which i think was unfair, actually, but i think you also got increasingly a sense that the germans were right. You know, the treaty wasnt fair. You know, they hadnt started the war. Why should they have to pay this penalty and why dont we just get on with things . It helped to divide the allies, i think. Opinion, even today, i think, in france, youll probably get more of a feeling the treaty wasnt that bad. One of the chief attacks or counterparts to canes was written by frenchman. Its quite powerful. He attacks canes and says he doesnt get it. I dont 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, too. Well, i can talk about the origins of the First World War until the cows come home, but perhaps we dont want to do that. I think it used to be said that the Alliance System, the sort of notion of a balance of power where you had sort of roughly balanced powers as a way of keeping the peace and where you had Alliance Systems had actually created the First World War because it meant if any two nations the balance of power was inherently unstable, and a tight Alliance System meant if you got into a dispute, it would drag in like a sort of trail, all the allied nations. I dont think that really is the case myself. I think the alliances before the First World War much looser than they have been portrayed. They were defensive alliances. And in the case of the triple entente, which was britain, france, and russia, the only defensive alliance was between russia and france. And what a defensive Alliance Means is you dont have to go to war unless your partner is attacked. You dont support your partner if it goes to war, and the british never signed an alliance. So it was looser than it might appear on the surface. And the triple alliance which was austria, hungry, italy, and germany, was again, a defensive alliance. And the thing about alliances, it seems to me, is who enforces them. You know, you cant go to a court of international judgment and say, look, my Alliance Partner fail today come to war when i was attacked. Failed to come to my defense. And the italians got out of their they simply avoided their obligations to go to war when austria, hungary, and germany went to war. They said in 1914, you attacked the others, you werent attacked. The defensive alliance doesnt work. I thought the Alliance System was much looser than it might appear, and people said it was, and i dont think it did cause the First World War. I think other things did. But i dont think the alliances were the chief culprit. In lieu of the fact that were involved with nato and britain, with the demise of the soviet union, do you see a continued role for nato . Well, youre getting far ahead of my field. But i always wondered at the end of the cold war whether nato shouldnt have been wound up. I mean, it was a cold War Institution to provide collective security for the members of nato. It redefined itself, and it began to move further afield. Afghanistan was a nato operation, and i always did wonder about that. On the other hand, i think something i mean, nato was designed partly to contain the soviet union. And it seems to me that russia still needs a bit of containing. So having Something Like nato, in which nations do cooperate and share military planning and so on seems to me not a bad idea. Last two questions will come from the other side of the auditorium. I think we all sympathize with the difficulty of ironing out this peace. But 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 their publics they werent going to get everything they wanted, everything they had been promised, but they would do their best to get europes economy going again. But politically, i think that would have been very difficult. I mean, you know, we may disapprove of it, but democratic politicians have to think of getting reelected. 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. I think the evidence is, and this was before Public Opinion polls. The evidence is that british opinion was getting much less vehement against germany by the summer of 1919 than it had been say nine months previously, and it might well have been the case that if lloyd george had said, look, were going to say were really going to go easy on the reparations or were going to give more to france. If britain would have been prepared to give more to france, that might have done it. But it was politically difficult. Im not sure they could have done much more with germany. I think they felt germany had lost. They felt they had a good they had every right to punish it, and you know, again, what they did is also looked at which is not, my mother always told me two wrongs dont make a right, but they did look at what germany had done to france after 1871, and they also looked at what germany had done to russia in the treaty in march 1918, which if you want to lack at punitive and savage treaties, that one, which also involved austria hungary, was savage. It detached huge chunks of russia, including ukraine from russia, and the bol shu vicks had to pay whatever they had in gold and pay to austria hungary. There was a sense that germany should have paid some penalty. The trouble was, as a french commentator said, the treaty was neither harsh enough or soft enough. As they had been prepared to make it clear to the germans who had lost, as it was, very few germans saw a foreign soldiers, and that sense of having lost the war was never properly properly is the wrong word, but if they had been prepared to do that, it might have been better. Or if they had been prepared to say to their own publics, look, the war has been a catastrophe all around, but were not going to make it worse by trying to extract reparations from germany, but i think their political choices were limited by their own Public Opinion. I think it was really very difficult to do it. And klemmen so said i cant i have to have reparations. I cannot face my electorate. I cannot face the French Public and say we wont have reparations. He said its just impossible. So its very, very difficult. I think ending wars which can raise these Great Expectations and great hatreds, 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 and contributing to rebuilding it if the United States and the soviet union hadnt fallen out. There are many sort of ifs and buts, and one of the reasons the u. S. Was much more committed, i think, to europe and to revival of europe and the revival of world trade and investment generally after the Second World War and was prepared to put many in it was fear of the soviet union. And after the First World War, the United States didnt have that feeling nor should it have done. I think the circumstances simply were not propitious for making good peace in 1919. Where they could have done things better i think is in the middle east. Thats another whole subject, but i think the british and french, who were responsible for the middle east settlements, behaved like old style imperialists and treated the peoples of the middle east as if their opinions didnt count. As if they were negligible. I think they could have done better there. 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 fared 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 had they hadnt come close to bankruptcy, but they had certainly lost enormous ground economically. I mean, in the course, and 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, so the british had lost ground as a world power. And i think were very much aware of that, and they had spent more than they could possibly afford to spend. They had also expanded their empire as a result of the First World War, which is going to put additional burdens on them. They were finding the burden of empire beginning to weigh very heavily by the 1920s. But i think what the british also lost was just the sense of i mentioned earlier that european civilization was somehow improving. They had lost the french lost the most men of military age, i think, in europe 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, for societies, for wives, who people who might have got married, for children, i think was something that was going to go on reverberating down through the generations. There were going to be children, lots of them, who never knew their fathers or had fathers who came home from the war who were never really capable of being parents to them because they were so psychologically damaged. And i think the women lost a lot as well. So 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, thats too strong a word, certainly economically strained by the First World War. I think it marked the beginning of the end for the British Empire. Even though britains empire was bigger after the First World War, britains capacity to manage it was getting less, and the empire was getting less willing to be part of the empire. Increasingly, the british were dealing with people who wanted to rule themselves. In india, gandhi had appeared and taken a middleclass movement and turned it into a mass movement. The british had an uneasy feeling the world was becoming very 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 to end this evening, so if you would please, join with me in thanking dr. Margaret macmillan. Thank you. Weeknights this month, were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight, from American History tvs history bookshelf series, a night of authors discussing american president s. Starting with david and gene hideler on the rise of andrew jackson, myth, manipulation, and the making of modern politics. The book examines jacksons election to the nations highest office. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, and enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. Youre watching American History tv. Every weekend on cspan3, explore our nations past. Cspan3, created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. And now, harvard professor erez manela, togged about Woodrow Wilsons upbringing and education shaped his view on he championed self determine and reform as bulwarks against both concentrated power and disorder. This video is courtesy of the National World war i museum and memorial in kansas city, missouri. Dr. Erez manela is a professor of history at Harvard University where he teaches International History and the history of the United States in the world. He also serves as director of the graduate programs at harvards Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and is cochair of the Harvard International and global history seminar. Hes coedter of the global and internation h