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 enlarge | Author: Margaret Macmillan
Creator: Richard Holbrooke
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  134 reviews
Sales Rank: 5842
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 624
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.4
ISBN: 0375760520
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.3141
EAN: 9780375760525
ASIN: 0375760520
Publication Date: September 9, 2003
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| Customer Reviews:
 Usual Stuff September 25, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
There is a certain breed of American history writer who likes to fill the narrative with gossipy things like the protagonists favourite breakfast food and whether they have a mistress. Margaret McMillan is such a writer. One can see this as making a human connection filling out a dull historic narrative or simply padding.
Between the wars the discussion about the Paris peace treaty was whether it was to punitive and if it led to the rise of Nazism. Maynard Keynes in fact wrote a book on the topic. The book is an attempt to revisit that issue and to also talk about the changes which remade the map of Europe.
In 1917 the Russian Empire was overthrown and the Bolsheviks took power. The Austo-Hungarian Empire collapsed and Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland emerged as independent nations. The Ottoman Empire was occupied and the remaining imperial powers Britain and France carved up its territories.
The reality is of course that it was not Versailles that led to the Nazis taking over. The German conservatives rejected the move to a democratic state. It was only after the disaster of the second world war and the enormous loss of lives and territory that all Germans rejected war and moved to accepting that the future lay in developing as an industrial rather than a military power.
One debate that would be interesting but is not touched on in the book is how idiotic Wilson's ideas were. He believed breaking up states on the basis of the ethnic base of the people living there. Hungary for the Hungarians that sort of thing. This was meant to end conflict and lead to a peaceful world. As an ideology it is repellent. It led to the justification by Hitler to destroy Czechoslovakia and the rationalisation for countless acts of aggression and border disputes. Rather than this racial approach the modern approach to the formation of states is to create democratic institutions and the protection of individual rights so that diverse groups can live together and resolve conflict through the state institutions.
Still most writers see historical debates through the prism of previous debates so that issues such as this are seldom discussed. Not a bad historical overview of the period
 Paris 1919 A contrast to 2007 in a World of One September 24, 2008
Insights and shortsights leading to our current situation, in the Orient.
http://cigarroomofbooks.blogspot.com/2007/12/paris-1919.html
 The history of the conclusion of WW I March 25, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This work is all about the treaty that brought World War One to a close. It's also takes a detailed look at the various, (and often, "nefarious"), world leaders who were the principals in fleshing out that final agreement which, by the way, was never ratified by the U.S, Congress.
I especially liked the book because it's sort of an unvarnished mini-biography of Woodrow Wilson. I came away seeing Wilson as both incompetent and a bit of a loser. The book also verified what I already knew about governments in general: they're NOT there to help you and their leaders harbor personal power agendas that are rarely, if ever, in the public interest.
A lot of countries got screwed (I couldn't think of a more appropriate term!) as a result of the Versailles Treaty and, perhaps, I differ a bit in my personal conclusions about this from the author and the conclusions she has drawn. Still, the book itself arms one with all the facts, and there's not much editorializing, and for that I praise Macmillan.
I doubt that there is a better documentation of this period and place anywhere. Macmillan was very thorough in her research and it's a fine book. I most enjoyed the discussion of "Lawrence of Arabia" and his dillemma.
If I have a complaint about the book it's simply that, even accounting for the fact that it's non-fiction, I didn't find that it was a very fluid read. This was a book that I had to make myself finish and, after the fact, I'm pleased that I did.
Best history book I've ever read January 28, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I've read some great history books before, including 1776 and America's Longest War. But this is the best. It shows in astonishing detail that the greatest errors made in 1919 by President Wilson were not in allowing the British and French to impose overly punitive reparations on Germany (though that is partly true, this familiar thesis is turns out to be overblown -- the greater error with respect to Germany was not following the young Keynes's advice and starting the EEC in 1919). Even worse, Wilson gave into American and European racists who could not tolerate Japan's proposed "racial equality clause" and thus had to accept Japan's demand for a slice of Chinese territory -- thus weakening the League's moral credibility, embolding Japanise colonialism, and driving betrayed Chinese intellectuals into the hands of Lenin. This is not your 11th grade history textbook: this is what really happened, with incredible detail about the tangle of problems in region after region -- Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the new Yugoslavia, Italy's attempted land grabs, Greece's ambitions and their terrible consequences, the disasterous policies in the middle east. The cast of major characters are painted in vivid detail; I almost feel I know these men after reading this amazing book. Through it all, the tragedy of Wilson's humanitarian dream comes through keenly -- compromised away in efforts to save the League of Nations that only ended up making it worthless. Here is a thought for the future: Henry Cabot Lodge and his Republican opponents of the League would have accepted a league that only included democracies. But Wilson would not compromise were it would have helped, only where is harmed, it seems. Perhaps we should go back to Lodge's idea now and consider a new Federation of Democratic Nations to replace the defunct U.N. -- and try to revive Wilson's lost dream.
IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME January 15, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
In assessing the 20th Century I tell people the pivotal event was the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand that touched off the first world war. Granted, if that had not happened something else probably would have caused the war sometime within that timeframe but such was not the case.
The assassination and the resulting catastrophic war eventually led to a cessation of hostilities in November 1918 when the Germans and the Axis Powers were more exhausted than the exhausted Allies. As the victors, the Allies met in Paris to establish the terms for surrender. The Allies also decided to set the terms for not just peace but a lasting peace in Europe specifically and the world generally.
However, the main architects of what was to be the Treaty of Versailles (Clemenceau of France, Lloyd George of England, and Woodrow Wilson of the US) were also humans prone to many human faults. For one thing, they were political leaders susceptible to political pressures. While Wilson was more sympathetic to the losing side of the war the British and French -- especially the French who hosted the western front for four miserable years -- were not sympathetic. The Russians were invited even though their new Bolshevic Government had withdrawn in early 1918 but the invitation was more of an obligation than an actual desire to have them in Paris to make things more difficult. To the relief of the Allies, the Russians chose not to participate.
When I first got the book I thumbed through it and my immediate thought was that it was going to be boring. Once I got into the book it was anything but boring. The interactions between the leaders and their staffs and their different agenda was fascinating and gave a clearer understanding as to why their efforts to redraw the boundaries of Europe and the world -- nobel as they were -- were probably doomed to failure. Perhaps the world would have been better off without the Paris negotiations, the Treaty of Versailles and the resulting League of Nations. But in 1919 the victorious leaders could not look ahead to see that their efforts to redraw Europe and the world was a mistake.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
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