The End Of World War I Essay, Research Paper

When World War I ended on November 11, 1918, peace talks went on

for months due to the Allied leaders wanting to punish the enemy and

?dividing the spoils of war.? A formal agreement to end the war was

made and called the Treaty of Versailles. The issue that took the most

time were the territorial issues because the empires of Russia,

Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman, and Germany had collapsed. These fallen

empires had to be divided up and America?s President Woodrow Wilson,

Georges Clemenceau of France, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, and David

Lloyd George of Great Britain, were the main deciders of this deal.

During 1918, Russia was knocked out of the war due to military

defeats and the Bolshevik Revolution. Even though Russia had not been

part of the Central Powers, Germany seized much of western Russia.

After many months of arguing, the four men had made western Russia

into the nations of Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland.

The Treaty of Versailles was either a treaty of peace or a

vengeance for the Germans. In April of 1919, Germany was previously

captured and made to wait in a small house that was surrounded with

barbed wire.

The Allied, who captured Germany, wanted to make a peace treaty

to end the fighting. The Germans agreed, but they wanted a treaty that

was based on the Fourteen Points but obviously they were not going to

get it because of the way they were treated; the barbed wire was

unnecessary and ?should have tipped them off to what lay ahead.?

When the treaty was first introduced to the Germans, they declined

to sign it. It forced the Germans to accept full responsibility for

the war and strip themselves of its colonies, coal fields, and the

provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. It also made them pay outrageous

reparations to the Allies. Nevertheless, on June 28, 1919, the Germans

reluctantly signed the treaty because the Allies refused to change one

word. Out of the $33 billion dollars the Germans had to pay for

damages, the country was only able to pay $4.5 billion of it.

The terms of the Treaty of Versailles helped set the stage for

another world war less than 20 years later because the Allied wanted

to stop Germany from ever becoming imperialistic again and still have

them pay the war reparations. Germany opposed these actions and was

the most effected by the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Germany got

the blunt end of the war and was desperate to find a new leader to get

out of their depression. That leader was Adolf Hitler. World War I was

won by the Allied in which a formal agreement was made called the

Versailles Treaty. It both brought peace and war in the coming years.

Due to the harsh life styles it forced Germany to live, World War II

broke out within twenty years time from the treaty.