VERSAILLES CONFERENCE TIMELINE

1
VERSAILLES CONFERENCE TIMELINE

• December 14, 1918 Wilson arrives in Paris but
  soon leaves to tour England and Italy
• January 10-20, 1919 Foch Clemenceau propose
  independent Rhenish buffer state
• January 25 Conference agrees unanimously to
  establish a League of Nations
• January 30 Wilson promises Orlando to accept
  Italian annexation of Trentino Trieste
• February 14-March 4 Wilson returns to USA but
  cannot persuade Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge to support
  Covenant
• March 24 Big Four begin talks over German
  borders
• April 28 Big Four adopt Rhineland compromise
• June 28 Signing of the Treaty of Versailles

2
Woodrow Wilson despised his predecessor, William
Howard Taft, as a champion of dollar
diplomacy.But Taft DID support international
courts of arbitration, and in 1916, 70 of U.S.
voters supported a League of Nations. Teddy
Roosevelt was almost the only leader to champion
unrestricted national sovereignty.
3
France and Britain had promised Italy the
Trentino, with 230,000 German-speakers, the
mostly Italian port of Trieste, and Istria
Dalmatia, with 1.3 million South Slavs. Wilson
and Orlando quarreled over Fiume.
4
Austrian ethnographic map from 1910
Ochre Italians Lt. green Croats Dk.
green, Slovenes See Nicolson, pp. 159-65
5
Can It Survive? (Literary Digest, July 1919)
On March 3, 1919, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge had
published an open letter rejecting any treaty
that included the Covenant
6
The Big Four argued about German borders from
March 24 to April 28
7
The impact of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany
(France occupied the Rhineland until 1930, the
Saarland until 1935)
8
Sir William Orpen, The Signing of Peace in the
Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28 June 1919
9
Delegation of French wounded at the signing
ceremony for the Treaty of Versailles, 28 June
1919
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KEY DECISIONS AT VERSAILLES IN 1919

• National self-determination for Poles,
  Czechoslovaks, Yugoslavs, Romanians,
  Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians
• Formation of a League of Nations dedicated to
  collective security (but key votes must be
  unanimous)
• Italy gains the south Tirol but must renounce
  Dalmatia the status of Fiume remains disputed
• Great Britain gains control of Germanys African
  colonies, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq as League
  of Nations Mandates France gains Syria,
  Lebanon, and Cameroon
• Germany must pay war reparations equal to the
  entire cost of the war and reduce its army to
  100,000 men

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European language groups, 1910
Postwar borders, 1921
12
Red Parliament! Vote Social Democratic
(Budapest, 1919)
Bela Kun led the Soviet Republic of Hungary from
March to August 1919
13
Hungarian nationalist poster from 1919 The red
worker is horrified because his uprising has
smashed Hungary to pieces
14
Admiral Miklos Horthy,Regent of
Hungary,1919-1944
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Be Vigilant!(1920)The threats include
capitalist minions in Finnland and the Baltic
Republics and Ukrainian nationalists
16
Polish peasants with their scythes volunteer
tofight in the Russo-Polish War, 1920
17
The front line in the Russo-Polish War in June
1920,at the height of Polish success (final
border in black)
18
Field Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, Polish chief of
state, 1918-1922 dictator, 1926-1935
19
Gabriele dAnnunzio, the Italian poet and war
hero who led volunteers into Fiume in September
1919, the first duce
20
Fascist Black Shirts March on Rome, October 1922
21
Benito Mussolini(1883-1945)ex-Marxist, combat
veteran, founder of the Fascist Party, Prime
Minister of Italy (1922-1943),il duce.He
advocated rule by the aristocracy of the
trenches.
22
Greek Prime Minister Venizelos and Megali
Hellas (1920)
23
General Mustapha Kemal at Gallipoli in 1915,
later known as Kemal Ataturk
24
Turkish cavalry moves toward the front in
theGreco-Turkish War of 1919-1922--- 1.5 million
Greeks fled Asia Minor, 500,000 Muslims fled
Greece
25
Czechoslovakia was the only successful new
democracy (the arrival of Thomas Masaryk in
Prague, December 21, 1918)
26
Already by 1922, it was clear that only the green
countries supported the Versailles settlement