A major bloody war of the first half of the twentieth century is not in vain has long been called the world. The magnitude of the intense military disasters, the number of armed forces that perished and crippled - all were striking in their scope. Only those killed were measured by millions of people. Both the winners and the losers spent a huge amount of material resources and undermined their financial systems (except for the United States, but this is the exception rather than the rule).
However, after several years of murder in 1918, World War I ended. And the triumphant winners received their bonus - after such an expensive (in all sense) victory, only they could decide the future of the world order. The Versailles Conference decisions became the first brick in the basis of the new world structure. Read more about this historic event below.
Paris Peace Conference
The date of the Versailles Conference was not far from the end of the fierce war. First, in January 1919, an international conference started in Paris, convened by the victorious countries to form and sign peace agreements with the losers. The event took place (with some interruptions) until the end of January 1920. In addition to the main participants, almost all the countries that existed at that time were on the side of the Entente.
The losing countries were involved in the conference after the negotiation of peace treaties. Soviet Russia was not invited to the conference. The leading role was played by Great Britain, France and the USA.
Then there were other international forums. Within the framework of the Paris Conference, several diplomatic meetings took place, among which the Versailles Conference stands out. Because of this, the two events are combined and often simply referred to as the Paris (Versailles) conference. The event really turned out to be significant.
Challenges and Opportunities
To fully announce the results of the past war, the Versailles Conference of 1919 began to work. Its results are striking in their global nature:
- The former world political map was changed. The most powerful monarchies collapsed.
- A fairly strong, albeit short-lived (as it turned out later) system of global agreement has been created.
- The states were determined - the new leaders of the post-war world order, which became its short-lived guarantors.
However, not everything worked out so clearly and unambiguously. In the course of a gradual political peace settlement, great contradictions were identified not only around the conquered, but also among the triumphant victors. In particular, the United States and some European powers were worried about the strengthening position of externally neutral Japan in the Far East, where during the war years it did not have strong rivals. The country gradually increased its armed and economic forces.
During formal diplomatic negotiations in the first post-war years, the Japanese managed to retain the occupied territories in China and on the sea open spaces of this region. But at the same time, the victorious United States increasingly felt that they were “masters” in the global arena, and especially in the Pacific Ocean. After all, they were powerful even before the war, capturing a leading place in the world. During the years of military confrontation, the United States suffered relatively small human and economic losses, but the total debt of European states to Americans rose to two tens of billions of dollars. It was clear that the United States would seek to obtain not only economic, but also political profit from a similar situation. Because of all this, the conditions of the Versailles Conference turned out to be very contradictory and ambiguous. Of course, this affected its results even in the near future after the event.
Members
At the Paris (Versailles) Peace Conference, there were a large number of countries in accordance with the number of fighting. Diplomatic negotiations, formally ending hostilities, attracted several groups of negotiators:
- the main participants in the war are the winners;
- losers of the state;
- neutral strong states (like Japan);
- newly formed European states;
- minor states of Latin America, Asia and Africa.
Among the former and current Entente states, only our country was not. Why didn’t Russia participate in the Versailles Conference? Soviet Russia refused to participate in the conference, although it was formally invited to it.
In this large gathering of countries, only a handful of winning states have the right to vote.
US conditions
The development of the post-war world, despite the large number of participants in the Versailles Conference, depended largely on the position of the United States, which was based on Wilson's 14 points. It was a radical and not entirely realistic program for rebuilding the world, not accepted by many political forces even in the United States. Its essence:
- openness of the world order, including openness of contracts, shipping, trade;
- settlement of the colonial issue between states, taking into account the rights of the population;
- resolving the Russian issue taking into account the interests of Russia itself;
- solving territorial issues in Europe taking into account the interests of countries (France, Belgium);
- the expansion of Italy was supposed to be solved taking into account the national question;
- the creation of new European states;
- establishment of an international organization (League of Nations).
This program, which is quite utopian and does not take into account the interests of many countries, although it had a serious impact on the decisions of the Versailles Conference, was only partially implemented. Only 4 Wilson points were implemented.
Versailles Peace Treaty Results
The outcome of the Versailles Conference was very great for the world. Diplomatic negotiations ended with a series of agreements that can be divided into several groups:
- Germany lost part of its territories in Europe;
- the country has lost all of its existing colonies in Africa and Asia;
- recognized the independence of the territories that were part of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the war, canceled all agreements concluded with the Soviet state, recognized all countries created in one or another part of Russia;
- recognized all new states;
- Germany had a sharp decline in the army, she paid reparations to the winners.
Developed at the Paris Peace Conference, the Treaty of Versailles at the same time ended the war and opened a new era in international relations. But the new world did not last long.
The League of nations
The actual consequence of the Versailles International Conference was the emergence of a new international organization. The problems of spheres of influence and the number of members of the new international organization led to serious discussions at the conference. Previously, the League of Nations was formed with the tasks of protecting peace and preventing a new war on the basis of the formation of international cooperation.
However, during the course of the conference it became clear that there are several rather controversial problems of the creation and functioning of the League of Nations.
The draft new international organization from France was clearly anti-German in nature and took into account the content of the documents of the Versailles Peace Conference. Moreover, Germany itself did not have the right to be listed in this structure. Under the League, the creation of international troops and the General Staff was envisaged.
That is, France advocated the creation of real structures that would be able to ensure the implementation of the decisions of the League of Nations. However, such a project did not attract the country's leading allies - neither England nor the United States - their projects were more moderate.
The English project had only a certain arbitration scheme in the sphere of interaction of large states that joined in an alliance. Its task is to prevent the unexpected attack of one of the members of the association on another. The British believed that this would provide an opportunity to preserve their considerable colonial possessions.
The American project increased the number of members in the League at the expense of smaller states. The principle of obligations of territorial unity and political sovereignty of any member of the organization began to work. However, the possibility of changing existing state formations and their borders was allowed, provided that 75% of the League members saw them as not meeting current national circumstances and the principles of sovereignty of nations.
As a result, this document was an agreement between the United States and England and reflected their interests and understanding of the development of the world. The main tasks of the League of Nations were to confront the war and maintain the current world order.
Charter
The League of the Nation was clearly created taking into account the current international situation and the decisions of the Versailles Conference. The first article of the document established membership in it. There were three kinds of countries in the League:
- founding states that approved the Charter as part of the peace agreement on the end of the war, these were the countries participating in the war;
- states that did not take part in the war (thirteen states of Europe, Latin America and Persia);
- other countries admitted to the League of Nations by general vote.
League Bodies
The leading bodies of the organization were the Assembly - the general meeting, the Council - the current executive body and the permanent Secretariat.
The first structure met once in the current year and could analyze all issues related to the current situation and following the agreements.
The second organ of the League consisted of invariable representatives of the five leading powers and four variables. The Council is obliged to meet once a year and study a large list of issues that fall within the scope of the League.
The Secretariat, subject to regulation, was located in Geneva. It consisted of several employees and led the ongoing work of the League of Nations.
Washington Summit 1921-1922
The leaders of the Asian and European countries that have in the Pacific, solved a number of issues that have accumulated over the turbulent years of the second half of the 10s. XX century
The conference was held from November 1921 to February 1922 in Washington. Germany and Soviet Russia, who lost the war, were not invited to the conference. But representatives of these countries conducted informal negotiations on issues of interest to them.
At the conference, a number of important legal agreements were signed.
One of the main agreements was an agreement on the preservation of colonial possessions in the light of the changes. Previous treaties were canceled and new ones signed, testifying to the growing influence of the United States, Japan, and partly China.
Another treaty that determined the situation in the world in subsequent years was the agreement on the containment of naval weapons. It determined the list of states entitled to the priority development of the Navy, their specific gravity in this process and the maximum size of military courts. At the same time, it was forbidden to build large volumes of military ships and fortified coastal structures.
The conference in the US capital continued and in many ways modified the arrangements of the Versailles Conference.
System instability
International agreements adopted over the several post-war years recorded the situation, noted the ways and extent of further development, and, ultimately, stabilized the international situation for some time. However, this brought only temporary stabilization, since the system turned out to be unstable and inefficient. There are several reasons for such consequences:
- The Versailles Peace Conference covered only a part of the states, the absence of the USSR and the USA had a particularly negative impact - these are two large countries, without which maintaining the situation in Europe was impossible.
- The system itself was in an unstable position. The contradictions between England and France, the downplayed position of Germany, the new states that do not fit into the previous structure - all this should have had an effect sooner or later.
- A serious drawback of the system was the principle of economic activity of European states fixed in it. The resulting division seriously destroyed economic ties in the regions of Europe. The single market was not broken by dozens of small ones, but it was not possible to neutralize this problem. Europe was not capable of making common decisions on economic issues. And the global economic crisis in the middle of the interwar era contributed to a strong decline in relations between countries.
All this, together with the serious internal problems of many states, plunged into collapse the existing system of the Versailles Conference. In addition, the events led to another world war, this time even more ambitious.
The situation of Germany and the USSR
The Versailles-Washington Conference brought a much-needed, but very unstable and unjust world. According to the results of the Versailles agreement, two large states - Germany and Soviet Russia - were victims, which led to a mutual rapprochement between the two states. Germany created illegal military equipment on the territory of the USSR and trained its military personnel. The USSR formally received the status of a significant European state (1922), as a result, the Entente states were forced to gradually recognize it, otherwise Germany alone would have a special position in trade relations with Russia.
Both countries considered the Versailles Conference decisions unfair. The Entente states shook off any responsibility for the past war, although in practice it was a common European problem, and all the warring parties were to blame for the bloodshed.
A significant amount of reparations demanded from Germany contributed to inflation and impoverishment of serious sections of the local population. In fact, because of this, the Nazi regime appeared , which formulated populist appeals for revenge.
The League of Nations, which began work in early 1920, was controlled by the Entente. Having not stopped the French attack on Germany (the capture of the Ruhr basin in 1923), the League of Nations lost its authority and ability to stifle the larger conflicts of these years, and, ultimately, was unable to stop the new world war.
results
The outcome of the Versailles-Washington Conference was significant. The new interwar system of world relations is a world order, the basis of which was founded by the Versailles Agreement of 1919, as well as a number of legal documents between the countries. The European component of the existing system (aka Versailles) was largely created under the influence of the interests and position of the victorious countries while ignoring the interests of the losers and the newly created states (nine countries only in Europe), which made this structure sensitive to collapse, including due to demands for its reform, and did not allow continued constancy in world affairs.
The negative answer of the United States to the question of working in the existing system, the isolation of Soviet Russia and the anti-German focus made it into a poorly stable and not narrowly targeted machine. Because of this, the possibility of a new world conflict soon grew. The United States became a sovereign country and broke the current order. Difficult for Germany points of the Versailles Peace (the volume of reparations, etc.) insulted the population and aroused revanchistic emotional tendencies, which resulted in one of the reasons for the seizure of power by the Nazis, who launched a new bloody world war.
The Washington military-political system, encompassing the Pacific region, was a much more significant equilibrium, but it was also not ideal. Its instability was determined by the vagueness of the political formation of China, the military nature of Japan’s foreign policy development, the isolationism of US politics and other important factors.
Another typical feature of the emerging Versailles system was anti-Soviet aspiration. In many places, diplomatic politeness manifested the bloodthirstiness of countries for Soviet Russia.
The largest profits from the created Versailles system came from England, France and the United States. At that time, a civil war continued in Russia, the Communists won it. Initially, they tried to establish diplomatic relations with neighboring Afghanistan, with the newly emerged Baltic countries and Finland. , , . , , . .
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