The Search for European Stability, 1917-29
Multiple Choice Questions
Exam Questions
Discussion Questions
Explain the decision of the United States to intervene, and assess its consequences.
How did the First World War alter European politics and society?
What aims did Britain, France, and the United States pursue at the peace conference? With what success?
Could the Versailles Treaty have provided a long-term basis for European stability?
Did the “Spirit of Locarno” reflect a fundamental change in German relations with its European neighbors?
Why were war debt negotiations the focus of such contention in the 1920s?
Assess Wilson’s 14 Points: To what extent did the Treaty of Versailles reflect liberal ideals of Wilsonian internationalism?
What elements of the Versailles Treaty were designed to provide long-term security to France?
How did the peace settlements in Central Europe mirror the Versailles Treaty?
To what extent did the United States retreat into isolation in the 1920s?
Exam Questions
The Treaty of Versailles could have maintained peace, if only the United States had remained committed to it. Discuss.
Merely a truce in a Twenty Years’ War. Discuss this interpretation of the post-1919 international environment.
To what extent was the Versailles Treaty a reflection of liberal internationalism?
Weblinks
https://www.flickr.com/groups/800965@N21/ – photography archive of First World War.
http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060022834 – video of British tanks in the First World War
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1914warpoets.asp#owen1 – text of First World War poetry
http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/small/cab-24-136-CP-3987.pdf – Cabinet memorandum on German reparations issue in 1922
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1919/01/the-idea-of-a-league-of-nations/306270/ – text of Article by H.G. Wells on the Idea of A League of Nations
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/zimmermann-telegram – text of Zimmerman telegram from German ambassador pledging spoils to Mexico if it enters the war against the United States
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-woodrow-wilsons-14-points – Woodrow Wilson’s speech calling for an end to the First World War
https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3829 – German General Ludendorff’s response to the Armistice, blaming domestic foes for German surrender
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7zNzU4SoDc – video clip of US air force experimenting with aerial bombardment on German battleships surrendered at Versailles
http://oldmagazinearticles.com/what-is-italian-fascism – text of magazine article about Fascism in Italy from 1921
Bibliography
Carley, Michael Jabara, “Anti-Bolshevism in French Foreign Policy: The Crisis in Poland in 1920,” International History Review 2:3 (1980) 410-431.
Dehne, Phillip, After the Great War: Economic Warfare and the Promise of Peace in Paris 1919, (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).
Gerwarth, Robert, “The Sky beyond Versailles: The Paris Peace Treaties in Recent Historiography”, Journal of Modern History 93:4 (2021) 896-930.
Graebner, Norman A. & Edward M. Bennett, The Versailles Treaty and its Legacy: The Failure of the Wilsonian Vision (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Jackson, Peter, William Mulligan, & Glenda Sluga, eds., Peacemaking and International Order after the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Meighen McCrae., ed., Coalition Strategy and the End of the First World War: The Supreme War Council and War Planning, 1917-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Parsons, Greg S., “British Conservative Opinion and the Problem of Germany after the First World War,” International History Review 35:4 (2013) 863-883.
Patrick, Andrew, “Woodrow Wilson, the Ottomans, and World War I”, Diplomatic History 42:5 (2018) 886-910.
Pelizza, Simone, “The Geopolitics of International Reconstruction: Halford Mackinder and eastern Europe, 1919-20,” International History Review 38:1 274-195.
Stöckmann, Jan, “Studying the International, Serving the Nation: The Origins of International Relations (IR) Scholarship in Germany, 1912-1933,” International History Review 38:5 (2016) 1055-1080.