Routledge

Chapter Resources

Chapter 2: The Search for European Stability, 1917–29

Debates

Debating peacemaking in 1919

Maps

Territorial changes in Europe after the First World War

Discussion Questions

  1. Who had the greater impact on shaping the peace of 1919 — Lenin or Wilson?
  2. Would the peace of 1919 have been more lasting had the Allies fought all the way to Berlin in 1918?
  3. What do differences over the purposes of the League of Nations between Britain, France and the United States tell us about what sort of peace each power sought?
  4. Was the containment of the Soviet Union the real stumbling block to peacemaking in the 1920s?
  5. Did France win the war but lose the peace in 1918–19?
  6. Was the peace of 1919 doomed to fail because it failed to ‘punish’ Germany enough?
  7. Was a lasting peace settlement in East Europe in the 1920s possible?
  8. Was the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 an empty gesture indicative of what Sally Marks called the ‘illusion of peace’?
  9. Were the Locarno treaties a false peace or a missed opportunity?
  10. How did access to sources change the historical debate over peacemaking in 1919?

Weblinks

Avalon Project at Yale Law School
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm
The Avalon Project aims to provide access to documents relating to law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy and government over the World Wide Web. The Avalon Project website has a clear structure to it making it straightforward to search. It is possible to search by keyword or to search the site by category. The categories available for browsing include by date (pre-eighteenth century, eighteenth century, nineteenth century, twentieth century), authors, major document collections, subject, titles, bibliography of sources and common names of diplomatic documents. The source of each document is clearly stated. The project aims to include links internally within the documents, and also to other sources, in order to aid navigation and facilitate study. A huge range of documents are available from this site and they are easy to locate making it a valuable resource for primary sources.

The complete Versailles Treaty
http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/text/versaillestreaty/vercontents.html