Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World [Anglais] [Broché]

If it cannot be argued that the second World War was an American led victory, the first World War is similarly an unarguable French led victory. The small and very late military US intervention sped up the end of the war but didn't change its result.

Some modern Anglo Saxon analysts, like Margareth McMillan, who feel very intelligent in raising the Ruhr occupation and Weimar Republic economic crisis as a cause to World War II, should thing deeper. They only repeat Hitler's arguments as if they were factual as a cause for World War II and input them back in the 1919 peace treaty.

They are forgetting that World War I, had resulted from German aggression against France, and had been carried on French soil, totally destroying (not simply damaging) the equivalent of the Ruhr region for the French economy, inducing also a huge demographic death toll for France. At the time iron and coal are the back bones of modern economy and the damage to France is of essential magnitude. "Reparations" (meaning repairing the damages done by a party) are to often dealt with as an abstract word implicitely corresponding to moral damages: these were actual damages. They are inconsequently estimated today as too heavy by people who only consider the German side of the issue: the alternatives were either to spread the reparations over a long period making them leiter in the meantime or more heavily on a shorter period. The choice was finally made at the American president's request and enforced through the League of Nations who entrusted France with a mandate which has been only patially fulfilled.

Maybe they should quit repeating Hitler's propaganda claims and analyze that by lacking to apply financial reparations due, it prevented France to rebuild its defense, allowing the nazi to finance theirs: possibly a much more sound and fairer analysis of the causes for World War II. Also the requirement by French President Clemenceau to prevent any possible Anschluss of Austria would have kept Germany less powerful. Also if the American Senate had voted for the League Of Nations that its President had during the Council Of Four placed as an arbitrator of the peace negotiated in Paris, Hitler would not have had a chance to put the world in flames.

The only merit of this book is to have collected facts which are now historically and geographically scattered. However by looking at an historical period from the perspective of the present balance of (economical and military) power which didn't apply in 1919, this book assemble the facts in a light that seems to me to be totally shallow and offers an analysis which seem essentially wrong.

The aims of the British over the Middle East and oil are as overlooked by the author than they were by the French President. They would condition the second World War (as demonstrated by the very first British bombing of German installations and Hitler's Russian campaign.)

The Germans were not victims (as authors seem to present them more and more often), they were an aggressor that had been pushed back by victims after considerable damages. The victorious victims were very reasonable in their request for reparations keeping in mind the necessity to build a durable peace. No damages were granted for the demographic drain and the losses of human lives, which would affect durably both English and French economies.

To be purchased for looking at the facts and reconsidering their analysis as proposed by the author keeping in mind that the British Empire and the French Empire were the two dominating powers of the time and that they had had way more casualties than any other Allies.