MacMillan's book is a WWI history-buff's treasure, full of details not just about the major powers but all the lesser squabbles (that later in the century took center stage. Balkans, I'm looking at you) and their players. Lloyd George is one of many major players, along with US President Woodrow Wilson (pushing his League of Nations) and the irascible French PM Georges Clemenceau, who pepper this book with personality.
Those three also come off less harshly than other historians might claim.
The prose is crisp as a fall leaf...and sometimes as dry. On the balance, I was engaged. I don't know about you, but non-fiction for me is just as fascinating and enthralling as fiction, with the added bonus of having happened. The only downside, especially with a topic as ranging and complex as the fallout from World War I, is the volume of data that must be conveyed to understand the good stuff.
What I knew about the peace talks was informed by the few world and European history classes I'd taken over my academic career. The conference produced the Treaty of Versailles, and quite directly, World War II. That would've been my one-line description of all that took place in the City of Lights during 1919.
According to MacMillan, I am half right. Yes, that ubiquitous treaty was produced by the victors and Germany signed it, but MacMillan argues that the treaty did not have to lead to another world war. It's an important conclusion of the book, one I'm not sure she - or other histories - support. Here too is where the Big 3, and many other Allied diplomats, get off with a slap on the wrist: they are seen as punishing Germany within its means, not realizing the destabilizing influence of the treaty or the extremists (left and right) who were waiting for just such an opening to forge a new nation.
But the fate of Germany, how bad the war reparations really were (or could be, or weren't) and the rise of extreme nationalism are supplemental topics left for closing paragraphs and epilogues. She concerns herself more with the whole of the conference, the road from Armistice Day through the end of 1919.
(The 1920 treaties are mentioned as well, but for all intents, this book tracks the first six months of 1919 ending in Versailles as the main "story," with the other four or five major treaties the [much-needed] secondary narratives.)
I enjoyed it, though it took me a while. In fact, I had this book on my shelf for nearly two years (and it was borrowed from a co-worker who, when I read it, had been gone for over a year himself!) before deciding it was time to get it out of the way. I'm glad I did, as it rounded my perspective on this important year in world history.
What I most took away is how screwed up the Balkan and Eastern European delegations were and how their rabid nationalism and racism was a poison that slowly took control of everything between Russia and Germany and on down to the Mediterranean. And today, the same prejudices aren't far out of mind in the fragile, post-Communist countries.
Few realize that much of the international woes we face now started, in large part, in the apartments of Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau...with a little help from delegations large and small, European and not, totalitarian, democratic, socialist and theocratic. The divvying up of Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans and Eastern Europe and to a lesser extent Asia: these major acts have led to countless deaths, small wars and what we perceive as "terrorism."
Solutions to these problems require an understanding of their origins. And this is as good a book as any to get the ball rolling.
-Erik
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