The History of the Treaty of Versailles - Five Future Wars …………. five to listen to

I have been listening to an excellent first episode of a series on the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed this month a century ago, and which was judged to make closure on the Great War.

Family members 

As we know that didn’t happen, and Europe faced a rerun of that conflict twenty years later, and some would argue set up other conflicts that rumbled through the next hundred years.

And that is the theme of the Radio 4 programme, The History of the Treaty of Versailles - Five Future Wars.*

In this series, former BBC Diplomatic Editor Bridget Kendall explores how the decisions made by the peace makers would influence a century of global conflict.

Great Uncle Richard Bux

“Kings, prime ministers and foreign ministers with their crowds of advisers rubbed shoulders with journalists and lobbyists for a hundred causes, from Armenian independence to women's rights. For six extraordinary months the city was effectively the centre of world government as the peacemakers wound up bankrupt empires and created new countries.

In this opening episode Bridget examines the treatment of Germany at the Paris Peace Conference. Blamed for the outbreak of the war and not given a seat at the table at the palace of Versailles where the conference was held. The Treaty of Versailles, when agreed, lumped Germany with economic reparations, forced disarmament and reduced territories. Following these punitive measures, the next decades of German history include the rise of Nazism and the outbreak of another World War. Were the seeds sown at Versailles?

Featuring contribution from Professor Margaret MacMillan, author of 'Peacemakers: Six Months that Changed the World' and Professor Richard Evans, University of Cambridge and author of 'The Third Reich Trilogy'”.

Subsequent episodes will include Poland and Vietnam, and some of those will be ones I grew up.

Great uncle Richard's wife

The first however because it involves post 1919 Germany, the Weimar Republic and the rise to power of the Nazi Party has a personal interest in that my maternal grandmother was German, remained in Germany until 1923, and her family including her brothers, and their families stayed and witnessed the full anguish of the hyperinflation, the mass unemployment of the 1930s and all the adjustments people had to make to the Nazi regime.

So, one to listen to.

Pictures; the German family, 1930s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The History of the Treaty of Versailles - Five Future Wars, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00066ym