FREE ESSAY ON END OF WW I

END OF WW I

The End of World War I
When World War I ended on November 11, 1918, peace talks went on for months due to the
Allied leaders wanting to punish the enemy and ?dividing the spoils of war.O A formal
agreement to end the war was made and called the Treaty of Versailles. The issue that
took the most time were the territorial issues because the empires of Russia,
Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman, and Germany had collapsed. These fallen empires had to be
divided up and AmericaOs President Woodrow Wilson, Georges Clemenceau of France, Vittorio
Orlando of Italy, and David Lloyd George of Great Britain, were the main deciders of this
deal. During 1918, Russia was knocked out of the war due to military defeats and the
Bolshevik Revolution. Even though Russia had not been part of the Central Powers, Germany
seized much of western Russia. After many months of arguing, the four men had made
western Russia into the nations of Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland. The
Treaty of Versailles was either a treaty of peace or a vengeance for the Germans. In
April of 1919, Germany was previously captured and made to wait in a small house that was
surrounded with barbed wire. The Allied, who captured Germany, wanted to make a peace
treaty to end the fighting. The Germans agreed, but they wanted a treaty that was based
on the Fourteen Points but obviously they were not going to get it because of the way
they were treated; the barbed wire was unnecessary and ?should have tipped them off to
what lay ahead.O When the treaty was first introduced to the Germans, they declined to
sign it. It forced the Germans to accept full responsibility for the war and strip
themselves of its colonies, coal fields, and the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. It
also made them pay outrageous reparations to the Allies. Nevertheless, on June 28, 1919,
the Germans reluctantly signed the treaty because the Allies refused to change one word.
Out of the $33 billion dollars the Germans had to pay for damages, the country was only
able to pay $4.5 billion of it. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles helped set the
stage for another world war less than 20 years later because the Allied wanted to stop
Germany from ever becoming imperialistic again and still have them pay the war
reparations. Germany opposed these actions and was the most effected by the terms of the
Versailles Treaty. Germany got the blunt end of the war and was desperate to find a new
leader to get out of their depression. That leader was Adolf Hitler. World War I was won
by the Allied in which a formal agreement was made called the Versailles Treaty. It both
brought peace and war in the coming years. Due to the harsh life styles it forced Germany
to live, World War II broke out within twenty years time from the treaty.