appointment' he states that: 'It was because the great powers had started a war in 1914 that over 30 Allied and associated powers gathered to make peace in 1919. Four years of industrialised warfare on an unprecedented scale had solved few problems, made many worse and created new ones.' The main man behind the settlement was the American president Woodrow Wilson who also tried to identify the causes of the First World War. The Versailles Treaty was quite long, consisting of several hundred clauses, but I am only going mention the four most important features: 1. New borders for Germany. The new borders did not favour the Germans at all, in fact they were rather hard for the Germans to accept. In the west, Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France, this removed one of the grievances that had made France eager for war in 1914. But the French did not stop with that, they also detached the coal and steel producing are of Saar from Germany and put it under the administration of the new League of Nations. In the east, new borders between Germany and Poland were drawn, but the 1919 border was no fairer than any other. It differed from the pre-war border only by including more Germans under Polish jurisdiction.2. New states. A number of new states were created in central and eastern Europe on the principle of self-determination. The state of Austria consisting mainly of German-speaking members of the old Austrian Empire was forbidden to unite with Germany, and the new state of Czechoslovakia included about 2 million German-speaking people. 3. German disarmament. The Versailles Settlement imposed severe restrictions on German armaments, the army was limited to 100,000 men, the navy was limited to 15,000 men and a few ships and an air force was forbidden altogether. Areas of Germany, like the Rhine area bordering to France, were turned into a demilitarised zone. This meant that no soldiers could be stationed or any fortifications bui...
