Amante, Cherina Anne O.
A51- INTGLOS
Mr. Takamichi Serizawa, PhD.
February 1, 2016

Reaction Paper (The Treaty of Versailles documentary)

During our class in Introduction to Global Society, our professor, Mr. Serizawa, let us watch a BBC Four documentary about the Treaty of Versailles and how it came to be. The documentary starts with explicitly telling that the treaty of Versailles that aimed to make a lasting peace with Germany, failed. The failure was due to the differences of goals of the 3 big powerful people or ‘the peacemakers’, namely; Georges Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France; Woodrow Wilson, the President of America; and David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister of Great Britain. The treaty of Versailles was called a ‘dictated peace’ since Germany was not allowed to negotiate the terms of the treaty. Woodrow Wilson wanted to establish a League of Nations that aimed to settle arguments between countries without a war coalescing. He also outlined the Fourteen points in which was a statement of principles that was to be used for peaceful negotiations after the First World War. But both his main Allied colleagues were not in favor of the Fourteen points that Wilson made. In my opinion, I think that the treaty of Versailles was doomed at the point when it was revealed in the documentary that Wilson, Clemenceau, and George had different interests in which path for the treaty to take. It was also devastating that the treaty not only failed in making a long lasting peace with Germany, but also paved the way for the Second World War to start. I also believed that the treaty posed some sense of unfairness on Germany’s side since the treaty required only Germany to pay a large amount of sum for the reparations. It seemed unfair that Germany was the only country to literally pay the price for the aftermath of the war. I also believed that the harshness of