After the war, ground rules were needed to be set to assure that there would never be another breakout from empire to start another war. Many of the European forces attended the Paris Peace Conference in January of 1919 to seek peace and was led by the Council by Four consisting of Clemenceau of France, Lloyd George of Britain, Orlando of Italy and Woodrow Wilson of the United States of America (MacMillan, 610) Everyone wanted peace since the war caused many casualties; 1,800,000 Germans, 1,700,000 Russians, 1,384,000 French, 1,290,000 Austro-Hungarians, 743,000 British and 192,000 from the entire empire (MacMillan, 26). Most of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were very harsh, especially on Germany. Many Germans complained as they believed …show more content…
It was led by the Council of Four, also known as the Big Four, but Italy left after not getting any requests granted. Clemenceau, 78 years old was mainly concentrated on the security of his country, while Lloyd George was worried about the the stability of the continent. U.K., France, Italy fought from the beginning of the war and the U.S. entered the war until 1917 and was not aware of the agreement pre-established of the Allies (The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles). Originally it was the Council of Ten but Lloyd George inspired the retire to Four as he believed too many secrets were being leaked to unnecessary sources. The main reason of this was to improve security, but the alteration did not make anything faster nor did the chemistry between them changed (Marshall, 469). The Russian government was not present even if they fought in the war as well until the end of 1917 because the Allies would not acknowledge the Bolshevik government and did not invite them. Turkey had to accept its fate as no longer being a Middle Eastern power but a small struggling state in silence until the French was looking to do better in the Balkans. Japan, on the other hand had done well in the war by providing the Allies with industrial products and raw material (Meyer, 612). Romania emerged after fighting badly began as another Allied Nation. The three nations of Austria-Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro were no longer on the map as they disappeared. Nine new nations got their own political borders. They consisted of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Finland, Hungary and Austria (Marshall, 478). It took them all of two months until mid-March when the Allies finally knew what to do with Germany. As the French and British wanted, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles would expose Germany to harsh punishments.