Welcome back. Have you ever looked at a modern
map of the world and just wondered why are the
borders drawn exactly there? Yeah, or why certain
countries have these really deep historical grievances
that still dominate our news feeds today. Exactly.
Well, today we're taking you back to a singular
moment in time where the globe was quite literally
carved up by a few men sitting in a room. We're
talking about the Paris Peace Conference of 1919
to 1920. It genuinely serves as the ultimate
origin story for the 20th century. We're drawing
today on an incredibly detailed historical overview
of the conference. And the sheer volume of cascading
consequences that came out of these meetings
is just truly unprecedented. Yeah, it really
is. Everything from the rise of totalitarianism
to the borders of the Middle East traces right
back to these specific negotiations. Right. So
our mission for you today on this deep dive is
to explore how this conference ended World War
one But simultaneously through its compromises
its bitter grudges and its frankly profound blind
spots Planted the seeds for World War two and
a century of geopolitical tension. Okay, let's
unpack this setting the scene You have the victorious
allies descending on Paris to dictate the terms
of peace to the defeated Central Powers, right?
The source describes the scale of this event
as almost incomprehensible. What did Paris actually
look like during those months? It effectively
became the center of a world government. You
had diplomats from 32 different countries and
nationalities pouring into the city. Wow. The
logistical footprint was enormous. They established
52 separate commissions. They held over 1600
sessions, pulling in experts to draft reports
on everything imaginable. I mean, from the fate
of prisoners of war to the regulation of international
aviation and even the ownership of undersea cables.
Wild. Yeah. For a brief moment, every global
issue was just being funneled directly through
Paris. But the source makes a very sharp distinction
between that sprawling bureaucracy and where
the actual power resided, right? Oh, absolutely.
That entire apparatus was essentially a facade.
Despite the 32 countries present, the globe was
being dictated to by the big four. And that's
the U .S., Britain, France, and Italy. Correct.
Specifically, U .S. President Woodrow Wilson,
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French
Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and Italian
Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. These
four men, along with a tight circle of advisors,
met informally 145 times. Behind closed doors.
Behind closed doors. They made all the major
decisions themselves, and then those decisions
were just rolled out to be ratified by the rest
of the attendees. And the defeated nations, you
know, Germany, Austria -Hungary, the Ottoman
Empire, they were simply not permitted a voice
in the deliberations. Which is a huge detail.
I was reading the section detailing how the conference
officially kicked off, and it mentioned a very
specific date and... location chosen by the French.
The conference formally opened on January 18,
1919, and the eventual signing of the treaty
with Germany happened in the Hall of Mirrors
at the Palace of Versailles. Why was the French
delegation so insistent on those exact details?
Well, it was a highly calculated move to humiliate
Germany. Which is a massive flex. A total flex.
January 18th was the exact anniversary of the
proclamation of the German Empire back in 1871,
which, if you remember, occurred after France
was defeated in the Franco -Prussian War. Right.
And that 1871 proclamation took place in that
very same room, the Hall of Mirrors. So the French
wanted to dismantle the German Empire in the
exact physical space where it was That is so
deeply petty, but also rooted in real trauma,
I imagine. Exactly. Trauma and a desperate desire
for security. French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau
had personally witnessed two German invasions
of French soil in his lifetime. So his primary
objective was to weaken Germany militarily, strategically
and economically so they could just never mount
another invasion. That punitive approach seems
to directly clash with the American delegation's
agenda. I mean, President Woodrow Wilson arrived
in Europe as the first sitting U .S. president
to ever visit the continent, and he brought his
famous 14 points with him. Right. And Wilson
was pushing a document bursting with idealism.
He advocated for open diplomacy, free trade,
national self -determination. He really wanted
to construct a liberal world order governed by
international law. But the Europeans weren't
having it. Not at all. The European powers, who
had bled for four years in the trenches, were
looking for tangible revenge and hard territorial
guarantees. They viewed Wilson as this academic
who was just totally disconnected from the brutal
realities of European geopolitics. Which perfectly
sets up my favorite quote from the source material.
Clemenceau was so frustrated with Wilson's moralizing
that he famously complained, Mr. Wilson bores
me with his 14 points. Why, God Almighty has
only 10. It's a great line. And that friction
dominated the room, and it ultimately produced
the Treaty of Versailles, the most famous of
the five major treaties drafted at the conference.
The centerpiece of that treaty was the notorious
Article 231. The war guilt clause. Exactly. Article
231 legally placed the entire liability for the
war and all the subsequent damages squarely on
the aggression of Germany and her allies. Beyond
just being a profound insult to the German public,
what was the practical function of that clause?
It served as the legal foundation required to
impose crippling financial reparations on Germany.
The Allies needed a legal justification to demand
that Germany pay for the pensions of Allied soldiers
and the rebuilding of European infrastructure.
So it was about the money. Yes, and it created
an impossible financial burden. It was a debt
Germany was supposed to pay, but essentially
defaulted on by 1931, which fueled deep domestic
resentment. Here's where it gets really interesting.
I noticed a detail in the source about some backdoor
maneuvering by the French that happened completely
out of sight of the public and even out of sight
of their own allies. What was the René -Massacly
mission? This is a wild detail. France was so
deeply paranoid about their security in the post
-war world that they sent a diplomat René Massili
on a secret mission to Berlin. Just totally bypassing
the Americans and the British. Entirely behind
their backs. Massili approached the German government
and proposed that France and Germany actually
shared a common enemy, the Anglo -Saxon powers,
meaning the U .S. and Britain. Unbelievable.
Right. France offered to revise the harsh territorial
and economic clauses of the upcoming peace treaty
if Germany would agree to form a joint alliance
with France to counter American and British global
dominance. To think that France was trying to
ally with Germany against the US and Britain
before the ink was even dry on the treaty is
just a crazy historical footnote. Why didn't
Germany take the deal? Well, the German foreign
minister suspected it was a trap. He thought
it was designed to trick them into accepting
the harsh treaty terms. Ironically, the German
leadership also calculated that Woodrow Wilson
was more likely to offer them lenient terms than
the French were. So they gambled on American
idealism over French real politics. And lost
that gamble, ultimately. But France wasn't the
only allied power feeling deeply insecure about
the outcome. The Italian delegation seemed to
be fighting an uphill battle from the moment
they arrived. True. Italy had joined the Allied
war effort in 1915. specifically because they
were promised significant territorial expansions
in a secret agreement called the Treaty of London.
Right. They were promised control over the Adriatic
Sea, including the Dalmatian coast, parts of
the Tyrol and Trieste. But at the conference,
Italian Prime Minister Orlando struggled to advocate
for his country. For one, he couldn't speak English,
so he relied heavily on his foreign minister
to negotiate, and the other powers pushed back
hard against giving Italy the city of Fiume.
The source mentions that Italy lost seven hundred
thousand soldiers in the war and their economy
was devastated. When Orlando returned home without
those promised territories, how did the Italian
public react? It sparked a national crisis. Italian
nationalists coined a term for the outcome, a
mutilated victory. Utilated victory. That's a
heavy phrase. It really is. That intense feeling
of betrayal and national humiliation became the
direct fuel for the rise of Italian fascism.
The disappointment in Paris provided the perfect
populist talking point for Benito Mussolini to
rally a fractured nation. Now, the diplomatic
tension wasn't just occurring between the different
empires. It was also fracturing the empires internally.
Britain attempted to speak for its entire global
empire at the conference, but the Dominions Countries
like Canada and Australia demanded their own
distinct seats at the table. Yes, they felt they
had earned the right to sovereign representation
through their immense sacrifices on the battlefield.
Could you break down the numbers the source provides
regarding Canada's contribution? It really puts
their demands into perspective? Sure. Canadian
Prime Minister Robert Borden pointed out that
Canada had lost 60 ,000 men in the conflict.
To put that in context, that was a larger wrong
number than the 50 ,000 military deaths suffered
by the United States. That is staggering. It
is. Borden argued that Canada had bled as much
as anyone and demanded representation as a minor
power. Eventually, Britain and a reluctant Woodrow
Wilson had to concede. But the fiercest internal
clash came from the Australian prime minister.
Billy Hughes. He clashed relentlessly with Wilson
over the fate of German colonies in the Pacific,
which Australia wanted to absorb as a buffer
zone against future threats. There is an incredible
exchange detail in the text where Wilson, growing
annoyed with Australian demands, dismissively
says to Hughes, but after all, you speak for
only five million people. And Hughes fired back
immediately. I represent 60 ,000 dead. It perfectly
captures the raw grief and nationalism sitting
just beneath the bureaucratic arguments. Hughes
was fighting ferociously for Australian interests,
which brings us to one of the most pivotal and
tragic moments of the entire conference. What's
fascinating here is the role of the Japanese
delegation and their specific demands. Right,
because Japan was originally considered one of
the leading powers at the start of the conference.
Right. What were they trying to achieve in the
new League of Nations? They had a sizable delegation
headed by a former prime minister, and alongside
territorial claims, they proposed a racial equality
clause to be included in the covenant of the
newly formed League of Nations. Okay. It was
a straightforward amendment stating that all
alien nationals of League member states should
receive equal and just treatment, making no distinction
on account of their race or nationality. On the
surface, that aligns perfectly with Woodrow Wilson's
rhetoric about a liberal, equitable world order.
Why did it face such fierce opposition? Because
it hit a brick wall built by the colonial powers.
While the British delegation was theoretically
open to it on a nominal level, they faced intense
pressure from their dominions. Australia led
by Billy Hughes in South Africa, were deeply
opposed to the clause because it fundamentally
threatened their own restrictive race -based
immigration policies. Ah, I see. To keep the
British Empire united, Britain abstained from
supporting the Japanese proposal. But the proposal
still went to a vote among the delegates. If
the majority supported it, how did Woodrow Wilson
manage to kill the amendment? Wilson was facing
his own domestic pressures from a segregated
America, and as the chairman of the conference,
he utilized a procedural loophole. Even though
11 of the 17 delegates voted in favor of the
racial equality proposal, Wilson suddenly ruled
that a unanimous vote was required for it to
pass. A completely arbitrary ruling just to bury
the clause. Precisely. And the diplomatic fallout
was monumental. This public, humiliating rejection
deeply alienated the Japanese delegation. The
source explicitly links the defeat of this proposal
to Japan's subsequent turn away from diplomatic
cooperation with the Western world. Pushing them
toward the nationalist and militarist policies
that would lead directly to World War II. Exactly.
And Japan wasn't the only Asian nation leaving
Paris deeply disillusioned. The Chinese delegation...
led by Liu Zengxiang, demanded that former German
concessions in the Shantung province be returned
to Chinese sovereignty. But despite the Western
powers preaching the gospel of self -determination,
they opted to hand those Chinese territories
over to Japan. Yes, essentially to appease Japanese
territorial demands after killing their equality
clause. The hypocrisy was glaring. It sparked
the massive May 4th student protests across China.
The Chinese delegation was so furious over the
betrayal that they became the only delegation
at the conference to flat out refuse to sign
the Treaty of Versailles. Which raises an important
question. Who else was being locked out while
the map was being redrawn? Because the silence
in that room was just as influential as the arguments.
That's a great point. As you listen to this,
you really have to consider that What did not
happen in Paris shaped our modern world just
as much as what Rue did. The halls were full
of delegations that the Big Four actively ignored.
You had Korean nationalists traveling from Hawaii
and China trying to secure a hearing for independence
from Japanese rule. They were ignored. You had
the first Pan -African Congress, supported by
W. E. B. Du Bois, petitioning to turn Germany's
African colonies over to an international organization,
rather than handing them to new colonial masters.
They were ignored. There was even a young man
named Grian I. Kwak petitioning for the self
-determination of the Vietnamese people against
French colonial rule. But because Vietnam was
a French colony, the great powers refused to
even entertain his petition. That young man,
radicalized by the rejection of Western democratic
processes, later became known to the world as
Ho Chi Minh. But perhaps the most devastating
tragedy detailed in the source material revolves
around Iran, which was officially known as Persia
at the time. Can you explain what happened to
the Iranian people during the war? The Iranian
delegation's experience is a grim lesson in great
power politics. Iran had declared strict neutrality
during World War I. However, their geographic
location made them a battleground. Their territory
was repeatedly violated and occupied by British,
Russian, and Ottoman forces. Just caught in the
crossfire. Completely. These foreign armies requisitioned
local food supplies, which led to a catastrophic
economic collapse and a horrific famine. The
source cites estimates that as many as 8 to 10
million Iranians died from starvation or disease
brought on by malnutrition. 8 to 10 million.
Yes, that was nearly half of the country's population
at the time. So with millions of dead civilians
and their neutrality violated, the Iranian delegation
travels to Paris. They demand the evacuation
of foreign troops, reparations for wartime damages,
and a restoration of their sovereignty. Why were
they refused admittance to the main sessions?
The opposition came largely from Britain. acknowledging
Iran's rights conflicted directly with British
strategic interests. Britain wanted to secure
access to Iranian oil and protect the geographic
routes leading to their colonial crown jewel,
India. Unbelievable. Shortly after the conference,
Britain actually attempted to push through the
Anglo -Persian agreement of 1919, which would
have effectively turned Iran into a British protectorate.
So Iran's voice was silenced simply to protect
imperial access to resources. We see a very similar
dynamic play out in the Middle East. The Ottoman
Empire had collapsed and its vast territories
were being carved up. How did the League of Nations
handle the Arab provinces? They utilized a system
called mandates. Rather than granting independence
to these regions, the League of Nations effectively
assigned control over the Arab provinces to Britain
and France. They drew borders, creating new entities
like Iraq. Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, placing
them under the administrative control of London
and Paris. And the text points out that this
was not done in ignorance of local desires. The
conference heard competing claims from Zionist
representatives who submitted draft resolutions
for a Jewish homeland under a British mandate
and from Arab leaders advocating for regional
independence. To figure out what the locals actually
wanted, Woodrow Wilson pushed for an international
commission of inquiry. Yes. Britain and France
initially agreed to participate in that inquiry,
but quickly backed out when they realized it
might threaten their colonial ambitions. Of course.
So it proceeded as a purely American effort known
as the King Crane Commission. They toured the
region, took statements, and sampled public opinion
regarding the future of Syria and Palestine.
What happened to the King Crane Commission's
report once it was finished? It was buried. The
findings indicated strong local opposition to
French mandates and a deep desire for independence.
Because that conflicted with the secret deals
the great powers had already made. The Sykes
-Picot agreement. Exactly. Which was a backdoor
deal made years earlier by Britain and France
to divide the Arab world between themselves.
So the report was kept entirely secret. It wasn't
published until the New York Times broke the
story years later in December 1922. The great
powers simply proceeded with their imperial divisions
regardless of the Commission's findings. We've
been talking a lot about geographical nations
being locked out of the negotiations, Iran, Vietnam,
China. But there was an entire demographic spanning
all of these nations that was also barred from
the table. Women were entirely denied seats at
the main negotiating table. Yes, they were. But
a committee organized an inter -allied women's
conference right there in Paris. How did they
manage to force their way into the conversation?
They were led by Marguerite de Vitschlenberger,
the president of the French Union for Women's
Suffrage. They basically refused to be sidelined
by the male diplomats. They relentlessly lobbied
Wilson and the other delegates, and they successfully
demanded a hearing before the League of Nations
Commission. And their lobbying actually secured
a tangible victory in the final text. They did.
They forced a concrete addition into the final
framework, Article 7 of the Covenant of the League
of Nations. It explicitly mandated that all positions
under or in connection with the League, including
the Secretariat, shall be open equally to men
and women. That's amazing. They managed to enshrine
women's professional rights into the literal
blueprint of the new international governing
body. So what does this all mean? When historians
look back at this chaotic, multi -year process
of secret deals, ignored petitions, and the carving
up of empires, how do they assess what the Big
Four were actually trying to accomplish? If we
connect this to the bigger picture, we have to
look at the analysis provided by historians like
Eric Hobsbawm and John Lewis Gaddis. We often
view Woodrow Wilson's push for self -determination,
the idea that distinct ethnic groups should have
their own sovereign nations, as pure, naive idealism.
But this historians argue it was actually a highly
calculated strategic maneuver against the Bolsheviks
in Russia. Because the Russian Revolution had
just occurred and the Bolsheviks were actively
calling for a global workers uprising. Exactly.
That terrified the capitalist powers sitting
in Paris. Historians argue that Wilson played
the nationalist card to tame that revolutionary
fever. By creating a whole new block of small
nation states in Eastern Europe, countries like
Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltic states,
the Allies were intentionally building a quarantine
belt. A quarantine belt. Yes. It was a strategic
barrier designed to stop the spread of the Russian
Bolshevik Revolution from sweeping westward into
a devastated and vulnerable Germany. But the
source points out a deeply troubling downside
to this obsession with drawing neat national
borders based on ethnicity. What happens when
you try to apply the concept of a pure nation
state to a map where populations are incredibly
mixed? This is where Hobsbawm's observation is
grim, but entirely necessary to understand. He
points out that the logical conclusion of trying
to create a map neatly divided into territorial
states where each state is inhabited by a separate
ethnically and linguistically homogeneous population
is inherently violent. The only way to actually
achieve that perfect homogeneity in the real
world is through the mass expulsion or extermination
of minorities. When you make ethnicity the core
basis of a state's legitimacy, anyone who doesn't
fit that specific ethnic definition becomes a
problem to be solved. Because the real world
isn't neatly divided. Precisely. Habsbaum notes
that the terrifying reality of this ethno -nationalism
wouldn't be fully demonstrated until the 1940s.
The peacemakers in Paris, in their attempt to
solve the political problems of 1919 and quarantine
the Bolsheviks, were inadvertently laying the
philosophical and geographical groundwork for
the atrocities of the Second World War. As you
listen to this, think about the immense value
of dissecting this specific moment in time. the
borders of Eastern Europe, the global tensions
in the Pacific, the very concept of an international
governing body. All of it traces its messy, complicated,
often hypocritical origins right back to these
Pacific rooms in Paris. The world we navigate
today was sketched out on their drafting tables.
And I want to leave you with one final thought
to mull over, specifically regarding the League
of Nations itself. Think about it. President
Woodrow Wilson sacrificed many of his core ideals
at this conference, making compromise after compromise
just to ensure his ultimate dream, the League
of Nations, was actually created. Yet because
of domestic isolationist pushback back home,
the United States never ratified the Treaty of
Versailles and never even joined the League.
Imagine how differently the chaotic 20th century
might have unfolded if the primary architect
of the New World Order had actually taken a seat
at the table he built. lens through which to
view the modern world. Thank you so much for
joining us on this deep dive into the Paris Peace
Conference. We'll see you next time.