Who had the greatest influence

A detailed Summary of Who had the greatest influence

The treaty of Versailles was influenced by a lot of different people. The people with the most influence were probably President Woodrow Wilson of the USA and George Clemenceau of France. I am going to try and decide which of these two had the most influence. In order to do this I will need to look at what each of them hoped to achieve and what they actually got.

Both Wilson and Clemenceau had one common objective in the peace treaties, to insure future peace. However they had very different ideas on how it should be done. They also had very different reasons for wanting it.

Woodrow Wilson thought the best way to keep the peace was through a peacekeeping organisation through which all problems and disputes would be sorted out. He thought Germany should be made to pay for the war but should not be victimised as this would only lead to further problems. Wilson came to the Paris peace talks with a very set agenda that he put to everyone in the form of his four principles and fourteen points. His four principles were:

4) A future peace keeping organisation

The fourteen points were based around these.

George Clemenceau thought that the best way

to keep the peace in Europe was by punishing Germany so much and keeping it on its knees so that it never had the power to go to war again. He wanted to make Germany pay the whole cost of the war; to make it give back all of its colonies and any other land it had taken; to place very harsh restrictions on the German armed forces, trade and merchant fleets; to make sure it couldn't form alliances with other countries and to generally make it impossible for Germany to ever regain any sort of economy or political strength in the world.

Although Clemenceau's ideas and aims dominate the treaty of Versailles I think that over all Wilson had the greatest influence over it. This is because his ideas and aims were bigger and more radical; they had a much bigger impact and did more to change the world. The establishment of the League of Nations had a great impact on the world. He had to give in to a lot of Clemenceau's demands in order to get the treaty but in the end he got it, and it is thanks to that we have the United Nations today.

To see what Wilson achieved I will go through his fourteen points and see which of them he achieved and which he didn't. The first point was open negotiations and treaties. This was sort of achieved, most future agreements were open but the actual treaty of Versailles wasn't. His second point was freedom of navigation of the seas. This was not achieved and restrictions remained. He wanted free trade and removal of economic barriers, again this did not happen. The fourth point was reduction of armaments to lowest possible level, only the losers were forced to do this. The next point was Colonial claims to be dealt with in the interest of the population concerned. This was not achieved and it was still only the big powers that got their say in what happened. Points six to eight were the evacuation of Russian territory, the restoration of Belgium to a full and free independent state and the

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Approximate Word count = 1302
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History