10 Questions: On The Legacy Of The Treaty Of Versailles
Nancy Ramsey is a contributor to CBSNews.com
This week the Evening News ran a two-part investigation of suicide among American war veterans. The war on terror continues Pakistan is in a state of emergency.
And we just celebrated Veterans Day. We thought it might be time to reach back into history for some perspective on today’s events, so we posed our 10 Questions to David Andelman, who’s written a book called “A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.” It’s set in Paris just after World War I (how ironic that it was once called “the war to end all wars”). Its major characters are the peacemakers who were present for the conference that would culminate in the Treaty of Versailles. But rather than building a lasting peace, Versailles helped set the stage for later conflicts and wars—World War II, Vietnam, Kosovo, the Middle East, Iraq.
Andelman is Executive Editor of Forbes.com, a former New York Times foreign correspondent and Paris correspondent for CBS News.
1. You’ve reported all around the world—Europe, Asia, Russia, the former Eastern bloc. When and where did you get the idea that Versailles more or less laid out the roadmap for the 20th century?
I’ve reported from more than 50 countries, and everywhere I’ve gone I’ve asked thoughtful people, people who care about and think seriously about their countries, “Where do you think your country went off the rails?” I thought they’d say the Cold War, the Second World War. But to a man, and a woman, the answer was, “After the treaty of Versailles.”
2. Rather than Versailles being a peace process, what you contend it did was to plant the seeds of all the conflicts and wars of the 20th century.
No question about it.
I didn’t go deeply into the Second World War because it’s such plowed territory, but there were economic demands on Germany that were catastrophic, which led to inflation, unemployment and misery in Germany in the 1920s—and the rise of Hitler.
But beyond that...take Vietnam. Nguyen Tat Thanh, who later changed his name to Ho Chi Minh, was working as a busboy at the Ritz. He had come to Paris to win independence for his homeland. He had set out from Saigon years before, traveling in the U.S., England and France to learn the languages and customs of the countries. And President Woodrow Wilson was in Paris talking about the self-determination of nations. Ho Chi Minh, who was a nationalist not a Communist at that point, presented demands to Colonel Edward House, Wilson’s adviser, and they were basically ignored. And so Ho Chi Minh went to Moscow...
(CBS)
And we just celebrated Veterans Day. We thought it might be time to reach back into history for some perspective on today’s events, so we posed our 10 Questions to David Andelman, who’s written a book called “A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.” It’s set in Paris just after World War I (how ironic that it was once called “the war to end all wars”). Its major characters are the peacemakers who were present for the conference that would culminate in the Treaty of Versailles. But rather than building a lasting peace, Versailles helped set the stage for later conflicts and wars—World War II, Vietnam, Kosovo, the Middle East, Iraq.
Andelman is Executive Editor of Forbes.com, a former New York Times foreign correspondent and Paris correspondent for CBS News.
1. You’ve reported all around the world—Europe, Asia, Russia, the former Eastern bloc. When and where did you get the idea that Versailles more or less laid out the roadmap for the 20th century?
I’ve reported from more than 50 countries, and everywhere I’ve gone I’ve asked thoughtful people, people who care about and think seriously about their countries, “Where do you think your country went off the rails?” I thought they’d say the Cold War, the Second World War. But to a man, and a woman, the answer was, “After the treaty of Versailles.”
2. Rather than Versailles being a peace process, what you contend it did was to plant the seeds of all the conflicts and wars of the 20th century.
No question about it.
I didn’t go deeply into the Second World War because it’s such plowed territory, but there were economic demands on Germany that were catastrophic, which led to inflation, unemployment and misery in Germany in the 1920s—and the rise of Hitler.
But beyond that...take Vietnam. Nguyen Tat Thanh, who later changed his name to Ho Chi Minh, was working as a busboy at the Ritz. He had come to Paris to win independence for his homeland. He had set out from Saigon years before, traveling in the U.S., England and France to learn the languages and customs of the countries. And President Woodrow Wilson was in Paris talking about the self-determination of nations. Ho Chi Minh, who was a nationalist not a Communist at that point, presented demands to Colonel Edward House, Wilson’s adviser, and they were basically ignored. And so Ho Chi Minh went to Moscow...
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