Paris Peace Conference 1919

A quick google on this shows around 4500 results so I know this is a well explored topic. However I couldn't find anything quite like the question I wanted to ask here.

Reading in particular Margaret McMillan's book Peacemakers as well as othe contemporary accounts like Keynes' The Economic Consequences of the Peace, it seems to me that while there are a myriad of different possible outcomes to the conference in terms of Treaties and political geography I can't see any of them being much better than any other. The range of enmities, tribal rivalries and realpolitik at work suggests that in practice we would have had some sort of major conflict around the same time as OTL WW2. The parties might be different, the seat of the conflict might vary, but somewhere in Europe all hell breaks loose.

So - my question is this. Can anyone identify an outcome or outcomes that would not lead to major conflict in Europe of some description?
 
This was my suggestion a while back for a peace treaty which would be most conducive to stability and prosperity in Europe. The description is relative to the OTL peace treaty.

A good place to start would be to eliminate all the clauses for having Germany pay for Allied soldier pensions, which were unfair, and formed a major part of the reparations. Instead of taking food from a starving country, have the German's shoulder half the costs of reparations, to be calculated as a "fee-for-service," reparations calculation; ie, Germany will pay half for each bridge rebuilt, etc. Eliminate the clauses which involve confiscation of productive goods like merchant marine or fishing boats, or any other type of industrial productive goods. Put fair plebiscites in all the areas where there weren't plebiscites, or had rigged plebiscites, and let Austria join Germany if she wishes to. Eliminate the war guilt clause. Apply disarmament clauses to all states, not Germany, setting military limits to, say, .5% of the population of every country, and setting no limits on the types of weapons Germany can develop, unless they will be applied to all countries. Do the same for the Navy, but along the lines of the Washington Treaty. Eliminate conscription in all countries.

Of course, such a peace treaty is completely ASB in any scenario where somebody "wins" but I think it's the sentiment that counts.
 
In practice though, in the interwar period I don't think Germany paid a great deal in reparations. I don't have the McMillan book to hand so can't check details.

There were also lots of other conflicts between states which went on into the 1920s. It seems to me to be the various boundary changes and new states that were the main factor in creating the conditions for extreme nationalist movements which took us into WW2 and also led to the isolationism of the USA.

Its possible that what we ended up was the best achievable, but I still wonder. Some of the options though would clearly have been much worse. I can't imagine a US mandate over Armenia turning out well, or France taking on the role we had in the Middle East in addition to the one they had in OTL. There was a really bizarre set of claims that would have reduced Turkey to a landlocked rump with Greece, Italy, France and others taking over areas around the coast. Italy tried to get most of coast of Dalmatia on the Adriatic and wanted bits of Ethiopia.

Its easy to dismiss these as unlikely but so was some of what actually happened and the political manouvering among the Group of Four was extreme.
 
In practice though, in the interwar period I don't think Germany paid a great deal in reparations. I don't have the McMillan book to hand so can't check details.

There were also lots of other conflicts between states which went on into the 1920s. It seems to me to be the various boundary changes and new states that were the main factor in creating the conditions for extreme nationalist movements which took us into WW2 and also led to the isolationism of the USA.

Its possible that what we ended up was the best achievable, but I still wonder. Some of the options though would clearly have been much worse. I can't imagine a US mandate over Armenia turning out well, or France taking on the role we had in the Middle East in addition to the one they had in OTL. There was a really bizarre set of claims that would have reduced Turkey to a landlocked rump with Greece, Italy, France and others taking over areas around the coast. Italy tried to get most of coast of Dalmatia on the Adriatic and wanted bits of Ethiopia.

Its easy to dismiss these as unlikely but so was some of what actually happened and the political manouvering among the Group of Four was extreme.

Yeah, Germany found a lot of opportunity to skip out, and by the Great Depression, reparations were pretty much indefinitely suspended. However, the fact that the reparations, if paid in full, would have been devastating, were grossly overinflated, and most of all, left the perception in Germany that Versailles was a Diktat did most of the damage already.

I shouldn't say the claims of Sevres and London were totally unlikely. Sevres, for example, was defeated by total failure in enforcement, with the result of a slightly fairer treaty being given to Turkey. Italy's claims really were unlikely, since they so heavily contradicted those of Serbia, the nominal country for whom the war had bee fought, but in the end, it boiled down to total failure of enforcement. Of course, in a world where self-determination rules, neither treaty would have even a chance of seeing the light of day. Of course, even then, OTL still had areas where self-determination was utterly pissed on. OTL might have been the best achievable, but it still wasn't very good.
 
The problem with the suggestion to let Germany keep the merchant marine fishing wessels, livestock and draught animals is that it would create an enormous resentment and in practice reward Germany for their wartime looting and trade warfare.
 
Top