Six Months that Changed the World: The Paris Peace Conference
by Margaret Macmillan narrated by the author The world will never see another peace conference like the one that took place in Paris in 1919. For six months, the world's major leaders, US President Woodrow Wilson, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and French Prime Minister George Clemenceau, met to discuss the peace settlements that would end World War I. These leaders faced huge issues, and as the weeks went by, their agenda grew.
The peace conference dealt with setting up the League of Nations, creating Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Iraq, punishing Germany, and bringing an end to the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, A great war had just ended political and social structures collapsing in parts of Europe, and new border needed to be established. The peacemakers made numerous decisions, many of which have been criticized ever since. Some have even argued that the peace settlement of 1919 led to World War II.
Much of the world we live in today is shaded by the decisions made all those years ago. The peace conference was about many things: punishing the defeated, rewarding the victors, dismembering the old state, creating new states, disarming, and ending slavery and child labour. The peace conference dealt with regions such as Europe, the Middle East, the South Pacific, Africa, and Asia.
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