The war had already began, you can't start a war that has already started.
Assuming said raids really took place, it demonstrates that the Russians were going to act regardless as well, making it a wash really
Better Versailles Treaty
- Thread starter Bobby Martnen
- Start date
Assuming said raids really took place, it demonstrates that the Russians were going to act regardless as well, making it a wash really
Here's my version of this.
1. Britain is one of the victors, the Protestant part of Ireland stays in the UK.
2. Germany keeps Memel and Danzig, gives up Alsace Lorraine. Austria loses South Tyrol.
3. Asmuch as it pains me to say it, Poland gets nothing from Germany, even though its claims to Posen, Upper Silesia, the corridor (save Danzig) and possibly Warmia are rock solid. Poland is not a victorious power and it is too big a concession to force on Germany, which is really the main existential threat to Poland down the road (plus Poland already faces Russia). Furthermore, Germany requires access to the coal of upper Silesia to help it pay the reparations, which it's still going to do by the way. Poland's Eastern border consists of the country as per the Curzon line with the version that includes Lwow, but not Wilno (but Poland might take it by force so who knows).
4. No independence for Russian territories except Poland, the Baltics and Finland. Those are enough as it is.
5. Italy obviouosly takes no territories from France. That is a patently absurd demand and Italy never even expected to receive these territories. Italy receives both Trentino and South Tyrol all the way to the Brenner pass. It also gets all of Istria including Fiume and the parts of the Dalmatian coast it was promised in the Treaty of London, in spite of the unfairness to Croats. It is vital that Italy be a strong ally to France in the future and that it remain stable.
6. Greece may receive Northern Epirus in areas that vote to join but only if the plebiscite isn't conducted by the Greeks (They were trying to rig it blatantly). Greece receives Western Thrace and the area surrounding Izmir/Myrna and any Kurdish areas that might be included in that state. Constantinople remains in Turkey.
7. The treaty of Sevres is a whole different animal from here on out so I'll leave out any concrete things about the fate of Armenia and Kurdistan. It is important to remember that it is very difficult to force Turkey to accept that treaty in full.
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It's somewhere in part III. on this site, at least.
Haven't translate all of it by now, since I'm also only using Google translate.
As you might have discovered it's not very ... good in dealing with russian, almost completly screws up grammer and syntax.
Only chance to get at least some ideas of its meaning : only one sentence after the other, if some words are not clear, check these words singly and ... google translate uses the wordwrap of each row as a break. You have to find them and eliminate them.
Also :
Whoever has put it at this site : he didn't look after wrong spellings caused by copy-and-paste out of a pdf.
Tbh : it took me months to get at least the introduction and the I. part into a more or less readable fashion. ... still with many part I'm ... not sure of.
The problem with the VT wasn't that it was insufficiently harsh -- it was that France was in lousy shape to enforce it, and Britain didn't want to.
(The U.S., not unreasonably in my view, decided that maintaining the Peace in Europe was a European affair)
The VT could easily have worked, if the Western Entente powers had possessed the spine to enforce it when Hitler demilitarized the Rhineland, for instance.
Now, i suppose you could argue that the VT should've been harsher, but if the Entente weren't able or willing to enforce the existing VT, making it harsher won't work, and will only result in even greater misery and resentment.
(The U.S., not unreasonably in my view, decided that maintaining the Peace in Europe was a European affair)
The VT could easily have worked, if the Western Entente powers had possessed the spine to enforce it when Hitler demilitarized the Rhineland, for instance.
Now, i suppose you could argue that the VT should've been harsher, but if the Entente weren't able or willing to enforce the existing VT, making it harsher won't work, and will only result in even greater misery and resentment.
What do you mean with : "could have worked" ?
What was its purpose in the eyes of the french, the brits and the other "winners" (beside the nice wordings for Wilson) ? ... in your eyes ?
If they would start to show "spine" that late as the remilitarization of the Rheinland ... much too late, IMO.
Well, that's the issue.
The British and French leaders wanted to humiliate Germany, pin ALL the responsibility for the war on the nasty Germans, convince their people that it was more or less worth the expense, and make a pretty penny in the process.
My own definition of a working VT involves, at a minimum: reducing the OTL likelihood of a Nazi-like regime (and hence a WW2), while keeping France and Britain intact. The OTL VT could've done that, if the French and (particularly) British had been willing to act when it obviously started to fall apart.
Personally, I'd favor an even more lenient VT in some respects, but such a thing wouldn't be feasible, and WOULD still require some level of willingness by the Entente to enforce its terms if required.
IMO the question was not as much the territories annexed from Germany as the war guilt cause and the indemnity.
Fix initially the reparations, as reparations to the damages to Northern France and Belgium, and remove the war guilt clause - you can press that clause on Austria-Hungary even as it is dismantled by Trianon.
Also, if you can get the war crimes to be judged by an overtly neutral court (ex in Switzerland or the Netherlands) it would be better for both sides.
Fix initially the reparations, as reparations to the damages to Northern France and Belgium, and remove the war guilt clause - you can press that clause on Austria-Hungary even as it is dismantled by Trianon.
Also, if you can get the war crimes to be judged by an overtly neutral court (ex in Switzerland or the Netherlands) it would be better for both sides.
H-L were fascists in 1919? I suppose that must mean that they started the movement. Where can I find a copy of their 1919 fascist political manifesto?
Edit: If you mean "break the necks of all those who might eventually become fascists"... well, okay, but murdering people for something they haven't done yet seems dubious.
They might be considered Fascist more in the vein of the Eastern and Southern European Fascists (basically, everyone but the Nazis and maybe Italians) in which you had aristocrat's and members of the army in charge of things.
Yes, in my opinion, it does make you less British, just like if I went to China, married a Chinese woman, and then our son married another Chinese woman, my 3/4 Chinese grandchild would still be less Chinese than fully native Chinese. That's just how it works.
Forcing the Ulster Protestants out wouldn't be unjust, given that they were an foreign occupying force.
Greeks had lived in Anatolia since BC.
Those were mostly about protesting Protestant Prussia than about wanting to be French. And they didn't get the majority in any elections after the early 1890s. A-L was happy being German in 1914.
And yes, that's how nation-states are defined.
Only because the Western allies were more interested in screwing Germany over than enforcing a lasting peace. France was the worst, and America the least bad.
The people wanted to unite, but were forbidden to. A North German state and South German state were created and forbidden to merge. The states were named "Germany" and "Austria".
I'm almost positive that if the other allies prevented French expansionism from taking all of A-L, the French would have begrudgingly accepted.
1. 2 of the 6 Northern colonies were Catholic and pro-Irish even then. Now it's 4 out of 6. At least those 2 should have been part of Ireland.
2. A-L was mostly German, but I understand the French had a bizarre obsession with it. Why in the world would you give S. Tyrol to Italy? They had to historical or ethnic claim to it.
3. I don't think Posen is an unreasonable concession. Germany would have probably grudgingly accepted losing Posen if they got to keep the corridor.
4. The point is to create a substantial buffer between Central Europe and Soviet Russia.
5. Why not give them Corsica instead of S. Tyrol?
6. Why should Turkey get to continue to occupy Constantinople?
7. Okay
Wrong; France had an idea for an economically lenient setting with Germany which would have created enough economic ties to make a later Franco-German war improbable. That was repelled by the Anglo Powers. Only then did France go for harsh peace for Germany.
None of the ratifiers of Versailles lasted long anyways. Maybe they should have willingly sacrificed themselves for a more workable peace. Probably not this one, though.