The Versailles Treaty and Its Legacy

This study a realist interpretation of the long diplomatic record that produced the coming of World War II in 1939 is a critique of the Paris Peace Conference and reflects the judgment shared by many who left the Conference in 1919 in disgust amid predictions of future war. The critique is a rejection of the idea of collective security which Woodrow Wilson and many others believed was a panacea but which was also condemned as early as 1915. This book delivers a powerful lesson in treaty-making and rejects the supposition that treaties once made are unchangeable whatever their faults.