Explanation:
Although we typically think of November 11, 1918, as the end date of World War I, that day only marked the start of an armistice ending the actual fighting, not the official termination of the war. To bring about a formal conclusion to the Great War, the victorious Allied Powers (led by Britain, France, the United States and Italy) had to complete peace treaties with each of their opponents in the Central Powers (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire).
The most important of these treaties was the Treaty of Versailles ending the war with Germany that was produced by the Paris Peace Conference and signed June 28, 1919. Yet even before the treaty was signed, it sparked criticism and controversy. And when World War II erupted 20 years later, the treaty was maligned and blamed for causing the political, economic and military conditions that led to the 1939-45 global conflict.
In the decades since, generations of historians have written countless books and other works creating what “everyone knows” about the 1919 Treaty of Versailles: The overly punitive treaty, imposed as “victors’ justice” on helpless Germany by the triumphant Allies, was chiefly responsible for making World War II inevitable. Its “war guilt” article humiliated Germany by forcing it to accept all blame for the war, and it imposed disastrously costly war reparations that destroyed both the post-World War I German economy and the democratic Weimar Republic. The treaty, therefore, ensured the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Moreover, the U.S. Senate’s refusal to ratify the treaty caused the collective security organization, the League of Nations, to fail because the United States was not a member. Furthermore, no less an authority than French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the World War I supreme Allied commander, apparently agreed with this assessment, famously complaining in 1919, “This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years!”
