At the end of the negotiations Clemenceau managed to restore Alsace-Lorraine to France but some of his other demands were resisted by the other delegates. Clemenceau, like most people in France, thought that Germany had been treated too leniently at Versailles.

  Clemenceau's failure to achieve all his demands resulted in him being rejected by the French electorate in January 1920. After retiring from politics Clemenceau wrote his memoirs, The Grandeur and Misery of Victory. In the book Clemenceau warned of further conflict with Germany and predicted that 1940 would be the year of the gravest danger.

  Lloyd George had qualities that fitted a war time situation; he was aggressive and determined to see things through.  Of the "Big Three" it was Lloyd George who understood the necessity to punish Germany but not to the extent that she would never be able to participate in European politics again. French demands for the total overthrow of German business were simply folly to Lloyd George. However, he could not neglect the voice of British public opinion. The "Hang the Kaiser" campaign was riding high in the British press and many British people wanted to see Germany punished. The Royal Navy had its eyes on the German fleet and the foreign office had its eyes on Germany and its Turkish colonies.

  Lloyd George had to walk a difficult path at Versailles, leaning towards the punishment lobby of the French but at the same time maintaining the logical idea that a punished Germany would be of little use for the other economies of Europe. But, in the atmosphere of postwar Europe, there was little hope that logic would prevail.

  Wilson proved to be an idealist but not a very practical realistic. The Germans had gone into the armistice on the strength of the 14 points, but they failed to take into account the demands of the French. Wilson came to Paris in 1919 very much the hero and was greeted warmly. Yet, his political will was constantly compromised by the other players at Versailles.

  In the end Wilson was let down just as much by his own government in America. The isolationist feeling in Congress had been greatly enhanced by the war.  Wilson went on a countrywide tour trying to rally support for the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations, however in the middle of his tour he suffered a stroke, and never regained full use of his faculties.  The Senate did not ratify the Versailles Treaty and the U.S. never joined the League of Nations, greatly undermining the legitimacy of the world organization.

  Of the major Allies in the first world war, the Italians were perhaps the ones who came off worst. The Italians had gone into the war in 1915 in hopes they could gain territory and power.

  Vittorio Orlando represented Italy at the Paris Peace Conference but clashed with Woodrow Wilson over Italy's territorial demands. Italy claimed the Tirol region and the city of Trieste in accordance with the secret treaties it had made in 1915.  It also claimed the port city of Fiume, a small harbor on the Adriatic Bay where Italians were outnumbered by Slovenes.  Lloyd George, Wilson, and Clemenceau steadfastly opposed giving Fiume to Italy.  Orlando left before the conference ended, a humiliated man bringing back with him a "mutilated peace".  The terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty undermined Orlando's position and in June, 1920, Orlando resigned from office.

  The fact that Italy felt slighted by its allies at the Paris Peace Conference led to the distrust of democracy and to the eventual rise of a totalitarian state.

In 1919 he headed the Japanese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference.  They knew they were unable to deal with Wilson's idealism and adhere to all the provisions of the Fourteen Points. However, different from Great Britain and France, they strongly desired to maintain security in the Far East, which the Japanese considered a vacuum where only Japan was dominant.

The Japanese also discussed how best to establish security in Europe, but made no major contributions in this regard. They eventually became arbitrary and largely irrelevant like the Italians.  This led Japan to become more imperialistic and utilize more of its resources toward building up their army and navy.

  Germany had high hopes that the Fourteen Points as proposed by Wilson would be used to establish a fair peace treaty.  It was, in fact, the Fourteen Points that convinced the Germans to stop their fighting altogether.  But the terms of Paris Peace Conference went in a much different direction.  The terms of the Versailles Treaty were especially harsh toward Germany - they had to give up a considerable amount of land to Poland & France, they could not fortify the Rhineland, the Saar Valley (a major German industrial region) was to be placed under the jurisdiction of the League, they had to scrap all their submarines and maintain only a small number of warships, they could not maintain an army of more than 100,000 men and had to abolish conscription, and they were required to dismantle a large part of their armed forces.  In addition, Germany had to pay enormous (and unrealistic) reparations, and claim all the guilt for starting the Great War.

  Brockdorff-Rantzau adamantly opposed the provisions of the Versailles Treaty.  With respect to the "War-Guilt" clause, he stated, "It is required by us that we admit ourselves as the alone guilty ones; such a confession would be in my mouth a lie."

  The Allies had been angered by the new Russian government's signing of a separate peace with the Central Powers, especially since it enabled the Germans to focus all their attention on France and the western front.  The Allies  wanted to prevent aid they had sent Russia from falling into the hands of the Germans.  They also feared that if the Communists gained control of Russia, revolution could spread to their countries - France was especially concerned with this.

  Actual results of the Paris Peace Conference included the recognition of the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania who had declared their own independence in 1918.  Much of the territory of restored Poland came from Russia, as well as from Germany and Austria-Hungary.  It is not surprising that the Communists appealed to ailing Russia - a country that had suffered more than any other during the war, and a country that actually lost territory as a result of supporting the victorious Allies.

  On November 3, imperial authorities signed an armistice, bringing Austro-Hungarian participation in World War I to an official end. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had for so many centuries occupied the heart of Central Europe, fell into pieces in the last month of the Great War and ceased to exist.  On November 11, Karl renounced any role in the new Austrian state, and the next day the provisional government issued a constitution for the German Austrian Republic.

As a result of the actual Conference, Austria recognized the independence of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, and Hungary.  Several smaller territories were ceded by Austria. The army was limited to 30,000 men, and Austria, like Germany, was to pay reparations for 30 years. The union of Austria with Germany (Anchluss) was forbidden.

Poland's politics were very complex during its move into a democracy. The country had never experienced anything remotely akin to democracy; its history had been almost totally immersed in totalitarian systems, and shared between the Austrian, Prussian and Russian autocracies. The Polish issue threw into the diplomatic ring the new and pressing problem of the Russian Revolution. Given what Germany was going through and the fact that Lenin was preaching about the export of the communist revolution, it was hardly surprising that the capitalist leaders of the west felt more comfortable with a thankful and democratic Poland between themselves and Bolshevik (communist) Russia.

Woodrow Wilson had made it very clear that a free and independent Poland was very high on his personal agenda.  Lloyd George was very positive about the foundation of a new Poland, and in particular, one that was granted access to the sea (a "Polish Corridor"), so as to divide Germany into its mainland part and East Prussia. It was this last aspect that also persuaded Clemenceau.

The Serbs were a very nationalistic race. The determination to see a "Big" Serbia come out of the peace treaty was intense. In addition, there can be no hiding the fact that the Serbs had ambitions on Croat, Albanian, Slovene, Bosnian, Macedonian and even Italian soil. The stance taken at Versailles by the Serbian delegates was ambitious and aggressive. That they were successful in many of their claims foretold the creation of Yugoslavia - uniting Serbia & Montenegro, the former Habsburg provinces of Bosnia & Herzegovina, and a section of the Adriatic coast. In theory, this new state was to be federal in nature and not restricted to any one ethnic group. However, as has been clearly illustrated by recent events in the Balkans, the Serb idea of nationalism resembled imperialism as much as anything else.
 

  At the end of the war the Ottoman government collapsed completely and the empire was divided amongst the victorious powers. France and Britain got most of the Middle East with the establishment of the new states of Palestine, Transjordan, and Syria. Turkish territory farther east became the country of Iraq.  These and other territories either became independent, or were divided up amongst other nations.

   His petition was ignored. Rebuffed, Ho began to engage in radical activities and, inspired by the success of the communist revolution in Russia and Vladimir Lenin's anti-imperialist doctrine, he became a founding member of the French Communist Party. In 1923 he was summoned to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) for training at the Moscow headquarters of the Communist International (popularly known as Comintern), an organization created by Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin to promote revolution throughout the world.  Ho’s rhetoric for “freedom” and “self-determination” had been his sole message until 1926.  It was at this time that he demonstrably altered his discourse from denouncing “freedom lost” to “revolution” and “revolutionary parties.”

   Contrary to Marxist theory, Ho emphasized national liberation over social revolution, and he believed that rural peasants rather than urban workers were likely to be the driving force behind Asian revolutions. After Japan occupied Indochina at the beginning of World War II (1939-1945), Ho resumed contact with ICP leaders, and in 1941 returned to Vietnam for the first time in 30 years. There, he helped found a new Communist-dominated independence movement, popularly known as the Viet Minh, which began to fight Japanese military forces inside Indochina.  He became the principal force behind the Vietnamese struggle against French colonial rule after World War II, and was the first communist leader of Vietnam in 1975, two years after the U.S. withdrew from the war-torn country.  Had the delegates at the Paris Peace Conference taken his petition seriously back in 1919, it is conceivable that Vietnam would not have fallen to communism.