203. Carthaginian Peace

Before moving on from the times when Lloyd George held power, we take a look in this episode at one of the major moments of his time as an international statesman: the Paris Peace Conference and, above all, the specific agreement that emerged from it concerning Germany, the Treaty of Versailles. The episode draws heavily on the views of Maynard Keynes on the Treaty and its likely effects, in particular on its failure to react to the massive gap between the expectations of money from Germany by the victors and the real ability of Germany to pay.

At the end, we look at the fact that as well as leaving a deep resentment in Germany of the victorious powers, it also left two nations that were actually with them, Japan and Italy, bitter with the outcome of the Paris conference. Germany, Italy and Japan. Compare that list with the membership of the Axis that the Allies would have to fight in World War 2 twenty years after the end of World War 1.

An event which Keynes foresaw.

Illustration: Covert og John Maynard Keynes’s book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, of 1919.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License