Thursday, November 21, 2019

History Source based questions - Treaty Of Versailles Essay

History Source based questions - Treaty Of Versailles - Essay Example .I have personally no doubt that we will get everything that you can squeeze out of lemon, and a bit more. I propose that every bit of [German-owned] property, movable and immovable, in Allied and neutral countries, whether State property or private property should be surrendered by the Germans. The cartoonist is trying to tell us that the Treaty of Versailles would lead to another war. The four men in the foreground represent (from right to left) Woodrow Wilson, the President of the U.S, Georges Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, the Prime Minister of Italy and Lloyd George, the Prime Minister of Britain. These were the Big Four who drew up the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed by Germany in the Palace of Versailles near Paris on June 28, 1919. "The Tiger" refers to Clemenceau, who exercised powerful leadership with his slogan â€Å"I make war!† and became known as â€Å"The Tiger of France†. The cartoonist is suggesting the treaty was too harsh on Germany, because it severely punished it, forcing it to accept responsibility for causing World War I, and blackmailed the German government to sign the Treaty under threat of invasion by the Big Four; because of these biased impositions on the Germans, there will be another w ar in the future. The title of the cartoon suggests that the peace will result in "cannon fodder" in the future because the supposed-to-be ‘peace’ brought about by the Treaty of Versailles actually resulted in total humiliation heaped on Germany; the humiliation was too severe for it to withstand for long, and when it could stand it no more then German cannons would boom again (the cartoonist was right – it took just 22 years from the end of the First World War in 1917 to the beginning of the Second World War in 1939). Clemenceau’s words: â€Å"Curious! I seem to hear a child weeping!† shows that he (and the other 3 leaders of the Big Four) feel that Germany has got a fair deal

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