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was returned to Germany's neighbors. France took back Alsace-Lorraine, seized by Germany in 1870,

while the restored Polish state was awarded the rich coal and steel region of Silesia. To compensate for

damages caused by the war, Germany was eventually required to pay 132 billion gold marks, in

installments, up to the year 1988.

No other issue so united Germans in their resentment of the victors than the question of reparations.

Though Germany managed to avoid paying much of what it was supposed to pay, and borrowed and then

repudiated vast sums, the important point is that ordinary Germans perceived reparations to be a punitivesanction. They were determined to overturn the Diktat (dictated peace).

The final year of war had ushered in a period of momentous transformation worldwide. In 1917 the

Russian war effort collapsed and the emperor, Nicholas II, was forced to abdicate. The revolutionary

regime tried to continue the fight, but economic conditions and military capability deteriorated sharply. In

October 1917, Lenin's Bolshevik Party -- the most radical wing of the Russian revolutionary movement --

seized power in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), and declared a Communist regime.

Bolshevik leaders expected that their revolt would herald the onset of worldwide revolution. After three

years of bitter civil war, Bolshevik rule was secured by 1921 but world revolution did not follow. Short

Communist revolts erupted in Hungary and Germany in 1919, and violent confrontations occurred

between workers and the state in Italy and Spain in the immediate postwar years, but no other European

society saw a Communist takeover. The Communist movement outside Russia was violently suppressed,

and many of its leaders were murdered or imprisoned.

The end of the war transformed the political geography of Europe and the Middle East. After the fall of the

Russian Empire, the German, Austrian, and Ottoman Turkish empires also disappeared. They were

replaced by new, small states from the Baltic Sea to the Suez Canal. The former Turkish provinces in Iraq,

Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine were handed over as mandates to Britain and France.

The former imperial territories in Europe held by Russia, Austria, and Germany all became independentnational states. This was consistent with the demand expressed by U.S. president Woodrow Wilson that

the peoples of Europe should be allowed national "self-determination." From 1919 to 1921, more treaties

were drawn up and signed with Germany's allies -- Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey -- which

confirmed the new shape of the continent. In every case, the national settlements were messy. Small

national fractions were isolated in the territory of other states.

The end of the war produced a paradox of crisis coexisting with a mood of optimism about the future.

Parliamentary democracy was introduced everywhere in the areas dominated by the prewar monarchies

(except for Russia), and in 1920 almost every European state was, in formal terms, democratic, even

though millions of women still lacked the vote. The settlement in 1919 was supposed to pave the way for anew world order based on collaboration and mutual respect. At Versailles, the foundations were laid for

the League of Nations, which was committed to isolating international aggression and providing a

framework for the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

In 1920 the League of Nations finally met in session in the Swiss city of Geneva, chosen because of

Switzerland's long tradition of neutrality. The League reflected a widespread revulsion against war. The

Covenant of the League of Nations committed all its members to work toward universal disarmament.

The New World Order Disintegrates

As the terrible human costs of World War I were inscribed on thousands of monuments to the war dead

across Europe, the popular mood echoed the slogan that the Great War had really been "The War to End

All Wars." In 1928 German author Erich Maria Remarque published his classic account of the war,All

Quiet on the Western Front. The novel was immediately translated into other languages. The book's vivid

descriptions of death and mutilation reminded Europeans of the futility of war.

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From the start, it was difficult to operate the new postwar order on the idealistic terms in which it had been

constructed. The peace settlement sparked a wide range of grievances for those states that regarded

themselves as victims. Even the victors were not entirely happy. Italy got little out of the territorial

readjustments, and Italian nationalists condemned what they called "the mutilated peace." Japan was

resentful at what it regarded as the race prejudice of the other victorious states. In Britain, the peace was

viewed as unnecessarily harsh.

In the United States, whose president had been the main architect of the new order, the peace settlementwas rejected by Congress as the result of a growing backlash against the European Allies, who were seen

as self-interested imperial states exploiting American assistance for their own ambitions. The United

States abandoned the League and the peace settlement altogether. It refused to ratify the treaty with

France intended to ensure that the French would not detach the left bank of the Rhine from battered

Germany.

The Soviet Union regarded the new order as a mask to cover the interests of imperialist capitalism. It was

excluded from the League because of the prevailing hostility toward communism. As the principal former

enemy, Germany was also excluded from the League until 1926. This placed the three potentially most

powerful economic and military states outside the prevailing order. The situation only enhanced theopinion that the League really was a Franco-British puppet designed, in the words of American

"radiopriest" Father Charles Coughlin, "to make the world safe for hypocrisy."

The system was also weakened by economic crisis. The pre-1914 world trading economy could not be

fully revived, and during the 1920s widespread unemployment and poverty existed across much of

Europe. From 1919 to 1924,currencycollapsed completely in Russia, France, Germany, Austria, and

Hungary.Bankaccounts and paper assets became worthless. The result was the dispossession of broad

sections of the European middle class, leaving behind a legacy of bitterness that fueled the growth of

radical right-wing politics.

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