ABSTRACT
The agreements reached at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 had important repercussions for the development of international politics throughout the following twenty years. The raft of measures imposed on Germany by the victor powers, which effectively condemned the country to second-class status, were as the more prescient observers noted at the time bound to create tensions in the future. The same was true of the decision to create a series of multi-ethnic states throughout central and south-eastern Europe, a move that took place in stark contradiction of the principle of national selfdetermination about which so much was said at the Peace Conference. Nor could the victor powers devise an effective policy for dealing with Soviet Russia, half-heartedly trying to broker an end to the Civil War there, whilst simultaneously promoting outside military intervention that was at least in part directed against the Bolshevik government in Moscow. There was not even much consensus at Paris about the future role of the new League of Nations, seen by some as an entirely new forum for conducting international relations, and by others as little more than a temporary irrelevance. The First World War had ripped apart the social and political fabric of Europe, making it almost impossible for the peacemakers to establish a new international order resilient enough to withstand the tensions and suspicions that were the inevitable legacy of years of bitter fighting and destruction.
