POL207Y1 Lecture : Europe After the War
Document Summary
Europe"s chance to develop to into a unified political entity arrived directly before the greatest catastrophe on the continent. Wwi was accepted and even willingly triggered by the european powers who grossly over estimated the national power they possessed. The post war order of 1919 was characterized by a sense of superiority on the part of the victors, nothing truly changed. The division of the hapsburg and ottoman empires payed no respect to deeply fundamental cleavages in the ethnic groups. The treatment of germany was based on a similar great power logic (occupation, reparation etc). It was designed to prevent the germans from ever starting another war in europe. A large part of west germany was occupied by the french. The west also created a land gap in the east separating danzig and konigsberg from mainland germany by granting the territory to. More conservative minds like that of briand, the french foreign minister were ignored.
