(07-26-2014 11:36 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  

(07-26-2014 11:21 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  

(07-26-2014 10:25 AM)TPBlaze84 Wrote:  

(07-25-2014 06:39 PM)DefCONNOne Wrote:  

(06-10-2014 02:22 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  The 7 Years War

a.k.a. the French and Indian War.

Fun fact: the French and Indian War lasted 2 years longer than the Seven Years War.

Also, has anyone read the Illusion of Victory by Thomas Fleming?
Is it any good? I have the book, but have yet to read it.

Illusion of Victory is very well written and overall a good read, but at some points it reads like an outright attack on President Wilson. The author collects criticism from both the right and left, and a wide variety of national and international sources to portray him as an extremely incompetent figure. This treatment opened my eyes to a lot of descriptions and events I hadn't heard about in previous works on World War I and Wilson. But for me this kind of evidence wasn't successful in advancing the author's larger thesis that World War I for the United States was unecessary. I also don't feel, as the author does, that Wilson was mostly responsible for the Treaty of Versailles.

Mostly what I've read is that the Treaty of Versailles was signed despite what Wilson wanted. I guess you have to be very careful of thinking historians don't have an ulterior motive.

Wilson was involved in every aspect of the crafting of Versailles. It was only the Republican controlled Senate that defeated it being implemented by the U.S.. Wilson, to appease the other Allied powers, took his vaunted 14 Points and threw them out the door. Versailles was revenge, which is exactly what the French wanted since 1871 and 21 years later they got they found out the Germans could one-up them in the revenge game. The entire Second World War could have been avoided if Wilson would have stood up to the other Allies, especially Clemenceau.

Wilson was highly involved in the creation of the treaty, but the harshest provisions were created and pushed the hardest by Clemenceau and Llyod George.

I don't know that the Second World War wouldn't have occurred in some fashion without the Versailles Treaty, because even before it's implementation, you had the rise of militant left-wing groups organizing coups in Germany that would later influence the political character of the Weimar Government, that regardless of whether the economic damage the treaty caused on Germany occurred, would have likely sufficiently scared the German elite and industrialists into empowering a right wing leader like a Hitler into power.