The End of the War to End All Wars

All was quiet on the Western Front at 11:00 a.m. on November 11, 1918.

- Barbara Krasner

The German Empire’s Kaiser Wilhelm II had fled to the Netherlands, and a new German Republic was established. The Great War earned its name—more than 8.5 million soldiers died. Its battlefields littered Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Troops from many of Europe’s countries and also including Africa, China, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, India, and the United States had engaged in battle.

By the end of the war, the empires that had seemed so indestructible just a few years before had either collapsed during the war or crumbled after it was over. The regimes included the Hapsburgs in Austria–Hungary, the Romanovs in Russia, the Turks in the Ottoman Empire, and the Hohenzollerns in Germany. Britain, while still an empire, was left in a weakened state. Some of its former dominions signed peace treaties as the independent countries of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

NEGOTIATING PEACE

The war’s end brought the daunting task to negotiate peace on a scale never before seen. Officials convened in France in January 1919 for the Paris Peace Conference. The top three diplomats to participate were French prime minister Georges Clemenceau, British prime minister David Lloyd George, and U.S. president Woodrow Wilson. They dominated the conference. Although the United States had been involved in the war for only 19 months, European powers needed its money and supplies.

The task before the members of the conference was two-fold. They had to decide on the punishments for the defeated powers. Many of the victors considered Germany to be the