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To What Extent Were the Consequences of Wwi the Causes of Wwii

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To What Extent Were the Consequences of Wwi the Causes of Wwii
To what extent were the consequences of WWI the causes for WWII

At the end of World War One, Europe was left in a devastating state, four major empires disappeared and the economy was profoundly damaged. The first global war had taken place and fear of a second one was strongly felt across the continent. In order to bring political order to European politics and to prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening again, the Paris Peace Settlement took place. The outcomes were the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the foundation of the League of Nations in 1919. Despite the inherently weak attempts to prevent a repetition of WW1, twenty years later, WWII broke out upon the invasion of Poland by Germany. Although exploding from a seemingly unrelated motive, the origins of WWII can be traced back to the aftermath of the First World War. The harshness of the treaty of Versailles and the economic instability which WW1 was responsible for, lead to a series of events which heavily complemented by independent factors such as European foreign policy, accumulated and eventually exploded into The Second World War.

The agreements made at the Paris Peace Settlement were destined to fail as the Treaty of Versailles did not effectively manage to relief Europe from German threat. The orthodox historians view the settlement as being a failed compromise between the idealism of Wilson and the realism and selfishness of the European powers. Wilson had a subjective aim as he believed that peace was impeded by three elements: the selfishness of European Diplomacy, the tendency of larger powers to deny ethnic minorities self determination and autocratic regimes which ignored the wishes of the people. Wilson’s perspective was quite idealistic and encompassed high moral values, it was too unrealistic to follow through. His principles clashed Clemenceau as France felt that Germany must be demilitarized and he pleaded for home land security. Clemenceau wanted to eradicate any

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