In the Versailles settlement section of GCSE specifications, ‘The views of the leaders’ is a familiar subheading. The US president, Woodrow Wilson, wanted the peace treaty to be fair on the defeated countries and hoped his pet project, the League of Nations, would usher in a new golden age of peace. However, the French premier, Georges Clemenceau, wanted to punish Germany severely, getting revenge not just for the First World War, but for the Franco- Prussian War too.
What of the British prime minister, David Lloyd George? His views are often presented as a bit of an afterthought, somewhere in between the extremes of the other two leaders. But was there more to Lloyd George’s part in the Versailles Conference than a rather unexciting middle-of-the-road position between Clemenceau and Wilson?
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