Recently I've begun reading Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed The World, by Margaret MacMillan. It is an account of the Paris Peace conference in 1919 following the armistice that ended World War I, which produced the Treaty of Versailles and founded the League of Nations.
I was particularly interested to read this, from the book's foreword by Richard Holbrooke:
In the headline version of history, the road from the Hall of Mirrors to the German invasion of Poland only twenty years later is usually presented as a straight line. But as MacMillan forcefully demonstrates, this widely accepted view of history distorts the nature of the decisions made in Paris and minimizes the importance of actions taken in the intervening years.
......MacMillan corrects the widely held view that thre reparations payments impose by the victors were so onerous as to have caused the wreck of the German economy that paved the way for Hitler.
The view which Ms. MacMillan apparently corrects in this work is one that sounded familiar to me. While I'm interested in history generally and wanted to read something on World War I, I also have another reason for wanting to read this book. You see, when I was a freshman in college, I completely, utterly, and totally botched a paper on Hitler's rise to power for Dr. Sanders' History of the Western World class. I think I got a D on the paper and, consequently, a C in the class--the worst of my college career.
Apparently I didn't understand the situation then, as I believe I repeated the very view that Mr. Holbrooke talks about above. So, I thought that now would be a good time to remedy that situation and come to a better understanding of the events. I think Dr. Sanders would be proud.
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