The author argues that the conditions imposed on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles did not lead to the rise of Adolf Hitler and asks whether the Great War was "an unmitigated catastrophe in a sea of mud", or instead was "about something". The book focuses on the "Big Three", who are photographed together on its cover (left to right): Prime Minister David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France, and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States. Peacemakers describes the six months of negotiations that took place in Paris, France, following World War I. The book has also been published under the titles Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World and Peacemakers: Six Months That Changed the World.
It was written by the Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan with a foreword by the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke. She refutes received ideas about the path from Versailles to World War II and debunks the widely accepted notion that reparations imposed on the Germans were in large part responsible for the Second World War.Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (2001) is a historical narrative about the events of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.
Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made the scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. The peacemakers, so it has been said, failed dismally above all they failed to prevent another war. They struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China, and dismissed the Arabs. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals, and prejudices of the men who shaped the settlement. For six months, Paris was effectively the center of the world as the peacemakers carved up bankrupt empires and created new countries. Ho Chi Minh, a kitchen assistant at the Ritz, submitted a petition for an independent Vietnam. Lawrence of Arabia joined the Arab delegation. David Lloyd George, the British prime minister, brought Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. Stern, intransigent, impatient when it came to security concerns and idealistic in his dream of a League of Nations that would resolve all future conflict peacefully, Wilson is only one of the characters who fill the pages of this book. Center stage was an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who with his Fourteen Points seemed to promise to so many people the fulfillment of their dreams. Between January and July 1919, after "the war to end all wars," men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace.
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