It feels urgent to revisit the events of early 20th century Europe right now. Reading about that era feels like watching someone draw back the slingshot whose energy still propels much of modern politics, including the conflict in Gaza and Israel.
Paris 1919, by Margaret MacMillan, traces the negotiations of the Paris peace conference, which eventually led to the Treaty of Versailles. Although that agreement is now best known for the burdensome reparations it imposed on Germany, creating resentments that Hitler fanned and exploited in his rise to power, MacMillan does a good job of explaining the misguided idealism that guided negotiators as they redrew the map of Europe, carving nation-states out of collapsing empires.
I picked up Postwar, by Tony Judt, after a historian friend texted to remind me of this quote in response to my newsletter a few weeks ago: At the conclusion of the First World War, it was borders that were invented and adjusted, while people were on the whole left in place. After 1945 what happened was rather the opposite: boundaries stayed broadly intact and people were moved instead.
#Paris peace conference #Treaty of Versailles #boundary adjustments #World War II #Israel-Palestine conflict
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