Dan Snow's History Hit - The Aftermath of WW1

Episode Date: April 15, 2020

In this podcast I was joined by Margaret MacMillan, professor at St Antony's College, Oxford University and author of 'Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War'. We discussed the effects WWI had on the world, and how Europe began to rebuild in the years that followed.For ad free versions of our entire podcast archive and hundreds of hours of history documentaries, interviews and films, including our new in depth documentary about some of the greatest speeches ever made in the House of Commons, please signup to www.HistoryHit.TV Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've been talking a lot about pandemics, we've been talking a lot about societies responding to moments of crisis and one that springs to mind of course is the end of the First World War which coincided not just a pandemic, outbreak of influenza, which we've been talking a lot about on the podcast, but also a world that had been dislocated by a gigantic global conflict. I decided that I would get Margaret Macmillan, Professor Margaret Macmillan, back on the podcast. She is one of the world's leading historians of 20th century international relations. She is an all-round legend. She's also my aunt, but lots of other people think she's a legend too. It's not

just me. And she's also the award-winning writer of the best-selling book about the Treaty of Versailles, Peacemakers, it was called in the UK in Paris, 1919, in North America. I thought I'd get her on to talk about how, just the extent of the damage after the First World War and how the world responded to it, or didn't respond. This was the first broadcast on my new History Hit Lives. If you go over to YouTube to the Timeline channel, you'll see my History Hit Lives. We're going out three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 4pm UK time, 11am Eastern and 8am Pacific time. We've talked to lots of different people. We've talked about the Maya. We've talked about pandemics,

talked about the First World War. So this is one that I thought would be good to share with the podcast because Margaret is always, always great value and says important and interesting stuff. If you want to see Margaret, remember we got her explaining why the First World War started over on History Hit TV. It's our new history channel. If you use the code POD1, P-O-D-1,

you get a month for free and then you get the first month for just one pound a euro or dollar. So do go and check that out on History Hit TV. Make sure you get the first month for just one pound a euro or dollar so do go and check that out on history hit tv make sure you use the code in the meantime everyone here's margaret enjoy margaret thank you so much for coming on this brand new history hit live this is really exciting well it's really fun to be at the beginning of something like this. Now, let's talk about the First World War. You've written the monster book on the outbreak of the First World War. You've also dealt in your multi-prize winning books about the end of the First World War. But let's talk briefly about the war itself. We talk of it as a world

war. What does that actually mean? Because we think of the fighting in France and Belgium, but it should probably be thought of as a global conflict, shouldn't it? I absolutely agree. I mean, I think we tend, for obvious reasons, in countries such as Britain to focus on the Western Front, because that's where so many British soldiers were. But the war was truly global. There was fighting in the center of Europe, massive fighting in the center of Europe, fighting in the Balkans, fighting in the Middle East, fighting in Africa, wars at sea in the Atlantic and the Pacific, fighting in Asia. So yes, it was a truly global war. And what is more, soldiers from around the world came to fight

in different parts. So half a million Indian soldiers came to fight in the Middle East and in Europe. Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Newfoundlanders, South Africans, all came to fight in Europe. So it was huge movements of people around the world. Fascinating to me that something like 70 million military personnel were mobilized from all of these powers, as you say, from Congo to Canada. Why was it just on such a gigantic scale compared to the wars that had gone on, you know, a generation or particularly maybe 100 years before? Was it the Industrial Revolution that intervened in the meantime? It was partly the Industrial Revolution because that made it possible.

I mean, the limits on war before the 2019th century had always been that you couldn't feed and transport and look after that many soldiers. You simply ran out of supplies and you didn't have the means to bring in fresh supplies on a large scale. What the Industrial Revolution made possible was you could put uniforms on millions of men, you could give them weapons, you could give them trucks, you could give them bicycles, and you could keep them there because you had railways and steamships and motorized vehicles which would bring up the supplies, which is why the war, First World War and the Second World War, were able to last for so long. But I think what also made this a global war and a massive war, a total war, we had to invent a new term for it, actually,

it was the first time we really began to talk total war, was that the war which started in Europe and started, I think, very much as a result of European rivalries, brought the rest of the world in very largely because Europe had empires. And so the Europeans controlled most of Africa, they controlled large parts of Asia, they controlled parts of theires. And so the Europeans controlled most of Africa. They controlled large parts of Asia. They controlled parts of the Americas. And so that made it a global war because it was a war not just of European nations, but their empires.

Speaking of empires, as you'll know as a Canadian, I think often about the huge Canadian effort that was made at the Battle of, well, we call it Battle of Passchendaele, 3rd April 1917. Take a battle like that, you know, something like on both sides approaching a million men killed and wounded. And we think, what, I mean, maybe like a four mile advance in six months. I mean, these battles are just, they're like almost like nothing else in history to that point. Now, one of the tragedies of the First World War, I think, was that the technology

had advanced so that it was much easier to defend than to attack. And you needed overwhelming force Now, one of the tragedies of the First World War, I think, was that the technology had advanced so that it was much easier to defend than to attack, and you needed overwhelming force to attack. And they were beginning to learn by 1917 how to do it. But what resulted, certainly after 1914, for three years and more, was a stalemate. And even if you did advance, say, 500 yards or a mile, you couldn't advance further because the ground was so cut up because the very shells that you had used to prepare the way for the attack had made it almost impossible to move further. We talk about the human cost of the war we've got perhaps you know

nine or ten million military dead incalculable numbers permanently maimed or psychologically scarred and then millions of civilians as well. I mean, this was something, and then that's before we even get to this pandemic outbreak of flu that follows, well, that starts during the war and then is unleashed on the world. Yes, I think you can understand when you look at those figures, the deaths and the casualties and the permanent damage that was done, and not to mention the destruction of land, of mines, of railways, of harbors. You know, this was a massively destructive war. And you can understand why people looked in 1918 and said, what have we done to ourselves? And is Europe and is the world ever

going to be the same? I mean, I think people really do see and did see then the First World War as some sort of dividing line between a different, perhaps more innocent world, perhaps a little bit more peaceable world, and this world of the post-1918 period. What's extraordinary is that when the fighting stopped, it seems like on one level, that wasn't the end of people's troubles. If anything, it got kind of worse. I mean, what state was the world in, in 1918 when the fighting stopped? Well, Europe in particular was shattered, I think, and a lot of Europeans talked about the end of their civilization, but other parts of the world had been very much affected by the war as well.

Their resources had been drained, their young men had been taken away, and of course a lot of those young men weren't going to come back again. The fighting stopped between the powers in 1918. Of course, part of the tragedy was that it didn't stop everywhere. And there was going to be fighting in the center of Europe, in the Balkans, in the Middle East, until well into the mid-1920s. And I think there was also a level of violence in politics, which people hadn't perhaps seen before. And a lot of people would put that down to the fact that so many people had been brutalized by the war. There was also a sense, not just of the loss and the continuing violence that worried people, but a sense that something crucial had been broken in Europe. Political structures were collapsing, particularly in the center of Europe.

There was a revolution in Russia, and it looked very much like there might be revolutions elsewhere. There was briefly for six months a communist government in Hungary, for example. And so there was a feeling that the world had come through one catastrophe and maybe trembling on the edge of something even worse. And because so many empires had collapsed, Austria-Hungary, for example, which controlled most of the center of Europe, had collapsed, whole economic structures had collapsed. So people weren't getting the food they needed. They weren't getting the coal they needed. Bakers couldn't bake bread to feed people because they couldn't get the wheat, which used to come in on railways and steamships and barges.

And they couldn't get the coal to light their ovens. And so you began to get people starving and people dying of the sort of illnesses that come along with misery and poverty. Typhus began to spread. But of course, the worst disease of all, and the one that made people talk about sometimes the four horsemen of the apocalypse, was the Spanish influenza, probably unfairly called after Spain, but we tended to give geographical names in those days. It may have killed from the time it started, probably starting somewhere at the end of 1916, but really reaching a sort of crescendo in 1918 and going on

into 1919 again with the second wave, it may have killed as many as 50 million people around the world. I mean, these figures are almost impossible to understand. And one of the horrifying things about the Spanish flu, I think to everyone, was that it took the young. It took people between about the ages of 26 and 32 and and was so quick someone would be live and healthy one day dead the next. I've done several podcasts on Spanish flu recently because people are talking about the pandemic of course and it is astonishing to think that if you were 28 29 30 you were particularly vulnerable to it and imagine these veterans coming back thinking they've survived the war or people who've worked themselves the bone in factories or in the field and then they succumb to Spanish flu in the winter of 1918-1919. I mean it just feels epic epic

tragedy. I think this is how people felt and you can understand this feeling of despair that must have hit a lot of people and of course the authorities didn't know how to deal with it. I mean we know much more now about how you deal with epidemics on this scale and so they made mistakes and they allowed people to go out they allowed people to go to victory parades and that of We know much more now about how you deal with epidemics on this scale. And so they made mistakes. They allowed people to go out. They allowed people to go to victory parades. And that, of course, just helped to spread it further. And they didn't know how to treat it.

I mean, American doctors in Paris were saying perhaps a good treatment for the flu, if you get it, is to smoke lots of cigarettes, which is probably the worst thing you could have done. OK, Margaret, we've seen recently a $2 trillion aid package that's just passed the House and the Senate in the US. We've seen other countries act in the same way, unprecedented amounts of state action to try and ameliorate the economic effects of the current pandemic. What were governments able to do? What did they try to do to rebuild in 1918 and after that? Governments in those days didn't have the same attitude towards the economy and I think didn't understand as much about the economic levers that they possessed as they understand today and so the reaction in most governments after the First World War was let's cut back the level of spending it was way too high and we've had to tax people

way too much for this war let's get right back to peacetime. In the case of Britain, let's go back on the gold standard, which in fact turned out to be very bad for British exports. But there was a sense that we've got to stop spending money. And so really what they did was it was an early version of austerity. And it was probably exactly the wrong thing to do if you wanted to get the world's economies going again. the world's economies going again. To begin with, it didn't do anything for the veterans who were coming back. And that caused a lot of real social tension. I mean, people were fed up. They came back from the war. They couldn't get houses. They couldn't get jobs. And you began to get a lot of discontent and a lot of violence and trouble in certain countries. And also you had businesses not able to function because they couldn't get the supplies they needed. They couldn't get the export markets they needed. And so I think, in retrospect, they would have been wise, the world statesmen, to follow the advice of John Maynard Keynes, who was in that point not a famous economist, but was a young official of the

treasury, who said, what we've got to do is get Europe's economic engines going again. But that didn't happen. And part of the problem was also the United States, which had become the great lender during the First World War, was not prepared to go on lending money. It was insisting on being paid back. I mean, it would lend the money, but it would charge interest rates and insist on being paid back. And so the European countries in particular found themselves struggling with huge, massive social problems. They were trying to cut and balance the books. And that, in fact, contributed to a depression in the years immediately after the war which of course hurt even more people

so yeah i mean it's just when you add it all up i mean you've got the pandemic uh you've got governments stopping spending i spoke you got people returning to the workforce you've got revolutions as well i mean you've got you've got uh you know bav for example, is a sort of anarchic state. I mean, how did the statesmen even, and some stateswomen as well, how did they try and manage this? Or do you see them as almost being sort of victims of events? Well, I think they manage as best they can, but they actually don't have that many levers. And in many cases, they're swept along by events. And of course, a lot of the statesmen of countries such as in countries such as France

and Britain and the United States and other countries in Western Europe were really afraid of revolution because they could look eastwards and they could see what had happened in Russia. And the Bolsheviks had taken over. They were in the process of winning their civil war. No one knew what sort of society they were going to create, but it appeared very appealing. And a lot of people in Italy, in France, in Britain, around the world, particularly people who were deprived and suffering, looked to Russia and thought, that's what we want. And so for the statesmen, there was this fear that they were facing economic issues, economic problems, also the possibility of revolution from within. And they really, I think, floundered. I

mean, there were various schemes floated to try and get Europe's economy going again. And eventually, eventually by 1925, after a lot of people had suffered, Europe began to recover the levels of production and output and consumption that it had had in the pre-war period. But it took a long time. And it came at a real political cost. I I mean one of the reasons Mussolini got into power in Italy in 1922 was partly because of the economic catastrophes that were happening in Italy and the failure of the government to deal with it. Let's take a snapshot of the globe if you like. Some of the most important and powerful players of the previous two, three, four hundred years just disappear in a space of a few months. The Romanov, so Romanov Russia, the Russian Empire's gone.

The Ottoman Empire that had ruled what we've now called the Middle East, Turkey, the Middle East, for centuries, gone. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, perhaps both gone. And what condition was, say, China, France, Britain and the USA? Land a Viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal j in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer.

Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Well, it depended very much on the country. The USA was actually in fairly good condition. The war, of course, it led to loss of American lives, but it had in some ways been good for the United States. It had stimulated the American economy. The United States had become the lender to much of the rest of the world. And so this really is a moment when the United States. It had stimulated the American economy. The United States had become the lender to much of the rest of the world. And so this really is a moment when the United States begins to become a world power, a very considerable world power. For Japan, the war itself had

actually been, Japan was an ally in the First World War. It had been quite a good war. It had seized territory in the Pacific and in China that it had always had its eye on, although Japan too had a slump after the war was over. But it was the countries in the center of Europe, I think, who suffered most. France and Britain weathered the storm, although it wasn't easy for them. But the countries in the center of Europe, many of them new, many of them appearing on the map for the first time, were small, insecure. They'd been fought over often. They didn't have the means to really help themselves. And of course, because they were new, they were intensely nationalistic, and they fell often to quarreling with each other. So it was a very bad situation, I think,

particularly in the center of Europe. Margaret, you've done such a huge amount of work on the Paris Peace Conference. Some people call it Versailles, but the reason it was signed in the Palace of Versailles in 1919. What was the idea behind gathering up all of these politicians from all over the world for one huge powwow? The idea was that the Allies would get together and draw up their preliminary terms, and then they would have a big peace conference. I mean, the Paris Peace Conference started as the preliminary peace conference,

and they were modeling it on the Congress of Vienna, which had met at the end of the Napoleonic Wars to try and put Europe back into order again and try and deal with the defeated France. In fact, there were too many allies. There was something like over 30 allies. And the conference itself was unwieldy. And it took them so long to come up

with the peace terms they were going to offer to Germany, which was the key country among the defeated, that they didn't dare bring the Germans in and start negotiating all over again. They were afraid the whole conference would fall to pieces. So it was a chaotic event. It was turned out completely unlike what they thought it would turn out. But what they did was cobble together peace terms, which were then offered to Germany, basically on a take it or leave it basis, which is something, among other things, that the Germans resented bitterly in the 1920s and 1930s. Is that because Germany, of course, was no longer Imperial Germany, the Hohenzollern,

the Kaiser Wilhelm was gone. This was now the socialist democratic republic of Germany. Yeah, Germany had undergone a tremendous change. And I think we have to remember just how young a country Germany was. And you think of Germans always having been there in the center of Europe. But Germany as a country was only formed in 1871. So it enjoyed about 40 years of being Germany, the imperial Reich. Suddenly that manages and they become a constitutional democracy.

And for a lot of Germans, it was deeply upsetting. They had seen one sort of society. They built a Germany. Suddenly it disappears from under them. There were other problems in Germany. I mean, I think there was an unwillingness to accept that Germany had lost the war, and that was going to gain, be a very important political factor in the 1920s and 1930s. Germany had lost. It had lost on the battlefields. It was basically done by the autumn of 1918. Its armies, its navy could not fight on. But gradually as peace came,

the generals who'd been responsible for the catastrophe began to say we could have fought on, we could have fought on, we really should have been able to fight on, it was only the cowards at home who stabbed us in the back. And you've got this pernicious myth that Germany was stabbed in the back by, and you can probably list in your own mind, the liberals, the social democrats, the communists, and the Jews. It was a very nasty bit of anti-Semitism now beginning to emerge in Germany. And so you had a deeply unhappy Germany. And the problem with that was Germany was still a very powerful country. It sat right in the heart of Europe. And you could argue, in fact, and I would

argue that it was more powerful in a curious way post-1918 than it was before, because it no longer had a common border with Russia, which had scared the German high command silly, because they saw a big Russia with more potential soldiers and developing very fast. There was now Poland in between. And instead of Austria-Hungary, with which Germany had had a very complicated relationship and often unfriendly relationship, there were now a whole lot of small states who quarreled with each other, which left the way open for Germany to play off one against the other. So Germany still remains very powerful. It still has a big population. And its infrastructure basically hadn't been touched by

the war because the fighting wasn't on German soil. The Allies are accused of being far too harsh on this new Germany because they, for example, they imposed reparations. Money had to be paid to the Allies for the damaged cores and things. Do you think the Germans were treated particularly harshly by the Allies? I don't think they were treated any more harshly than anyone who lost a war in that period or in the 19th century or earlier was treated. When the German Confederation defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, Germany, the new Germany, imposed a

very harsh peace on France. The French had to pay for a German occupation until they'd paid a huge fine. And it's been estimated, this is only an estimate, it's been estimated that France actually paid Germany more proportionate to its economy and its revenue in 1871 than Germany was asked to pay post-1919. It was understood that if you lost a war you sacrificed things, you gave up your art treasures, you paid money, you lost territory. And so I don't think the treaty was that harsh except that people were now expecting a different sort of world and the American President Woodrow Wilson had said, I want a peace of no retribution. And so people in Germany and elsewhere thought, look, this is a bit unfair to actually punish Germany for it.

The other problem was that the reparations were never really paid. Some of them were paid. The Allied leaders knew that Germany would never pay the whole bill, but they didn't dare tell their own publics that. And that was a problem. Politically, it was very difficult and very few Allied statesmen had the courage to say to their own publics, look, we'd be better off not trying to get anything out of Germany. We'd be better off just getting on with it again. The publics wouldn't have gone for it in 1919. Maybe later, but not in 1919.

It feels that in Paris, there's two different things going on. There's a sort of slightly more old fashioned 18th, 19th century idea of stripping bits of territory away from defeated enemies. Then there's also this strand, perhaps epitomized by Woodrow Wilson, the American president,

of building a new world of utopianism, of an international order to make sure this can never happen again. Is that true? And were they in conflict with each other? I think, yes. I think a number, they were in conflict. And I think a number of things were going on in Paris.

I mean, there was one, the old fashioned thing, how do we treat the defeated? And how do we get some recompense for what's done to us? And, you know, you can understand the French position. Everyone sees the French as vindictive. France had not attacked Germany in 1914. Germany had declared war on France. And it had been on French

soil that the fighting had taken place. And so you can see the French point of view. Why should we pay for a war that we didn't start in the first place? So there was that. There was who pays for the war and how do you punish those who started the war? There was also the whole issue of how do we just manage the unfolding situation in Europe and try and deal with all these new states that are emerging and how do we try and divide up the Middle East? There were lots of other things on their plates. And then there was also this idea that perhaps we can do better. I mean, there was this sense that Europe could never go through a war like this again. It would be the end of European and perhaps Western civilization. And so there were a lot of people, both in the

United States and the new world, but also in Europe, who said, look, something better has got to come out of this catastrophe. And so what Woodrow Wilson was talking about was, I think, a vision, but a very important vision. And all these different sorts of strands didn't mesh neatly with each other, but you can understand why they're there. You've always spoken so beautifully about how individuals matter. We're all talking about these big strategic ideas and the economies of Europe. But you also have made it very clear that in the room, in the room where it happened, the mood of Lloyd George or Woodrow Wilson or who was sick or Clem Orso, the French premier being a surviving assassination attempt, that all really mattered as those months went along.

It did, I think, because it was an extraordinary event. I mean, we will never again, I think, see leading world statesmen spending six months in one place. And you think of the G7 or G20, how long they last. I mean, they last for, what, two and a half days, even less if President Trump has his way. So I think it's really an extraordinary event. And they meet every day, pretty much, and they chat.

And they don't always like each other. I mean, Lloyd George is not trusted by Woodrow Wilson and Clemenceau. Lloyd George thinks Woodrow Wilson is a bit too idealistic. Clemenceau doesn't trust anyone. He's deeply cynical, but they're sitting there day after day and they become sort of friends. There's some lovely transcripts of their conversations before the formal bits start and they compare their dreams or they talk about when they have trouble sleeping or they say whether or not they like coffee. There's a sort of fellow feeling develops, because there are not many people in the world who have those sorts of burdens and those sorts of responsibilities. What about the League of Nations, this idea that it wouldn't just be in

Paris, that actually there could be some permanent structure? Was it the beginnings of a kind of move towards global government? I think it was. Not global government so much as global cooperation. And the ideas behind the League of Nations actually had been around for quite a long time and had been discussed. In the course of the 19th century, a lot of thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic were saying, look, there must be another way to settle disputes among nations than resorting to war. And arbitration was seen, for example., compulsory binding arbitration, which both states agreed to accept the result, was seen as something that might prevent future wars. Disarmament was seen also as something that might prevent future wars. And so there's a lot of

talk about how do we do this. And the notion of some sort of permanent consulting body of nations was certainly talked about. What Woodrow Wilson did, and he was tremendously eloquent, the American president, who'd also been a university professor and university president, spent a lot of time thinking about these issues. And he took those ideas and put them into a form, drawing very heavily on the European ideas and indeed previous European drafts, and talked about a League of Nations, which would be like a sort of parliament. He much admired the British parliament. So you'd have an executive, a council, like a cabinet, which would be comprised of the major powers plus elected ones who'd rotate. Then you'd have an assembly, which would be like the

House of Commons with different nations debating issues and so on. And you would have other ancillary organizations like the World Health, well, not like the World Health Organization, but its forerunner, but like the International Labor Organization, which would begin to deal with some of the difficulties and injustices and hardships in the world. And I think it was, yes, it was an idealistic program, but it was also a very practical one. The idea was to try and find ways where nations could work together to make the world a better place and not go to war. The League of Nations proved to be a disappointment. Eventually, it was unable to prevent the outbreak of the Second World War. Judging now 100 years later,

think about some of the other decisions that were made at that time. I mean, how enduring have they been? Well, the settlement in the Middle East has, for better or worse, been pretty enduring. It came out of the Paris Peace Conference, and the details were finally hammered out in conferences post-1919. But the borders that were drawn in Paris and later basically haven't changed, the borders between the states of the Middle East. And the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine really comes out of this period as well and was recognized by the League of Nations. And so you do get a number of areas in the world where decisions made there have lasted. I think what has also come out of the Paris Peace Conference is the idea that you can have international cooperation. The League didn't work and it was seen as a

failure, but the powers of the world set up the United Nations. And so I think we haven't lost the idea and we're still dealing with it, we still worry about it. And so I think a very important shift takes place in thinking about the international order as a result of the First World War, and the peace conference at the end. How do you mark these politicians? I mean, were they wrong about reparations? Were they wrong about the economy? Could they have divided up the world in a more sensible fashion, rather than just creating states here and there using maps or do you think on the whole they dealt pretty well with the set of challenges that

confronted them? My own feeling is they didn't do too bad a job but they were dealing with extremely difficult difficult circumstances I mean it's often said that the statesmen in Paris created the states that emerged on the map of Europe in the center of Europe that they created a re-emerged Poland they created a Czechoslovakia they created created a Yugoslavia. They didn't. Those states were creating themselves on the ground and basically what they did was recognized. And yes, you can criticize them for trying to get reparations out of Germany, but they had to deal with their own publics. I mean, this is the difficulty of a democratic leader and it's the strength also of a democratic leader. If you have your people with you, you can do a lot. But if you don't have them with you, then you cannot go

too far out or you're going to lose the next election. And so I think that was a problem. I think there was also a problem in the United States didn't join the League of Nations. And there, I think it really comes down to my view, Woodrow Wilson's failure of political leadership. He refused to accept any compromises. He refused to compromise with the Republicans who wanted to attach some riders to the treaty. He refused to accept that. And the treaty, which embodied the League of Nations, the Treaty of Versailles, which embodied the League of Nations, which would have meant the United States joined it if it passed the U.S. Senate, was rejected in the Senate by a combination of hardline Republicans and Wilson's own Democrats who he told to vote against it because it had been modified. So it's one of those big tragedies and what-ifs in history. What if the

United States had been in the league? Might it have been stronger? Well, Margaret Macmillan, unlike Woodrow Wilson, who was a fellow professor, you could convince anyone of anything. So if you'd been in charge, it would have been fine. Thank you very much indeed for coming on to this History Hit Live on Timeline. I've enjoyed it very much. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money, makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review. I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of

the jungle out there and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.