Chapter 20 sheds new light on what arguably was the crucial problem of the peacemaking process of 1919 – the fact that ultimately the peace settlement and the terms and rules of the new order were not negotiated between the victors and the vanquished but imposed by the western powers, above all on the fledgling Weimar Republic. It shows that what led to this outcome were not only the unprecedented transatlantic complexities Wilson and the principal British and French “peacemakers” faced when trying to hammer out the fundamental parameters of the peace and postwar order, and to reconcile their often all but irreconcilable interests, aims and ideological priorities. As it underscores, the imposed peace of 1919 was also the outgrowth of underlying hierarchical assumptions the victors shared about their “right” to dictate terms to the defeated German power and to place it on probation. Also analysing the strategies that leading German policymakers like Brockdorff-Rantzau and Matthias Erzberger pursued to open the door to a negotiated peace it finally reappraises the eventual political-cum-ideological battle between the victors and the vanquished that escalated in 1919 and analysis the destructive consequences of the peace settlement’s ultimate imposition.

Chapter 21 offers a new, Atlantic interpretation of the peace of Versailles and the reconfigured international order that emerged in 1919. In contrast to previous assessments, especially the long dominant view that the settlement represented the best possible outcome, it argues that what the “peacemakers” managed to negotiate could only lay a frail groundwork for lasting peace and a sustainable world order of democratic states. It emphasises that the peace architecture of 1919 remained truncated in crucial respects – particularly because it neither integrated the Weimar Republic nor provided effective mechanisms to come to terms with the German question, the dramatic consequences of the Great War and the broader structural and systemic challenges of the “long” 20th century. It illuminates that this was especially due to the fact that the overburdened key decision-makers of Paris confronted one novel, overriding challenge they could only meet in a very limited manner: to forge sustainable transatlantic compromises that reconciled very disparate aims and conceptions – and to create a robust, integrative and thus also more legitimate transatlantic superstructure of security and stabilisation. Finally, it highlights that the learning processes the war had engendered did not reach far enough to permit more far-reaching advances.