Mistakes and Myths: The Allies, Germany, and the Versailles Treaty, 1918–1921*
For nearly forty years, historians of twentieth-century diplomacy have argued that the Versailles treaty was more reasonable than its reputation suggests and that it did not of itself cause the Depression, the rise of Hitler, or World War II. Their efforts have had little effect, despite Margaret MacMillan’s best-selling Paris 1919. The distorted view of The Economic Consequences of the Peace and J. M. Keynes’s other works still dominates both the Anglo-American historical profession and the English-speaking educated public, though Zara Steiner pointed out in The Lights That Failed that the Versailles treaty was the mildest of the 1919–20 settlements. Despite scholarly opinion, condemnation of the Versailles treaty continues without cease. The latest addition to an immense literature, The Versailles Treaty and Its Legacy, by Edward M. Bennett and the late Norman A. Graebner,
Revolutionary Contagion and International Politics

 When do leaders fear that a revolution elsewhere will spread to their own polities, and what are the international effects of this fear? This book develops and tests the domestic contagion effects theory. According to the theory, fear of contagion is driven more by the characteristics of the host rather than by the activities of the infecting agents. In other words, leaders will fear revolutionary contagion when they have significant revolutionary opposition movements that share the same ideological affinity of the revolution. Whether the revolutionary state merely serves as a model for revolution or whether it also acts as a platform, attempting to spread revolution abroad, is not the crucial distinction. When leaders have a fear of contagion, it will have a profound effect on international politics, prompting hostility toward the revolutionary state and cooperation with states that have similar fears, sometimes in contrast to geopolitical pressures. Cases spanning the reaction to the democratic American Revolution and the Dutch Patriot Revolt, the wave of liberal revolutions in Europe in 1820–21, the Russian communist and Italian fascist revolutions, and the Iranian Islamist revolution in the Middle East largely, though not uniformly, support the theory. This book advances our understanding of when, why, and how much states with different domestic ideologies affect international relations. In certain periods in international relations, one simply cannot make sense of international politics—patterns of alliances and wars—without considering the fear of contagion.
The Outbreak of the First World War and German War Aims
German innocence or at least relative innocence for the outbreak of the I9I4 war had for decades been something that could not be questioned in Germany. The function of this taboo varied according to the circumstances: in early August I914 it was designed to impress both the SPD and Britain, in order to get the former into the war, and if possible to keep the latter out of it. During the war it was to convince neutrals and Germans alike of the righteousness of the Reich's cause. Immediately after the war, even the left-wing governments of 1918-I9 clung in dealing with the Allies to the concept of German relative innocence, in the hope of getting a more lenient peace settlement. When they failed, later governments and public opinion in the Weimar Republic retreated from the relatively critical line of these earlier governments which, after all, had published the German documents and set up a Commission of Enquiry into the causes of Germany's defeat. The Weimar Republic opened a sustained campaign against article 23I of the Versailles treaty; it hoped, by disputing Germany's responsibility for the war, to dismantle the treaty as a whole. The campaign had started at Versailles itself, where Billow (later Secretary of State in the Auswartiges Amt) mapped out and initiated the strategy.1 In the Auswirtiges Amt a small sub-section, the Kriegsschuldreferat, inspired, directed, and financed the German innocence propaganda. Its chief instruments were two organizations, the Arbeitsausschuss Deutscher Verbande (ADV),