At the university of mississippi , and we have stayed in touch quite a bit as we both moved on. We have always had a set of shared interests. Mike, it is great to be here with you today and to have a conversation on a subject that is extremely timely, which is responding to crisis. What needs to be said to the audience, they have seen all the evidence they can of the Current Crisis the coronavirus the economic downturn that will , be the serious issue for leaders, for everyday people. And it seems a good time to talk about two major 20thcentury crises. At the end of two world wars and how leaders responded, and to raise an issue about the light that might throw on the present about a framework for comparison. Mike, youre one of the people to talk to about. There are too many of your books to list for the audience but i thought i would talk about the book, fighting the great war world war i, the blood of free men, the book about the liberation of paris in 1944. But two books for the audience that will be of great interest is your concise history of the treaty of versailles, and your and the endotts dam of world war ii and the remaking of europe. I thought we will start with world war i and take a chronological approach and talk with you about how leaders responded to these crises and if we have time at the end, we can raise issues about how that relates to the present. The place to begin is pretty straightforward, the world as it appeared to allied leaders in 19181919. The end of world war i, some 10 Million People had perished in that conflict as the american, french, british, italian leaders met, they are faced with pandemic, the great 1918 influenza. Looking at that world and looking back on it, how did these leaders respond to these crises . How did the world look to them, and how did they think about moving beyond the world work . Mike first of all, thank you, jason, thank you to the museum, to christie and kate for all the work they have done putting this together. Thank you to the viewers for signing in. I hope youre using this opportunity to use this time productively. For me, it has been a time to reflect about the ways in which the days that you live in changes the way about the past, and changes the way you think about these big questions, how you deal with a pandemic and how you deal with Great Power Competition in the era of crisis, which is certainly what was going on in 1919. I dont think anybody thought that whatever was decided that decided at the paris peace conference was going to end Great Power Competition. It is about what kind of world you are living in and what set of philosophies do you want Going Forward . One thing this crisis has done for me, it is made me realize how similar in broad respects they were thinking 100 years ago. What i mean is, this is simplifying things too much come things too much, but one is there are at least two , major groups of thinkers. One is represented by Woodrow Wilson who argues that the right solution is multilateral. That projects like pandemics, Great Power Competition, International Bolshevism they , are International Problems that need international solutions. And there are folks like the french Prime Minister who are not opposed to negotiating with countries, but they want to go strictly to a national model. And then there are americans like Theodore Roosevelt making the same argument in the u. S. What do you think is causing the problem and what do you think is the appropriate solution . There are people who were thinking internationally 100 years ago and people thinking nationally. Would be verysets familiar to people 100 years ago looking at our world. And they wouldve recognized a lot more about the situation then maybe we would expect. Jason that leads me to my next question. We were talking about the framework and different visions there from the beginning. These countries had fought together. Britain and france had been in u. S. Ight since 1914, the jumping in three years later. At what point did the tensions lemenceauilson and c to lloyd george about how begin to surface between an international and national framework, how to deal with germany germany is not occupied in 1918 and 1919. And how to deal with that we , will come back to the questions of the bolsheviks and case,ke, but in this there were already, very early on, tensions on how to respond at what vision would inform a piece. Could you say a bit about that . Michael Woodrow Wilson very famously said that when he saw said,s points, he thank god himself he was content to give us just 10. And george was asked to evaluate his own performance and he said i dont think i did too bad , seeing that i had napoleon on , one side and jesus christ himself on the other. There are tensions already. The First American president to go to europe in office. The First American president trying to take american ideals and provide them to the old world. A lot of it also depends on what you think fundamentally caused the war. Eau,u are george clemenc there is something inherent in the german character. He had argued for fighting on rather than giving up alsace lorraine. There is Something Different about germany that you have to deal with. Mind, itlloyd georges is simply that there is a balance of power problem. The lack of open markets, the lack of incentives for states to work together. So although they were allies during the war, they had very different definitions of what they thought they were doing there, and very difference y different and differentad very definitions of what they thought they were doing there. We can talk about this for world war ii as well. What do you think is the fundamental cause of the problem and until you have answered that, you cannot look for solutions. The american approach looks way too idealistic, way too pieinthesky. Wilsonclemenceau solution appears to be the same. Jason you understand the differences of germany and how they understood the conflict and clemenceausiews idealism. That is one thing people always bring up about the wilsonian perspective. On the french and british side, is there any real sense that there is democracy, the fact that the kaiser had been forced out, is there any sense in 191819 that germany is becoming a republic . You think that might be a signal for wilson that the german people are trying to step up and move past authoritarianism. The british and the french side andthe british and the french side have been in the war much earlier, northern france, much of it devastated that the , wariness and the suspicion would be deeper than germany. That weat all convinced have someone running germany instead of wilhelm the second and ludendorff, that there really hasnt been much change. That is something i wanted to add. On the british and french side, is there much interest at all in the fact that germany seems to be transitioning to some type of democratic system . Whereas for wilson that may be , confirmation that his point of view is correct. Mike i think you are right about both of those points. Not all frenchmen see the world the way clemenceau does. There are plenty of french people, intellectuals, argue, germanyo will need time to figure out how democracy, what its about time to figure out what its democracy is going to look like. There are youth movements and socialist Party Movements trying to build these bridges across the rhine river. Say,not to say, lest to lets just kiss and makeup, the fundamental problem of germany was kaiser, it wasnt germany, it was prussia. That comes up at the end of world war ii. Their kids had gone through world war ii and day number of bavarians were like, it wasnt us, it was those guys. There are people who are sympathetic. It is what they call the two germanys movement. There was this germany of beethoven and others that was crushed by this prussian autocracy, and now that the prussian autocracy has been removed, there is a chance to move forward. But it doesnt mean that everybody in france and britain trusts that but it means they say if we are looking for a postwar strategy it is better to leverage that than it is to continue the hatred and the enmity. This works better at the end of the Second World War, at least until the 1960s and 1970s, but you are a you are at a point now its an expression that you can do this under different historical circumstances. To me, its a story every time that i cross that border. I know it has been a while now, but shared currency, consultation on foreign policy. Of people are lot envisioning in 1919 and into the 1920s, that you might eventually get to Something Like that. So they are not all wildly optimistic or too idealistic, but they are hoping that if you can build bridges between them, you increase that chance for cooperation rather than competition. And again, that is very similar to the debate we are having now. So whats the best way to deal with this crisis . Is it to build those bridges between governments that do not trust each other governments , that know they have Different Things they are trying to accomplish, or is it best to wall yourself off and deal with it from a National Perspective . There is no obvious answer to that question, but to me it resonates with the kind of stuff i studied at the end of the two world wars. Jason those are important points. To two followups on that. One is that youre noting that we should not be monolithic in the way that we understand the responses of these three countries to how to build a new order after world war i. So the first question would be what kind of popular pressures do you see . Like lloyd george had just had , an election in 1918. Woodrow wilson, there had a Congressional Election and he now has republicans in congress who are not terribly excited about a lot of the internationalist side of this peacemaking process. Clemenceau does not have an election so much to deal with, but there are popular pressures that he has to respond to. And a lot of people, the sacrifice and casualties that france undergoes, the destruction in significant parts of the country that he has to , listen to these pressures, he cant just simply ignore them. I think we can get so focused on the big three and what is going on with them as they are trying to figure out a treaty that everyone can agree to, but they also have to as democracies, they are a republic, britain with its long tradition, they all have to deal with pressures from below. Could you Say Something about that . Mike the easiest way to study the treaty of verseilles is with those big three. Answers no one british to the covid crisis. There is no one american answer to the covid crisis. These are determined by things like middleclass versus , workingclass, where you live all kinds of things will , determine your response. The debates reach across national lines. And the big one is do you want , to solve these things at the theonal level, or at 19181919 imperial level . If you are british do you want to open up to International Trade . Or do you want to increase those imperial ties . In other words increasing , tariffs, keeping americans out of those markets, and trying the best that you can to reinforce the strength of the empire . Both of those arguments are out there. The imperial argument wins at the end of world war i. It doesnt win at the end of world war ii. Two completely different concepts, where the americans were able to force open the British Empire. The argument about the league of nations is interesting there is , a group of senators that say i dont care whats in it, im not signing it. And there is another group that says there are ways in which this is unconstitutional, there is a way that the league of nations can turn the United States into a war, and the obligation to declare war belongs to the u. S. Congress. That is unconstitutional. You cant do that. There are some people making the argument that the league of nations is one nation, one vote. Why would americans accept the same level of power in an International Organization that ecuador would have . Why would we do that . It makes power basis no sense. Which is why in world war ii, the u. S. Comes with the Security Council and the veto. There are arguments that are sothere are arguments that are perfectly legitimate. To paint opponents of the league as backward looking dinosaurs is unfair. They had legitimate grievances. There are things we still talk about today. The world health organization. Do you want to be part of an organization in which you cede some of your sovereignty, and you pay money into the organization know you are not getting as much out of it as a smaller state would, because you believe in helping International Organizations. If you accept that, the who makes perfect sense. If you dont, that you are not going to do that. And again, the same exact debate was happening 100 years ago. The french case is more complicated because of the immediacy of the german threat. It is more complicated. Jason you already set me up for this second question which is , the issue of democracy, and coming back to it for a second. You pointed out about popular pressures. There are a range of different views coming forward. And we should take these seriously, these different should there be a league of nations, what kind of authority should have, should it intervene . Is it only there to arbitrate . There are a lot of perspectives in there, and because of the 1930s, the league is so badly people that it is difficult to have a serious conversation about what things looked like in 1918 when people were trying to envision it. The u. S. Is fighting world war i with a segregated military. American women at the National Level dont get the right to vote until 1920. British women, during the 1920s they will get it, french women not until the end of world war ii. And then, the whole issue of the colonies where the british and , the french had used colonial respective those countries, part of the british and french empires were like, what about democracy . So much of this is being fought in the name of democracy and against german militarism and german autocracy, what is this going to mean . And obviously in versailles, ande become real issues, about what do we do about opening things up . Just in the sense of what time should we grant more autonomy . These movements for independence, those obviously become quite violent in 1919. Massacre you have in india in 1919 or so. What should we do with bad about the issue of democracy and how that rhetoric had been there late in the war, and how these big three then have to confront that . That will be for our viewers a segway into addressing the bolshevik revolution and challenge that that has. But these three countries have real issues of democratization that they have to address. Mike they have enormous issues. the imperial question is an enormous one. My canadian friends are fond of the anecdote the first time , canada ever signed a document in its own right was the treaty of versailles. The original one, they signed on the wrong line. So they had to put an addendum on the treaty of versailles document. My canadian friends like to point that out, how ambiguous this leap onto the world stage was for canada. In india, when the First World War began, gandhi was a supporter of the war. He thought the british were doing the right thing but by the right thing by standing up to german aggression. But by the end of the war, he realized this is not a war about democracy, or poverty this is , about freedom and all the things the allies had talked about. A supremely talented historian harvard wrote about a wilsonian moment, in which he argues where they read of Woodrow Wilson and said the americans are going to fight for democracy. The 14 points can be read as antiimperial. He is serious about this. And the point that he makes is that by the middle of the paris peace conference, wilson doesnt have that in mind at all. What he has in mind is america s rights to to trade in those empires. So this book is about the dissolution that people start to sense in american rhetoric. And president roosevelt is going to try to bring that back in the Second World War with the atlantic charter, hes going to try to put more teeth behind it than wilson did. There are a couple of parts in the world, the peninsula standoff controversy in china, where these interests and values come in conflict with each other. Armenia is another example and the United States doesnt know what to do because we are still , trying to figure this out. The end of the First World War creates a lot of these legacy conflicts, palestine, vietnam, that are going to come back and bite people before the 20th century is over. We talk at the Army War College about some of the wars we are fighting now as the wars of ottoman succession. We are still trying to figure out how you govern a complicated place like the middle east in the absence of a centralized Authority Like the ottoman empire. 1917, george is talking about british operations in mesopotamia and palestine and he says we are focused on where our troops are fighting. And he says, when we looked down the road, mesopotamia and palestine are the problems we are going to have to deal with. Jason there is so much more that we can say about that, the uprising in presentday iraq, and the issue of palestine would be a whole other weapon. So these are big ones. China, you mentioned the may 4 movement that starts in 1919. This is a huge question, and it connects directly to the particular challenge that the bolshevik revolution posed to the big three. This is a subject im very onceested in and how lenin, trotsky, and the bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they published all of the secret treaties that imperial ru