Emaan Yaqub

1235 Words

The history of U.S. diplomacy has been a bumpy road. With the culmination of the

Spanish-American War in the Treaty of Paris, the United States achieved its status as a world

power. This war may have entered America onto the world stage, but in accordance with the

Monroe Doctrine, it stayed as neutral as it could of European wars, so long as they stayed clear

of the America’s. The first introduction of America as a truly world power was the end of World

War One. This was the United States’ first test as a global superpower. The treaty that came from

that war involved Britain and France imposing on the ruined German Reich some of the harshest

measures in history. And to say the least, it failed, leading to the worst single conflict in all

human history.

The first failure of America was Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. It was not the

contents of the proposal itself that was inadequate, it was the opposite; the problem stemmed

from the lack of the U.S.’s, implementation of the proposal. Instead, America let the diplomats of

Great Britain and France, take precedence in the peace conferences. Despite being the foremost

power at the conference, America let the reprisals asked for by the Allies to go through, bringing

on the tragedy of the Second World War (Wilson).

The second failure was the result of the peace conference itself: the Treaty of Versaille.

The British and French wanted a peace that would hurt. A punitive and humiliating peace to set

Germany so far back that it would never challenge the empires of Britain and France again. The

peace took away all of Germany’s colonies, ten percent of its mainland, sixteen percent of its

coal industries and half of its iron and steel industry. Its army was limited to a laughable one

hundred thousand men and forbidden from creating an air force, tanks, battleships or submarines,
and the Rhineland was demilitarised. The worst measure was the reparation payments that were

to be made out to Britain and France which were impossible to make and were there for the sole

reason to humiliate an already broken nation (Treaty). With the country suffering from massive

loss of industry, jobs, and manpower, along with it being divided by the new Polish state, the

future for Germany looked bleak. And to top it all off, the German Reich was blamed for being

the catalyst for the seminal tragedy that was World War One (Explain).

The final issue was the constitution of the Weimar Republic itself. Most of the

constitution was very progressive and liberal, more so than the nations that wrote it. The first

issue was proportional representation, in which people voted for parties, not representatives.

Those parties were then given seats in the Reichstag proportional to the votes they received. This

resulted in a multitude of parties, each one is so small that by itself it could not pass any laws, all

leading to a stunted legislative body. The final issue was Article 48 of the constitution. It

proclaimed that a president, in the event of an emergency, did not need the approval of the

Reichstag to issue decrees. It did not, however, define what an emergency constituted and thus

allowed any dictator to grasp the reins of power easily. And the dictator who did this was Adolf

Hitler, who ran on a ticket of righting the wrongs of the Treaty of Versaille and to weed out

scapegoats. In this case being Communists, political dissidents, homosexuals, Catholics,

Gypsies, and of course the Jewish people. This led to perhaps the worst genocide in human

history: The Holocaust (GCSE).

World War Two came and went and along with it came the total devastation of Europe,

but the United States had learned from its failure from the first World War. The East was in the

hands of the Soviet Union and Communism was spreading. The Russian military dwarfed the

rest of the Allies and Western Europe could not hope to possibly stand up to the Russian
juggernaut. The U.S. needed to act quick, and so it enacted the Marshall Plan. Over a period of

three years, the United States gave thirteen billion dollars to countries all over the world,

although mostly Europe. Allied nations received the most, with Axis powers and neutral

countries (aside from West Germany) receiving the least. America was to remake Europe’s

economies in its own capitalistic and federalist image. Thus ensuring that America would not

backslide into another depression like after the previous World War. Despite what America’s

motives may have been, the results were indisputable. With economic relief, came a relief from

the threat of Communism that hung over Europe like a guillotine. In the words of George C.

Marshall, it restored “the confidence of the European people in the economic future of their own

countries and of Europe as a whole.” But, what really made the Marshall Plan a success more

than anything else, was its generous, not punitive nature. It did not seek to stunt any European

nation; instead, it turned the greatest enemies of America into some of the U.S.’s strongest

alliances to date, such as Japan. Despite attacking us unprovoked, Japan is now one of America’s

greatest allies against an increasingly hostile China. Perhaps if the U.S. had enforced its demands

in World War One, and not listened to Great Britain and France, America could have avoided the

second war altogether (Marshall).

The United States was not entirely merciful, however. While the German people

themselves would not be punished, the masterminds behind the war and The Final Solution

would be brought to justice. Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels were not tried

due to their preemptive suicides. Nonetheless, twenty-four of Hitler’s top men were found guilty

of war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. This was the first international

court dealing with war crimes in human history, involving Great Britain, France, The United

States, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This set a precedent of an international stand
against future war crimes, and America’s non tolerance against any aggression on the world

scale, leading to its now role of policeman of the world. Nations like the U.S. and organizations

like the United Nations effectiveness in dealing with genocides and massacres that occur today

are hotly debated topics, with no clear answer (Nuremberg).

In modern times, the United States of America has fully embraced its role as policeman

of the world. America learned that allowing punitive and vengeful treatises will only cause

further conflict in the future. A fair and agreeable compromise must be made in order to ensure a

stop to future aggression. Once a conflict is over, the United States must help to rebuild that

nation, not only physically but also constitutionally so that a dictator can not rise only to

scapegoat a minority into genocide. By following these steps America have and will turn its

bitterest enemies into its greatest allies, creating a better future for all. It seems, though, that with

the longest war in America still raging and the Middle East a bigger mess than ever before, that

the U.S. have forgotten the lessons America have learned from the first world war. No amount of

troop surges or drones strikes seem to make the situation better. It’s time the United States

returned to the old ways of diplomacy and building up nation, rather than tearing them down.

Works Cited

“Explain How the Treaty of Versailles Created Many Problems for Germany in the
Period 1919-1923? - GCSE History - Marked by Teachers.com.” Marked by Teachers,
www.markedbyteachers.com/gcse/history/explain-how-the-treaty-of-versailles-created-
many-problems-for-germany-in-the-period-1919-1923.html.
“GCSE Bitesize - Weimar - Strengths and Weaknesses.” BBC, BBC,
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“Marshall Plan.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009,
www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/marshall-plan.
“Nuremberg Trials.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2010,
www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/nuremberg-trials.
“The Treaty of Versailles.” NationalArchives, National Archives,
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/greatwar/g5/cs2/background.htm.
Wilson, Woodrow. “President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points.” Avalon Project -
President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points,
avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/wilson14.asp.