Stay ConnectedWDF examines how wars broke out, how they were concluded, and their consequences. Expect juicy diplomacy, sneaky intrigue, fascinating characters, and incredible drama. By Dr Zack Twamley, qualified history nerd.
Current Series: The July Crisis
Patreon Series: The Age of Bismarck
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Welcome delegates, to the first proper episode of the Delegation Game! Here we see everyone in the few hours before the plenary conference opened, and the Paris Peace Conference as we know it began. There was much to do, there was scheming aplenty and a great deal of opportunistic handshaking going on, as the delegations and the lonely delegates alike scoped out Hotel Twamley which would host them for the next six months.
I am so incredibly excited and proud to present this to you guys - an idea which began around the time of the Armistice in November has ballooned in size and scope, to the point that I can now count 33 delegates, a number which is only set to increase as we go on. For those that have signed up and are playing the game, thanks so much for making this idea of mine a reality. For those that have yet to sign up, I hope this episode will indicate what's in store for you - absolutely every person that is mention here is played by a real person, and the negotiations continue in the Facebook group and the innumerable chat groups which await your presence!
There is far too much going on here to list in detail, but if you want to learn more about what's going on, who is who and where their goals might lead, make sure and access the section of our website where we deal exclusively with the Delegation Game. For more information please don't hesitate to contact me through the usual channels!
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The Delegation Game is possible because of your support and interest - make sure to spread the word, engage with the debate, and look at the different ways you can help this project succeed!
->Become a delegate and play the Delegation Game for just $6 a month!
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OTD IN HISTORY - 18TH JANUARY 1919 - THE PEACE CONFERENCE OPENS!
We finally made it, to the point of a new beginning for the world, in the war torn locations where so many foreign faces were travelling, and upon which so much hope had been places. There was a lot riding on the Paris Peace Conference, and those present on its very first plenary session, attended by all delegates then available in Paris, and a gigantic press corps, could not hide their excitement or positivity.
It seemed as though anything was possible, with the world assembled here, to make a better peace for a better world. How could any power present deny the importance of peace? How could any power deny the importance of new institutions to safeguard the peace of the world like the League of Nations? Surely, only the wicked, the cynical, the deceitful, would dare ruin this goal of all civilised nations? Surely cooperation would be easily gained for the grandest of Woodrow Wilson's plans? Surely the world would not be let down by selfishness or fail to realise its potential?
But the pragmatists knew better. They knew better because they had seen the true extent of the problems, some impossibly complex, others straightforward but no less intractable. Even those that had attended the previous week's meetings knew that arriving at consensus was not going to be as easy as they may have initially expected. But they were here, and they were eager to forge a lasting peace. The will and the intelligence was present, and the moment of truth had arrived, to put these qualities to their ultimate test...
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The Versailles Anniversary Project is possible because of your support and interest - make sure to spread the word, engage with the debate, and look at the different ways you can help this project succeed!
->Visit the homeland for this new project!
->Become a delegate and play the Delegation Game for just $6 a month!
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I am SO EXCITED to bring you all this episode. This is exactly what this project is all about - a comprehensive examination of primary sources, left to us by those that were in place and charged with TAKING charge a century ago. Here we cover the period of 13-17 January 1919, using the minutes of the Paris Peace Conference, provided by the US Foreign Relations papers series as our guide. I am super keen to hear what you all thought, but read on if you want to know more about this very chunky episode before you get started...
By 15th January 1919, everyone of importance had arrived, but there was much work to be done before this world summit could open. In #23, we examine this body of work which preceded the official opening of the Paris Peace Conference. Join us as we drift between the major characters, assessing the major concerns of each, and the ways in which their aims created controversy and friction with their counterparts. It was not an easy task to make everyone feel on the same page, and the list of issues which each day threw up are too numerous to go into sufficient detail here. Suffice to say, in this episode, a whole range of problems come under our microscope, at the centre of them was Germany.
Germany was the defeated power, yet she was not conquered. She was beaten, yet she could not be aggressively punished. She had been the enemy, yet the allies knew they would have to provide food for her people, otherwise a more sinister force would overthrow the fledgling German democracy before it had even left the cradle. This force was Bolshevism, moving like a torrent from the east, and the conflict reigned between those that feared pushing Germans too hard would occasion their succumbing to Bolshevism, and those that reasoned, whatever happened, the Germans had to be made to pay. The tension between these two viewpoints grew only larger as the difference in opinion became greater, and this all before the Conference had officially opened.
But, then again, what was this Conference? Was it a preliminary, inter-allied gathering, designed to formulate the main terms of the peace treaty, which would then be left in the hands of minor diplomats to hammer out? Other questions abounded - what form of censorship should be used, did they need another committee? What would the official language of the Conference be? French, or English, or French and English? Why not Italian and Japanese then as well? How large should each of the smaller power's delegations be, and did the dominions have to have delegates since Britain could speak for them? Could Britain actually speak for them, or was the Empire, now the Commonwealth, past that point of deference to the mother country?
The week preceding the official opening of the Conference, in short, threw up just as many questions, if not more, than answers. But one thing which was certain was that this Conference would remain in place in Paris, near the Palace of Versailles where the Supreme War Council had met in months past. Furthermore, a Supreme Council or Council of Ten would sit, composed of the premier and Foreign Minister of each of the five major powers (USA, UK, France, Italy and Japan) and this group would make executive decisions, guided by the appointed President of the Council, Georges Clemenceau. Administration and organisation were surely the intended goals of the week before the 18th January, but instead, this was for many the week when the scales began to fall from their eyes, and they began to come to terms with the sheer size of the challenge which loomed before them...
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The Versailles Anniversary Project is possible because of your support and interest - make sure to spread the word, engage with the debate, and look at the different ways you can help this project succeed!
->Visit the homeland for this... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
ON_THIS_DAY_IN_HISTORY - 12th January 1919 - David Lloyd George arrives in Paris for the preliminary peace talks.
Before the Paris Peace Conference opened, it was important for all sides to meet and talk together. As all three men spoke English well, Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George could be expected to do the bulk of the negotiating personally. However, the initial set up of the Conference did not allow this personal arrangement, so the three men took advantage of that precious week before the conference officially opened, during the preliminaries, to build relationships, wrest concessions and have a ramble around the French capital.
The arrival of the British PM on 12 January kicked the preliminaries into high gear, and from the beginning, it became clear that everyone had travelled to Paris with a degree of optimism, but also with their own aims and ambitions. The Italians, as well, could not be ignored, and their support and assent for certain agreements was clearly going to be necessary if the wheels were to be greased and everything moved along. Give and take would have to be the motto of the day, if any progress was to be made...
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The Versailles Anniversary Project is possible because of your support and interest - make sure to spread the word, engage with the debate, and look at the different ways you can help this project succeed!
->Visit the homeland for this new project!
->Become a delegate and play the Delegation Game for just $6 a month!
->Support the podcast financially and access ad free episodes with transcripts from just $2 a month!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
With the launch of the Delegation Game only a week away (on 18th Jan 2019) I thought it'd be beneficial to set out some detail about this fantastic explosion of nerdiness, and what you need to do in order to take part. We look at some tools which the game will avail of, investigate what kind of impact your scheming can have on the proceedings, outline the structure of each episode going forward, and close the episode with some FAQ's, so that we're all on the same page.
The Delegation Game is a seriously exciting effort by yours truly to engage more completely with the source material and era which the Versailles situation provides. I've already been blown away by the interest and enthusiasm shown, but if you'd like to know more, then this episode is for you! We launch in a week, so make sure you take your seat in Paris! Thankssss, and I'll see you all there soon!
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The Delegation Game is possible because of your support and interest - make sure to spread the word, engage with the debate, and look at the different ways you can help this project succeed!
->Become a delegate and play the Delegation Game for just $6 a month!
->Support the podcast financially and access ad free episodes with transcripts from just $2 a month!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
ON_THIS_DAY_IN_HISTORY - 10th January 1919 - the Spartacist Uprising reaches its apex - before it is brutally crushed in Berlin.
Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were the most prolific casualties, but much more was going on beneath the surface than simply the execution of Germany's communist extremists. The establishment of organisations like the Freikorps, and the struggle for order and law in this defeated, depressed country, contain more than enough stories all by themselves.
In this episode, we will conclude our examination of this ill-fated uprising, assessing why it failed, what its aims were, whether it could have succeeded and how its impact was felt across the country and among the allies. Did it make the allies more or less eager to bring Germany to peace, before she succumbed to Bolshevism altogether? Let's find out, as we go back in time...
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The Versailles Anniversary Project is possible because of your support and interest - make sure to spread the word, engage with the debate, and look at the different ways you can help this project succeed!
->Visit the homeland for this new project!
->Become a delegate and play the Delegation Game for just $6 a month!
->Support the podcast financially and access ad free episodes with transcripts from just $2 a month!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Germany was in dire straits by the time revolutionaries began taking over the streets in early 1919. Bolshevism was spreading westwards, but perhaps the most potent ingredient in this spread was the lack of available food, and the endless opportunities this gave rabble rousers to cause anarchy and chaos on an unimaginable scale. Hunger was a more powerful weapon than any political message, and the combination of this desperation for a solution and the despair at the lack of aid - not to mention the continuing blockade - would soon spell disaster.
Initially Germans held it together, but they could only keep the lid on the boil for so long before it all erupted. Here, we examine the background to the infamous Spartacist Uprising which seemed to threaten the end of Germany as the world knew it!
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The Versailles Anniversary Project is possible because of your support and interest - make sure to spread the word, engage with the debate, and look at the different ways you can help this project succeed!
->Visit the homeland for this new project!
->Become a delegate and play the Delegation Game for just $6 a month!
->Support the podcast financially and access ad free episodes with transcripts from just $2 a month!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
OVER_THIS_PERIOD_IN_HISTORY - the first week of January 1919 - Woodrow Wilson begins his tour of Italy!
In Italy, as in France, the citizens of that exhausted country were excited indeed to received the American President, and for six days until his departure on 6th January, Wilson travelled across Italy meeting everyone from the Pope to the King to the Premier. His mission was one of networking and publicity, and it went well, even if the Italians, deep down, did not gel particularly well with Wilson's vision of a new world. The world Wilson imagined, that of cooperation, and end to imperialism and peace, was in contrast to an Italian leadership and people who expected to be rewarded for their entry into the war. In time, the tension would explode, and Italy would get nothing at Wilson's insistence, a bitterness which helped facilitate Mussolini's acsendency. Initially at least, however, the Italian people were Wilson's friends.
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The Versailles Anniversary Project is possible because of your support and interest - make sure to spread the word, engage with the debate, and look at the different ways you can help this project succeed!
->Visit the homeland for this new project!
->Become a delegate and play the Delegation Game for just $6 a month!
->Support the podcast financially and access ad free episodes with transcripts from just $2 a month!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
ON_THIS_DAY_IN_HISTORY - 26th December 1918 - Woodrow Wilson meets David Lloyd George in London!
Hope you're all not TOO full of foodstuffs, because we have an important little bulletin to bring to you! The US President's visit to London in late 1918 was significant for a myriad of reasons - not least of which was the sight of an American President getting a horse and carriage ride through the city's streets! Who would ever have imagined that such displays were possible between former colony and former master?
Now these powers were firm friends, and the relationship between President and PM would only improve as time went on, and the two men realised they had more and more in common, to the detriment of the French premier of course, who quickly became something of an outsider.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you history friends!
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Here we conclude this incredible and early podcast Christmas present, which is 2/3 alternative history and 1/3 a breakdown of whether I believe this makes sense and why I went with what I did. How plausible was it all? You decide. This could be a very fun topic to have a number of debates on, but here we look at the opening phases of the war and what went right/wrong for each side. Irish troubles? Of course they are ever present! I hope you've enjoyed a different path instead of the dire one we got in 1914. Would the world be a better place had Princip missed? That's probably a story for another day, but for now we examine how the Entente came to collapse, and what this meant for the thoroughly victorious allies...
Support and get in touch
->Visit the homeland for this new project!
->Become a delegate and play the Delegation Game for just $6 a month!
->Support the podcast financially and access ad free episodes with transcripts from just $2 a month!
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