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Many of the millions were prepared for desperate measures.

The Paris Peace Conference was concerned with Germany, just as the Congress of Vienna was concerned with France. The determination to make Germany pay for the damages of the war was paralleled by a determination to keep Germany weak in the future. Some French leaders wanted to separate the German Reich from the Rhineland. The Rhineland was a heavily Catholic area that was fully incorporated into the French state during the Napoleonic period. The idea of separation from Germany was supported by some industrialists who were worried that the Social Democrats in Berlin would favor working-class interests. Others hoped that the peace settlement would be more favorable for the Rhineland because of the separation from Protestant-Prussian Germany. A majority of the population in the area were against the idea of a separate Catholic-German nation.

The final compromise was to make the Rhineland a demilitarized zone, including all German territory west of the Rhine as well as a fifty kilometer stretch along the river's eastern bank. Allied forces were to remain in German territory west of the Rhine for fifteen years, after which German military installations were forbidden. The Versailles Treaty included a number of measures to keep Germany weak. The country's army was to be limited to 100,000, enough to maintain internal order but not to stage aggressive war. The naval fleet was to be drastically reduced, and the country was forbidden to build any of the already built weapons.

The issue of war guilt and its link to the charge of unique war guilt became the most controversial of the measures. There were many precedents for the idea that Germany should pay for war damages. In 1871, France was obliged to pay compensation, and it did so ahead of schedule. The damages done in World War I were much higher than those done in the Franco-Prussian War. It took quite some time to come up with a final figure, but at 132 billion gold marks, it was roughly twice Germany's national wealth in 1914. Yearly payments were in the distant future.

Had Germans accepted their obligations in the spirit of the French after 1871, the compensation could have been paid. The Germans didn't see things that way since they didn't accept unique guilt for starting the war. It was impractical to require one country to pay for all damages, as Germany would not be weakened and expected to be productive. In the 1920s, there would be on-going conflicts, which were never paid at the rate the French had intended.

The Americans did not participate in the deliberations over the compensation, but they did not suffer any damage to their homeland, and their losses at the front were relatively small.

Wilson hoped that the League of Nations would be able to fix the flaws of the peace settlement. It was the League that brought up the most doubts as to its feasibility, even though it was the grandest vision of those included in his Fourteen Points. Europe's nations were too committed to their absolute sovereignty and suspicious of one another to be able to entertain seriously an international organization with enough power to prevent war. The idea of international reconciliation was weak compared to the determination to punish Germany.

They were more representative of the American population than Wilson was. The Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations were not approved by the Senate.

Wilson's political inflexibility, in particular his unwillingness to com promise with Senate leaders, played a role in the eventual negative vote, but it must be questioned whether Americans in 1919 and 1920 were ready to take up the heavy burdens of world leadership.

The Republican presidencies of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge created the hard-core isolation of the United States in 1919.

American traditions were reflected in these trends. It would have taken more than the efforts of one man, even one more flexible and knowledgeable than Wilson, to reverse the United States' aversion to getting permanently immersed in Europe's troubles. In Latin America, where the United States played a more active role before 1945, it was not in the direction of supporting Wilsonian principles but rather in accommodating dictatorships. The United States was not powerful enough to reverse antidemocratic political traditions in other countries.

According to what was perceived as feasible, it could only give encouragement to one group.