Different groups of people often come into conflict when a problem cannot be solved, when values collide, or when there is ambiguity about ownership of land and resources. Diplomacy, the art of maintaining peaceful relations without the use of force, can help turn conflicts into collaboration. Share these resources with your students to investigate different conflicts around the world and cases where different communities are working together successfully. In January 1919, two months after the end of the fighting of the First World War, a conference was convened at Versailles, the former country residence of the French monarchy outside Paris, to elaborate the terms of a peace treaty aimed at officially ending the conflict. Although representatives of almost . Keynes was only a prominent critic of the Treaty of Versailles. French military leader Ferdinand Foch refused to attend the signing ceremony, believing that the treaty did not do enough to protect itself against a future German threat, while the US Congress could not ratify the treaty and then concluded a separate peace with Germany; the United States would never join the League of Nations. that relate to public order, government, administration or elective office. Article 1 obliged the Austrian government to grant the American government all the rights and privileges enjoyed by the other Allied powers that ratified the Treaty of Saint-Germain Bulgaria signed the Treaty of Neuilly a few months later and lost territory to the new Yugoslavia and all access to the Aegean Sea. Hungary, which is an independent state after its separation from Austria less than a month before the armistice, lost two-thirds of its former territory and 58% of its population in the Treaty of Trianon, signed on June 4, 1920. Between 1950 and 1953, strained relations during the Cold War and the existence of a hot war in Korea also contributed to the paralysis of talks on the Austrian situation.

Then, after the death of former Prime Minister Joseph Stalin in 1953, his successors in the Soviet Union launched a “peace offensive" in an attempt to ease international tensions. Although there have been some concrete indications of the new policy, such as the easing of controls in East Berlin and the newly discovered willingness of the Chinese to discuss the exchange of prisoners of war during the Korean War after the visit of Chinese leaders to Moscow, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower said he would only accept a summit with the Soviet Union if there were several clear signs that: that Soviet actions would match their peace rhetoric. One of the examples he mentioned was the completion of the Austrian State Treaty. Even before the resumption of treaty negotiations, there were signs that Soviet policy towards Austria was liberalizing, as it eased restrictions on the press and travel to and from its sector, and also sought to establish formal diplomatic relations with the Austrian government. The Treaty of St. Petersburg Germain officially dissolved the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, although it was an “agreement reached" at the time the treaty was signed. The situation in Austria was unique in post-war Europe.

In 1938, it had been the only nation to have been annexed in its entirety by Nazi Germany, a fact that, during the war, repeatedly raised questions about the extent to which the country was a victim of Nazi aggression or whether it had been a collaborator. At the Potsdam Conference in 1945, the Allies agreed to occupy Austria together in the post-war period and to divide the country and its capital Vienna into four zones, as they had planned with Germany and Berlin. The Soviets also demanded reparations from Austria, a request abandoned due to the country`s non-war status, but the United States agreed that the Soviet Union would be entitled to German assets in the Soviet occupation zone. Unlike Germany, the Austrian government continued to exist and govern in the post-war period, although the four powers could veto any new legislation if they were unanimous. This arrangement was maintained until the withdrawal of the occupying powers after the conclusion of the Austrian State Treaty. Austria, like the other defeated Central Powers, had to pay for war damage – reparations. After concluding peace agreements with Germany, the Allies turned their attention to the remaining former Central Powers. The Treaty of Saint-Germain, signed on 10 September. Signed in September 1919, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy officially dissolved and forced the new Republic of Austria to accept its independence from more than 60% of its former territory. This territory included the new nations of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, as well as part of Poland.

The treaty was supplemented by a treaty signed in Washington on November 26, 1924, which provided for the creation of a joint U.S.-Austro-Hungarian commission to decide on the amount of reparations to be paid to the United States by the Austrian and Hungarian governments. [2] In parallel with these land punishments, Austria was forbidden to unite politically or economically with Germany unless the League of Nations consented to it. This is the moment of the resolution of the peace conference, during which the leaders of the Allied leaders are able to demonstrate their determination and unity in the signing of the treaty, as well as their political power. The backdrop is the dazzling Hall of Mirrors of Versailles, built by Louis XIV, with much effort to demonstrate his political power. Above their heads is the legend “The King Governs by Himself," a sharp reference to the endless quarrels of the conference when Germany claimed that it could not comply with the sanctions imposed and that the Allies were unable to agree on a compromise. In William Orpen`s vision, it is the extravagance of architecture that stages the stage and reduces politicians to a footnote. Their supposedly ordered world is distorted and broken by the mirrors behind them. Some historians believe that the Treaty of Versailles, in the words of british economist John Maynard Keynes, was “one of the most serious acts of political recklessness for which our statesmen have ever been responsible." They say contributed to germany`s economic and political instability, which allowed the formation of the National Socialists (Nazis) a year later.

The collapse of the “Grand Alliance" during the war and the advent of the Cold War meant that the Austrian occupation lasted much longer than expected. Negotiations on Austria`s final status began in 1947, when half of the fifty-nine proposed articles agreed on a treaty. At the first meeting, the Foreign Ministers agreed to qualify the negotiated agreement as an Austrian State Treaty and not an Austrian Peace Treaty, in order to recognise that Austria`s participation in the war was not voluntary and that the Treaty was therefore not intended to end a war, but to restore an independent state. The main point of contention during the 1947 negotiations was the question of German assets: how they were defined and how much compensation the Soviet Union was allowed to receive. The Soviet occupation forces had taken control of the factories, railways, oil and shipping companies, all of which had been under Nazi control at some point, and had offered to sell them to the troubled Austrian provisional government only at exorbitant prices. As a solution to this situation, the France proposed a revenue-sharing plan in which some profits from industries formerly owned by Germany would be resold to the Austrians and some would operate independently, with the Austrian state and the occupying powers sharing their revenues, but the Soviet Union then rejected the treaty and claimed some Austrian territories on behalf of the government of Yugoslavia. The parties finally reached an agreement in 1949 in which the West would offer economic concessions to the Soviet Union in exchange for Soviet renunciation of Yugoslav claims. While an agreement was imminent, the Soviet Union again decided not to sign; In fact, at several points in the process, the Soviet Union delayed the completion of the treaty while considering the benefits it hoped to derive from the agreement. In the years following the Treaty of Versailles, many ordinary Germans believed they had been betrayed by the “November criminals," the leaders who signed the treaty and formed the post-war government. Far-right political forces – particularly the National Socialist Workers` Party or the Nazis – would gain support in the 1920s and 30s by promising to reverse the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles. With the onset of the Great Depression after 1929, economic turmoil destabilized the already vulnerable Weimar government and set the stage for the fateful rise of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to power in 1933.

On June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed at the Palace of Versailles near Paris, in France. Since the question of German ownership was as good as settled in the last draft treaties, the issue that delayed the negotiations at this stage was the question of Austrian neutrality. .