Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War

Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (2001) is a historical narrative about the events of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. It was written by the Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan with a foreword by the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke. The book has also been published under the titles Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World and Peacemakers: Six Months That Changed the World. Peacemakers describes the six months of negotiations that took place in Paris, France, following World War I. The book focuses on the "Big Three", who are photographed together on its cover (left to right): Prime Minister David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France, and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States. The author argues that the conditions imposed on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles did not lead to the rise of Adolf Hitler and asks whether the Great War was "an unmitigated catastrophe in a sea of mud", or instead was "about something". She concludes, "It is condescending and wrong to think they were hoodwinked". During the later part of the war, the British prime minister was David Lloyd George, the author's great-grandfather.