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Introduction: A fight for love and glory -- We'll always have Paris: the Nazis march in -- A hill of beans in this crazy world: America's new insecurity -- No good at being noble: the Vichy quandary -- We mustn't underestimate American blundering: Britain's imperial insecurity -- They're asleep in New York: the Allies look for answers -- A beautiful friendship? The invasion of French North Africa -- Round up the usual suspects: assassination in Algiers -- Conclusion: As time goes by.

Signed in 1919 between Germany and the Allied Powers, the Treaty of Versailles formally ended World War I. Controversial from the very beginning, the treaty still shapes the destinies of societies and states worldwide. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George said It is all a great pity. We shall have to do the same thing all over again in twenty-five years at three times the cost, and French Marshal Ferdinand Foch declared that "This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years." At the time, observers read the treaty through competing lenses of peacemaking after the First World War, the future of colonialism, and the emerging threat of Bolshevism. A century after its signing, we can gain new perspectives on the treaty and its impacts by looking at how those histories evolved through the remainder of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The author of several award-winning books, Michael Neiberg provides a clear and authoritative account of the Treaty of Versailles, explaining the enormous challenges of trying to put the world back together after the global destruction of the First World War. He shows how the treaty affected not only Europe but also the rest of the world. In China, the Allied decision to give the Shantung Peninsula to Japan led to a wave of protests known today as the May Fourth movement, which is seen as a foundational moment in the modern history of China. Global disillusionment with the treaty led to mass transnational movements that helped to set the foundations for Cold War debates about anti-colonialism. American rejection of the treaty also served as a mirror and a prism for American fears and ambiguities about its own international role. The treaty is, therefore, much more than its role in ending the First World War."--

Jesus Christ and General Jackson -- The most terrible responsibility any man ever faced -- May days -- Our troubles might not be over yet -- A vast undertaking: coming to Potsdam -- What a scene of destruction -- In seventeen days you can decide anything -- I dreamed that my life was over -- Dismemberment as a permanent fate?: Solving the problem of Germany -- The bastard of Versailles -- Dr. Groves' son and the fate of East Asia -- Conclusion

"Neiberg marshals letters, diaries, and memoirs of ordinary citizens across Europe to show that the onset of war was experienced as a sudden, unexpected event. As they watched a minor diplomatic crisis erupt into a continental bloodbath, they expressed shock, revulsion, and fear. But when bargains between belligerent governments began to crumble under the weight of conflict, public disillusionment soon followed. Yet it was only after the fighting acquired its own horrible momentum that national hatreds emerged under the pressure of mutually escalating threats, wartime atrocities, and intense government propaganda"--Jacket

This book examines the Reserve Officers Training Corps program as a distinctively American expression of the social, cultural, and political meanings of military service. Since 1950, ROTC has produced nearly two out of three American active duty officers, yet there has been no comprehensive scholarly look at civilian officer education programs in nearly forty years. While most modern military systems educate and train junior officers at insular academies like West Point, only the United States has relied heavily on the active cooperation of its civilian colleges. Michael Neiberg argues that the creation of officer education programs on civilian campuses emanates from a traditional American belief (which he traces to the colonial period) in the active participation of civilians in military affairs. Although this ideology changed shape through the twentieth century, it never disappeared. During the Cold War military buildup, ROTC came to fill two roles: it provided the military with large numbers of well-educated officers, and it provided the nation with a military comprised of citizen-soldiers. Even during the Vietnam era, officers, university administrators, and most students understood ROTC's dual role. The Vietnam War thus led to reform, not abandonment, of ROTC. Mining diverse sources, including military and university archives, Making Citizen-Soldiers provides an in-depth look at an important, but often overlooked, connection between the civilian and military spheres