During the early months of 1918 the amalgamation controversy assumed its peak and it became uncertain whether Britain would receive any American help at all. But the ultimate victory for the Western powers was made possible due to their superior cohesion and coordination – something which their enemies could not achieve. So, despite America’s Navy being very weak, its supply of troops to the Western cause was a decisive factor. And their successful integration under British and French command had what made it possible. (Coetzee, 1995)
In 1919, at the end of the Great War, leaders from the coalition of England, France, Italy and the United States decided that they need a treaty to set right the damages caused by Germany and its allies. The treaty would be based on Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Point plan that was proposed in order to bring lasting peace to Europe. The culmination of these discussions and negotiations was the treaty signed by all participant countries in the French city of Versailles. While closing a curtain over the most brutal war till then, the Treaty of Versailles sowed the seeds for a bloodier war two decades later (Barnhart, 2002).
The Treaty of Versailles continues to be regarded to this day by scholars and laymen alike as a highly vindictive and humiliating peace agreement, imposed on a protesting, helpless and a weakened German nation. Assigning complete responsibility for the war on German actions alone is found to be incorrect by historians. Its punitive economic terms coupled with extensive territorial losses, especially in the East, only served to arouse in the German people an enduring bitterness against the Treaty and a fierce sense of nationalism that paved the way for National Socialism (Nazi) and for the outbreak of a second major war within 20 years.
Wilson had mooted and implemented the League of Nations (LoN) after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. He intended the LoN to serve as a neutral arbitraging/peacekeeping organization for the international community. But despite the noble foundations for the League, it would ultimately prove ineffective in preventing the Second World War and became defunct by 1945. (Barnhart, 2002)
References:
Barnhart, M A (June 2002). From Versailles to Pearl Harbor: The Origins of the Second World War in Europe and Asia., The English Historical Review, 117, 472., p.758(2).
Bruce, Robert, A Fraterntiy of Arms: America and France in the Great War, published by University Press of Kansas, 2003
Coetzee, Frans and Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee, eds. Authority, Identity and the Social History of the Great War. Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995.
Kiesling, Eugenia C. “Europe’s Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?.” Parameters 35, no. 2 (2005): 148+.
Stubbs, Kevin D. Race to the Front: The Materiel Foundations of Coalition Strategy in the Great War. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002