Guy Goff World War 1 Analysis

The man who wrote the letter you are about to read will not show up in your textbooks. His name was Guy Goff and this was one of many letters he wrote to his wife during World War 1, this one specifically was written while he was stationed in France during the Paris Peace Conference to end World War 1. He wasn’t a politician and he wasn’t a diplomat, he was an assistant to those involved in the peace talks and got a front row seat to all of the political drama. Goff gives historians a fascinating outside perspective of the machinations that occurred at the negotiations that would the Great War.
World War One was a war of conflicting ideas. Europe in 1914 was on the precipice of change. Industrialization led rapid economic expansion, which led …show more content…
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to Austria-Hungry, went to Sarajevo, Bosnia to inspect military troops in on June 28, 1914. That same day in 1389 Serbia was defeated by the Turks, so the day was very important to the Serbian people. Nationalists saw this demonstration of Austrian power coinciding with another defeat at the hands of a large empire insulting. After a botched bombing an assassin was able to shoot the Archduke and his wife that evening. By July 28th Austria-Hungry declared war on Serbia. Germany allied itself with Austria-Hungry and Russia, Belgium, France, and Great Britain sided Serbia. Within a week of July 28th Europe was at war …show more content…
It was a harbor city in the Saarland region of Poland that was taken from Germany following the war and put under the rule of the League of Nations. The city was rich in coal and so afterwards the League had access to that wealth and Germany didn’t, which was a major economic hit considering the League of Nations was already demanding that Germany pay five billion dollars in reparations. It was worsened further on in 1921 when the Inter-Allied Commission found that the war cost came out to an additional 32 billion dollars, which was also put on Germany