When reparations payments first came due in 1921, the German economy was in bad shape and the government resisted payment, while the German right opposed paying them at all.

Germany receives the Treaty of Versailles and is given the choice of accepting the treaty as it stands, or restarting the war.

Imposing an indemnity on the defeated enemy after a war was a longstanding practice. At the Paris Peace Conference, reparations were supposed to be something more just and civilized: a charge for losses to civilians during the German occupation of Belgium and France.

The new democratic German government believed they could get a generous peace deal from the Allies. They were wrong.

After the abdication/removal of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany was declared a republic. But what kind of republic?

With the bloodshed seemingly unending, the Lloyd George government and the Irish Republic strike an agreement.

The conflict in Ireland grows more bitter, culminating in 1920's Bloody Sunday.

On January 21, 1919, the first Dáil Éireann met in Dublin and declared itself the parliament of an Irish Republic. That same day, IRA fighters in County Tipperary stole 168 pounds of gelignite, killing the two police officers who were guarding it.

As Woodrow Wilson recovered from his stroke, the effort to gain Senate approval for the Treaty of Versailles floundered, and the US government was without a leader.

As hard as it was to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles, Woodrow Wilson returned home to an even greater challenge: winning Senate approval of the treaty.