Who were the Big Three and how did they affect the Treaty of Versailles?
In this complete lesson, GCSE or A-level students will learn about the various aims of the Big Three and how those aims impacted the Treaty of Versailles.
Students start by identifying British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, American President Woodrow Wilson and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. They work in groups to analyse a source on each member of the Big Three using inference squares. They then regroup and share the information they have learned about each leader and the country he represented.
They watch a video clip to help them better understand how the effects of the First World War on each country led to the differing aims of Britain, the USA and France, including making Germany pay reparations, ensuring self-determination in Europe, limiting German naval power, demilitarising the Rhineland and creating a League of Nations.
An extract from the primary source for David Lloyd George:
You may strip Germany of her colonies, reduce her army to a mere police force and her navy to that of a fifth rate power; all the same in the end if she feels that she has been unjustly treated in the peace of 1919 she will find a means of exerting retribution from her conquerors
