made to pay for all the sacrifices of the war were not limited to the western Allies. According to Peukert, "public opinion in all the combatant nations was bent on inflicting a punitive peace settlement" (42). Birdsall pointed out that official 1917 German documents showed that a victorious Germany planned to retain Alsace-Lorraine (seized by it from France after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870), annex the adjacent Longwy-Briey ore basin, retain political and economic control over Belgium, appropriate most of France's prewar colonies, and "exact suitable indemnities from the victims to compensate her for the tremendous financial costs" of the war (3). Under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of January 1918, Germany gained dominion over large parts of western Russia, Poland and the Baltic eastern littoral.
Allied war aims toward the Central Powers noticeably hardened between the time of the pre-Armistice Agreement of November 11, 1918 and the deliberations of the Paris Peace Conference (January-June 191
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