• the events immediately prior to the Treaty and the aspirations of each of the countries and leaders involved
• the question of whether Germany would sign, and the euphoria of the feeling of secure peace once it did
• the reaction to the Treaty in Germany, and the prospects for peace in the future.

It was the Treaty, not the Armistice of November 1918, that officially ended the war. For the Allied countries there was always the chance that hostilities would recommence. Germans may have felt that it had failed to win the war, but not that it had lost it. They expected a negotiated peace with honour. The competing views of Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau and the British public about how the Treaty should look have to be seen against this background.

Understanding the reactions to the treaty is fundamental to understanding the rise of Nazism and the origins of the Second World War. The reactions in both Britain and Germany have to be seen in context. The British reaction is a mixture of triumph, celebration, relief and vindictiveness. The German reaction was quite different; most Germans had been misled about the scale of the military defeat facing them in 1918. The programme ends with the eerily prophetic Daily Herald cartoon about future 'cannon fodder'.