The three men who met in Paris for the most consequential summit conference of the twentieth century were very different men: Georges Clemenceau, 77, “The Tiger” who had spent five decades fighting for the ideals of the French Republic; David Lloyd George, who grew up in poverty in rural Wales, had entered the House of Commons at twenty-seven, had stood alone in his opposition to the South African War, and who rose to become prime minister and become the face of Britain’s defiance to the kaiser; and Woodrow Wilson, the lifelong academic who went from president of Princeton University to the president of the United States in the span of two years.

They were, in many ways, much alike: They were three of the most brilliant men of their age. Each had the ability to charm and sway an audience, whether in the House of Commons, the French Chamber of Deputies or in a Princeton classroom. Yet, the document they produced, the Treaty of Versailles, was the “Carthaginian” peace that sowed the seeds of the Second World War. How did these brilliant men—who knew better—let it happen?

For the first time, Robert F. Klueger traces their tumultuous histories until they reach Paris in 1919, Wilson determined to remake international law based upon the ideals of his Fourteen Points, Clemenceau every bit as determined to make France secure against another German invasion, and Lloyd George, leading a coalition government and a people determined to “make Germany pay,” until, at the very last, he tried and failed to reverse what he saw would be a tragic result.