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Finally we can say that the failures of the League of Nations were not due so much to the existance of a totalitarian power, but to the wish of the democratic states to keep the peace with any price. These democratic states made to the expansionist states concessions, sacrifiing for this the territorial integrity and independance of the smaller states. This peace, thus implemented, was a false one and was not of long duration. It was based on the older principles of the balance of the powers and not on the democratic objectives of the League of Nations Pact. This is why it was possible a new conflagration that could not be avoided. In spite of its failures, the League of Nations organisation has still the merit to be a road opener in the field of international cooperations between states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Shadow of Versailles. - The Treaty of Versailles broke with the tenets of successful peace settlements in Europe: it humiliated the defeated, made them economically and morally culpable for all the horrors and destruction of the recent war, and established a regime that was characterized by contradictions while making a new beginning impossible. Above all, the treaty ignored the essential prerequisites for a successful peace: acceptance, amnesty, and forgetting. As a consequence, the Treaty of Versailles - so the thesis presented here - turned out to be the seminal catastrophe of the Weimar Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the lecture given by professor of law Sean D. Murphy at a conference on Non-International Armed Conflicts (NIAC): Developments and Challenges' held at Melbourne Law School on March 17, 2015. Topics discussed include mechanisms for punishing atrocities in Non-International Armed Conflicts, importance of the International Criminal Court for prosecuting such crimes, International Law Commission's Project on Crimes Against Humanity and provision of Treaty of Versailles.

The article discusses lessons from World War II, an allegedly just and necessary war against the personification of evil and forced by an aggressor on unwilling combatants. It argues that the lead-up to World War II suggests a lesson of working for justice if one wants peace, and another lesson that there is no way to peace but that peace is the way. The Versailles treaty is regarded as establishing an unjust international order and being responsible for World War II.