Versailles is a massive royal palace complex originally built outside Paris by Louis XIV of France, the Sun King. As the model for a European monarch's palace grounds, it was repeatedly used for diplomatic meetings to end wars, resulting in dozens of "Treaties of Versailles." The most important one, however, was brokered at the end of the Great War, also known as World War I. The peace deal crafted at this conference was criticized as overly punishing to Germany, a defeated power, which partially resulted in another war just two decades later.

"Some were gentlemen who felt strongly, like his lordship himself, that fair play had not been done at Versailles and that it was immoral to go on punishing a nation for a war that was now over. Others, evidently, showed less concern for Germany or her inhabitants, but were of the opinion that the economic chaos of that country, if not halted, might spread with alarming rapidity to the world at large" (Ishiguro 66).