The complex agreements, which were the fruit of complex negotiations, included not only the famous Treaty of Versailles, but the less famous yet equally important Treaty of Saint-Germain, Treaty of Trianon, and Treaty of Sevres.
Far from a calm equilibrium these treaties left the world with simmering tensions which arose largely from the financing of war debt and the payment of reparations. To keep the peace, a number of skilled diplomats worked constantly during the postwar years to fine-tune and adjust various agreements between nations.
Among those diplomats were those officially appointed to international relations, like Frank Kellogg, and those whose roles were only tangentially connected to diplomacy, like Andrew Mellon — and then there were those who played major parts without being any part of the government: private-sector individuals like J.P. Morgan, Jr., who worked to stabilize the various European economies which were staggering under the burden of reparations and war debt repayments.
Two of these diplomats were singled out for recognition by the Nobel Peace Prize: Gustav Stresemann and Charles Dawes, as historian Erich Eyck writes:
Stresemanns internationales Ansehen als eines tatkräftigen Mitarbeiters am Werk des Friedens fand eine eindrucksvolle Bestätigung als das Nobel-Komitee des norwegischen Storthing am 10. Dezember 1926 beschloß, den Friedenspreis für 1926 den Außenministern Frankreichs und des Deutschen Reichs, Aristide Briand und Gustav Stresemann zuzusprechen, während der Friedenspreis für 1924 gleichzeitig Austen Chamberlain und General Dawes zuerkannt wurde.
Gustav Stresemann received the Nobel Peace Prize primarily for the Locarno Treaties, a series of agreements which finalized the borders among postwar European nations and normalized relationships between them.
Charles Dawes earned the Nobel Prize for the “Dawes Plan” which in essence refinanced the reparations which Germany was supposed to pay to France, making those reparations at least somewhat realistic, in contrast to the impossible demands made by the Treaty of Versailles and the London Schedule of Payments.
The original totals in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and the 1921 London Schedule of Payments were so abusive that they were likely to provoke war, as historian Sally Marks writes:
The reparations totals discussed at the peace conference were astronomic, ranging to sixteen times the amount finally set. The British experts, Lords Sumner and Cunliffe, were so unrealistic that they were nicknamed “the heavenly twins.”
Men like Charles Dawes and Gustav Stresemann created more realistic and practical relations among the nations, and preserved peace for another decade or more, earning thereby the Nobel Peace Prize.