This Sunday, the 3rd of October 2010, will mark the 20th anniversary of German reunification. Also, on this Sunday, 92 years after the guns of the First World War fell silent, at 11:00 am on the 11th day of November 1918, the Great War will officially end. On this Sunday, the Federal Republic of Germany will make its last reparations payment as outlined in the Treaty of Versailles.

Maybe a little stretch to say the war will officially end on Sunday, but a sorry chapter of the 20th century will finally close when Germans celebrate 20 years of reunification, and pay €70 million.

To truly understand the 20th century, one needs to understand the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles. Many geopolitical issues of today were determined in Paris in 1919. The war to end all wars, somehow became the ‘peace’ to start more wars.

A good book on this topic is Peacemakers by Professor Margaret MacMillan. I caught up with Professor MacMillain at Oxford University last year. A brilliant scholar, she and I chatted over tea at St Anthony’s College. She gave an interesting insight into researching and writing Peacemakers and also on some of her other works. She also gave some other anecdotes about the Paris Peace Conference. Finally she encouraged me to peruse postgraduate studies and to consider Oxford.

I will be looking into further studies in Europe. But in the meantime, I will be celebrating the end of the First World War this Sunday with my friends from Europe in a bar on Sydney harbour.

Photo: November 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall from  Der Spiegel.