Treaty of Versailles

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The Treaty of Versailles ended World War I between Germany and the Allied nations. On 6 October 1918, Prince Max von Baden, the Reich Chancellor, appealed to President Woodrow Wilson to take steps leading to an armistice based on Wilson's Fourteen Points. The Allies had never endorsed this progressive peace program; they acceded to most of it, however, because in the armistice negotiations Wilson had managed the confiscation or internment of virtually all Germany's machines of war.

At the Paris Peace Conference, the president's priority was the inclusion of the Covenant of the League of Nations as an integral part of the treaty. Despite grave reservations, the British, French, and Italian leaders bowed to the massive public support Wilson's proposal enjoyed throughout Europe. But the peacemakers used their acceptance as a lever to gain concessions from him on other vital issues. For example, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa coveted the captured colonies of (respectively) New Guinea, Samoa, and German Southwest Africa. These claims defied the idea of “mandates,” the League's arrangement for guiding incipient states along the path to self‐government. In this, as in other quarrels, Wilson found himself in a minority of one. The territories were designated as mandatories but were ultimately assigned on the basis of military occupation.

At another juncture, Georges Clemenceau, implying that he might withdraw his endorsement of the League, demanded for France the coal‐rich Saar basin and military occupation of the Rhineland. Vittorio Orlando claimed for Italy the Yugoslav port city of Fiume and left when Wilson refused to indulge him. Japan, too, threatened to bolt as it insisted on retaining economic control over Shantung. Wilson was able to moderate some of these demands, albeit in less than satisfactory compromises. From Japan, he wrung a pledge (honored in 1922) to restore Chinese sovereignty in Shantung through mediation by the League. In the case of France, he and Clemenceau settled on a fifteen‐year occupation of the Rhineland. The crisis over Fiume, alas, was never resolved at Paris.

The acrimony came to a head when British prime minister David Lloyd George added military pensions to the already astronomical reparations bill that France had presented against Germany. On the verge of physical collapse, Wilson at last capitulated. Then came Article 231—a declaration saddling Germany with the moral responsibility for allegedly having started the war. The reparations section and the “war‐guilt” clause would spark unending controversy. In all of this, Wilson anticipated that, once wartime passions had cooled, the League could redress the injustices.

Because he had so many difficulties in keeping faith with the spirit of the Fourteen Points, and because (largely for other reasons) the Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, Wilson, in his own time and in history, would bear the main burden for its shortcomings. Yet many scholars today contend that the territorial provisions were not nearly as bad as disillusioned contemporaries and revisionist historians believed them to be; and that, without the president's intermittent heroic exertions, some of the settlement's 440 conditions would have been far more severe. Nevertheless, this remains the most controversial peace treaty of the twentieth century.

[See also World War I.]

Bibliography

• Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace, 1944.
• Arno J. Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of the Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918–1919, 1967.
• Arthur Walworth, Wilson and His Peacemakers, 1986.
• Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman, and Elizabeth Glaser, eds., The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years, 1998

A peace treaty signed by Germany and the Allies on June 28, 1919 at the end of World War I. Negotiated at the Paris Peace Conference, it approved most of the proposals in President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and included the Covenant of the League of Nations, Wilson's fourteenth point. It altered boundaries of several European nations and forced Germany to pay financial reparations, undergo disarmament, and relinquish its colonies. The U.S. Senate opposed the treaty, instead signing the Treaty of Berlin with Germany in August 1921.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Signed on 28 June 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference, seven months after the armistice ending the First World War, the treaty is seen as marking the end of the old order of Europe. It ascribed ‘war guilt’ to Germany, and imposed upon them huge reparations payments, territorial and colonial losses, and restrictions on military power. The treaty also comprised the Covenant of the League of Nations, an international organization established to promote collective security, and clauses ratifying the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

— Stewart Wood

Versailles, treaty of, 1919. The peace treaty between Germany and the victorious allies at the end of the First World War. It was signed on 28 June 1919 in the hall of mirrors of the palace of Versailles, where the German empire had been proclaimed in 1871. Germany had to surrender Alsace and Lorraine to France and considerable territory to the reconstituted Poland. She was not to be allowed to rearm. The Germans particularly resented the fact that they had to accept liability for all war damage and pay ‘reparations’ to the allies. The treaty also established the new League of Nations.

Versailles, Treaty of, (1) effected an alliance between Austria, France, and Russia in 1756 (see Diplomatische Revolution). It was elaborated in the Second Treaty of Versailles in 1757.(2) The document (Versailler Vertrag) of the Peace Conference held at Versailles from 18 January to 28 June 1919 (see Weltkriege, I). The treaty is usually described even by moderate German opinion as the Versailler Diktat, since the defeated were not admitted to the discussions. The text was handed to the German delegation on 7 May. After the resignation of one government in Germany and bitter debates in the Reichstag the German delegation signed the treaty on 28 June 1919.The German text was a document of 229 pages, divided into fifteen parts and 440 Articles. Pt. I was the Covenant of the League of Nations (Völkerbund), to which Germany was not admitted. Pt. II concerned the frontiers of Germany. Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France, Eupen and Malmédy ceded to Belgium, the Prussian province of Posen became a part of the revived state of Poland, and a Polish corridor was created providing access to the sea, so severing East Prussia from the rest of Germany. The northernmost strip of Schleswig, after a plebiscite, became Danish, the easternmost strip of East Prussia beyond the Memel passed to Lithuania. Pt. III contained the political clauses. The Saar District was to be administered by France until 1935, when a plebiscite would be held, Danzig became a Free State under the aegis of the League of Nations, and the independence of Austria was declared inalienable. Pt. IV deprived Germany of its colonies, which were later distributed as mandated territories by the League of Nations. Pt. V was military and naval, limiting the German army to 100, 000 volunteers serving for twelve consecutive years, and banning tanks and aircraft. Naval building was limited to surface ships of not more than 10, 000 tons.

Pt. VIII (Reparations) imposed repayments in kind or cash to cover not only damage inflicted on the Allies, but also the costs incurred by the Allies in conducting the war. The justification for these reparations is contained in Article 231, which is commonly referred to as the ‘War Guilt’ (Kriegsschuld) clause.

Pts. VI, VII, and IX were financial clauses, Pt. X economic clauses, Pt. XI covered aerial navigation, Pt. XII ports, waterways, and railways, and Pt. XIII labour. Pt. XIV provided for Allied occupation of the left bank of the Rhine for fifteen years.

The Treaty of Versailles was the agreement negotiated by the victorious Allied nations with the defeated Central Powers to end World War I. Twice, in 1919 and 1920, the Senate rejected the treaty. These Senate votes were a major defeat for President Woodrow Wilson, who had gone to Paris to personally negotiate the treaty with the Allied leaders and the defeated Germany and Austria and who led the fight for its ratification.

The treaty was negotiated at a peace conference held between January and June 1919 at the Palace of Versailles outside of Paris, France. It was attended by 32 nations but dominated by Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France, Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando of Italy, and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States. Wilson shattered precedent by attending the conference in person rather than naming the secretary of state of a special envoy as chief of the delegation. He was the first U.S. President to go to Europe during his term. Wilson's delegation did not include any leaders of Congress. Instead, Wilson took hundreds of experts to advise him about the people and politics of Europe.

Wilson's Fourteen Points program renounced territorial gains for the United States and denounced secret understandings. He called for “open convenants openly arrived at.” The other Allies, however, had aleady come to agreement about the spoils of war, especially German colonies in Africa and the division of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle east.

Signed by the defeated German government in June 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was a vindictive settlement. Germany was forced to accept sole responsibility for the war, pay $56 billion in reparations to the victors, and disarm. The French were allowed to occupy German territory for 15 years and to regain the province of Alsace Lorraine, which Germany had conquered in 1871. Poland was given a corridor to the sea through the German province of Prussia, which cut Germany in two. Altogether, Germany was stripped of 10 percent of its people, one-eight of its territory, and all its overseas possessions. From the Ottoman Empire the British received mandates, or territories, in Palestine, Trans-Jordan, and Iraq, and the French received Syria and Lebanon. Japan acquired Germany's pacific islands.

The only victory for Wilson during the negotiations was the inclusion of a League of Nations as part of the treaty. The league would be an assembly of all sovereign nations, pledged to preserve the independence and territorial integrity of each member.

Wilson returned home in June to press for U.S. Participation in the League of Nations. Opposition came from German Americans and Italian Americans and from isolationists in the South and West. Wilson had not consulted with the Senate during the negotiations and had not tried to win over the influential chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Republican Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. Lodge led the fight against the league. He disliked Wilson and believed the United States should retain complete freedom of action in international afairs. Although Lodge was no isolationist, he managed to unite the isolationist wing of his own followers around a series of “fourteen reservations'” to the treaty (an echo of Wilson's Fourteen Points). One provided for U. S. withdrawal from the league by concurrent resolution of Congress, a method not subject to Presidential veto. Another provided that the President could not direct troops in a league peacekeeping operation–an attack on the President's power as commander in chief. Still another would have prevented the President from making interim appointments to an international organization when the Senate was in recess.

The most important reservation amended the treaty by stating that the United States would retain complete freedom of action in foreign affairs and that only Congress had the right to commit U.S. forces to military action–not the league or the President.

To get the two-thirds vote needed for ratification, supporters of the treaty needed to forge an alliance with those favoring reservations. But Wilson refused to make any compromises. Instead, he took his case directly to to the people, confident that public opinion would force the Senate to accept the treaty and the League of Nations. In September 1919 Wilson embarked on a nationwide speaking tour to rally support. His tour was exhausting and he collapsed on September 25 in Pueblo, Colorado, He returned to Washington and sufferd a stroke on October 2.

On November 19 Democrats in the Senate voted down the treaty with the Lodge reservations; then Lodge's republican coaliton voted down Wilson's version of the treaty. Although more than two thirds of the Senate favored some sort of league, they were caught between Wilson and Lodge, and no treaty could pass. For the first time, the Senate rejected a peace treaty negotiated by the President. The United States never became a member of the League of Nations. Instead, Congress passed a joint resolution in 1921 officially recognizing an end to hostilities with Germany and other Central Powers.

See also Advice and consent; Treaty powers; Wilson, Woodrow

Sources

• Lloyd E. Ambrosious, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight in Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
• Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963).
• Woodrow Wilson, The Hope of the World (New York: Harper, 1920)

The Treaty of Versailles, which formed the core of the peace settlement after World War I, was signed on 28 June 1919. Outside the German delegation, it was signed by two countries of the initial Triple Entente that had gone to war against Germany in August 1914, France and the United Kingdom (the third one, Russia, having already signed a separate treaty at Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918), and by a number of nations that had joined them at later stages in the war, the major ones being Italy, Japan, and the United States (1917). This widely different experience of the war explains why unity of purpose was so difficult to achieve among the Allies during the peace conference that opened in Paris on 18 January 1919.

The League of Nations

Whereas British and French official policy followed traditional lines of territorial and colonial ambitions, combined with guarantees of military security and reparations from the defeated, American peace aims were expressed in President Woodrow Wilson's ideal of self-determination and his Fourteen Points, first put forward before Congress in January 1918 as the foundation of a just, durable peace. These included the novel concept of "A general association of nations … for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike." The Fourteen Points had been seen by Germany as an honorable way out of the war, and they were therefore central to the Allied negotiations in Paris, which finally led to the treaty as presented to the Germans, who had been excluded from the conference. The American president, who headed the U.S. delegation in person, played a leading role in getting his allies to agree on a common text. He often acted as an arbiter between their rival claims and as a moderator of their territorial and financial demands from Germany and its allies, though the British prime minister, David Lloyd George, maintained that it was he who acted as the conciliator between Wilson, the naive idealist, and French premier Georges Clemenceau, the wily realist.

Wilson's greatest personal achievement in this respect was the early acceptance of his association of nations by Britain and France, which had been reluctant to relinquish any parcel of their sovereignty to an international organization, and its elaboration into the Covenant of the League of Nations, which formed Part I of the treaty. An article in it effectively ruled out the possibility of a long war between the signatories, let alone a world war, if the European great powers, Japan, and the United States adhered to it: "Should any Member of the League resort to war in disregard of its covenants … it shall ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of war against all Members of the League.…It shall be the duty of the Council in such case to recommend to the several Governments concerned what effective military, naval, or air force the Members of the League shall severally contribute to the armed forces to be used to protect the covenants of the League." The French were still unconvinced that this protected them forever against renewed attack by a demographically and economically stronger Germany, and they insisted on further guarantees of military security from Britain and the United States, which they verbally obtained in April. Since the vexed question of "making Germany pay" was to be decided later by a Reparations Commission, the way was now clear for a settlement ostensibly based on Wilson's conceptions of a "peace between equals." Indeed, contrary to general belief, derived from very effective German propaganda, there was no mention of war guilt as such in the wording (by Americans Norman Davis and John Foster Dulles) of Article 231, which was couched in purely legal terms so as to give a justification to the reparations already provided for in the clauses of the armistice.

Territorial and Financial Provisions

The territorial losses in Europe were defined in Part II: Alsace-Lorraine went to France, the Eupen-Malmédy area to Belgium, and western Prussia and the province of Posen (now Pozna[UN]) to Poland, with the creation of a "Polish corridor" to the sea around Danzig (now Gda[UN]sk). Memel (now Klaipe˙da) went to Lithuania, and plebiscites were to be held in North Schleswig, Upper Silesia, and the Saar (whose mines were given to the French as compensation for the flooding of their mines by German troops). The loss of territory amounted to 25,000 square miles with a population of 6 million, but most of the loss had already been envisaged in the Fourteen Points and accepted in the armistice.

Overseas possessions (mostly carved up between the British and French empires) were examined in Part IV. Other parts defined German obligations in Europe, including the prohibition of an Anschluss with Austria; the demilitarization of the Rhineland and a band extending fifty kilometers deep on the right bank of the Rhine; a ban on conscription, all air forces, and combat gasses; the severe limitation of the navy, army, and munitions industry; the right of aerial navigation over Germany for the Allies; and international control of German ports, waterways, and railways to guarantee Central European countries unobstructed access to the sea. The financial provisions were defined in Parts VII to X (with the guarantees stipulated in Part XIV): Germany had to pay an immediate sum of $5 billion in cash or in kind before the Reparations Commission published the final amount in 1921. "Voluntary default" by Germany was covered by clauses that gave the Allies power to take measures in Germany and to seize German private property abroad.

U.S. Rejection of the Treaty

The central question remains whether the treaty was "too gentle for the harshness it contained"—in other words, whether it was enforceable as it stood, and if yes, why it was never really enforced. The decisive blow probably came from the U.S. Senate's refusal, on 19 March 1920, to ratify the treaty, a refusal that included rejection of U.S. membership in the League of Nations. The League was bitterly opposed by Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, on the same grounds of sacred national sovereignty as invoked in 1918–1919 by the British and French premiers. The United States signed a separate peace treaty at Berlin on 2 July 1921. Then President Wilson did not push the Treaty of Guarantee to France promised in April 1919 (wherein the United States would declare war on any country that challenged the existing French frontiers), and Britain indicated that its own commitment fell. Collective security guaranteed by the major powers, the outstanding innovation of the treaty, thus remained a pious hope.

It was clear that by 1920 Great Britain, France, and the United States had no common German policy left—if they had ever had one—and their increasing disagreements over the amount of reparations and how to get Germany to pay them drew a constant wedge between them, gradually eroding whatever credibility the peace terms might have had in the first place. The exclusion of Soviet Russia from the settlement and the specter of Bolshevik revolution also explain why many moderates believed that nothing should be done to destabilize the German Republic, and with it central and eastern Europe, which was slowly adapting to the postwar order. There is no consensus on the relative weight to be given to these considerations, but the most recent historiography at least agrees on one thing: the popular image of Versailles as a punitive "diktat" leading to the ruin of Germany and the inevitable advent of Hitler rests on manipulation rather than fact.

Bibliography

Allied and Associated Powers. Treaty of Peace with Germany, June 28,1919. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1919. The text of the Treaty of Versailles, with U.S. Senate reservations.

Boemeke, Manfred M., et al., eds. The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After Seventy-five Years. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Dockrill, Michael, and John Fisher, eds. The Paris Peace Conference, 1919: Peace Without Victory? New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Keylor, William R., ed. The Legacy of the Great War: The Peace Settlement of 1919 and Its Consequences. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Temperley, H. W. V., ed. History of the Peace Conference of Paris. 6 vols. London: H. Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton, 1920–1924. Reprint, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.

United States Department of State. The Paris Peace Conference, 1919. In Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States. 13 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1942–1947. The final volume was also published separately in 1947 as The Treaty of Versailles and After: Annotations of the Text of the Treaty.

Treaty ending World War I; it established the mandate system for the governance and eventual independence of the Central Powers' former colonies.

The armistices of October and November 1918 ending hostilities in World War I were followed by the Conference of Paris at which World War I victors and associated powers determined the terms for dealing with Germany and her allies during the war. The conference, which officially began on 18 January 1919, resulted in five treaties. The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June at Versailles, France, and ratified on 20 January 1920, addressed the terms of peace with Germany. The treaties of Sèvres, Neuilly, St. Germain, and Trianon dealt with the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria, Austria, and Hungary, respectively. Besides setting forth the terms for dealing with Germany after World War I, the Treaty of Versailles established the League of Nations and the mandate system for governing territories surrendered by Germany. This treaty included the Covenant of the League of Nations as Part I, with Article 22 giving the league the power to supervise mandated territories consisting of former German colonies. The other treaties included the covenant in their texts.

The armistice with Germany and the Conference of Paris were both predicated on U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points for peace enunciated in his address to Congress on 8 January 1918. In addition to his vision of a League of Nations, these included an adjustment of all colonial claims giving equal weight to the interests of colonial populations and to those of countries with colonial claims. This led many to believe that the peace conference would lead to the independence of the Arab portions of the Ottoman Empire. Based on this, Prince Faisal I ibn Hussein arrived in Paris in January 1919 as head of the Hijaz delegation and with the objective of securing an independent Arab state. At first the French opposed recognition of the Hijaz delegation based on the fact that the Hijaz was not one of the Allied belligerent states. The British, however, intervened, and the Hijaz delegation was recognized. On 29 January Faisal submitted a statement to the conference defining Arab claims. He requested recognition as "independent sovereign peoples" for those Arab-speaking peoples of Asia from the Alexandretta - Diyarbekir line south to the Indian Ocean. Essentially, this included what is now Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Iraq. Faisal exempted the Hijaz as already independent, as well as British Aden. The prince addressed the conference on 6 February, stressing the principle of the consent of the governed. He then proposed a commission to visit Syria and Palestine and ascertain the wishes of the populace. The French were not inclined to support this, but pressure by Wilson resulted, on 25 March, in the approval of a commission, later known as the King - Crane Commission.

Despite the sincere desires of Wilson to forge a new world in which all peoples would be the ultimate determiners of their national destinies and the eloquent arguments of Faisal and others on behalf of the Arabs, the Conference of Paris yielded to the imperial interests of Britain and France and, to a lesser extent, to those of Italy and Japan. The colonial territories of Germany and the Arab portions of the Ottoman Empire were assigned to members of the League of Nations under the mandate system established in the covenant. In the case of the Middle East, agreements made during World War I played a large role in distribution of mandates. The secret Anglo - Franco - Russian agreement of 16 May 1916, commonly known as the Sykes - Picot Agreement, divided the Arab dominions of the Ottoman Empire between Britain and France. Britain received the areas that are now Iraq, Jordan, and Israel; France got what is now Syria and Lebanon. The Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, also played a role in the disposition of Arab territories by the Conference of Paris. This was a letter from Lord Balfour, British foreign secretary, to Lord (Edmond de) Rothschild, a prominent British Zionist, that supported the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. These two documents, more than anything else, shaped the fate of the Middle East in the post - World War I era. The San Remo Conference of April 1920 awarded Syria, including Lebanon, as a Class A mandate to France; Iraq and Palestine, including Transjordan, became Class A mandates under British supervision. The mandate for Palestine endorsed the provisions of the Balfour Declaration. In 1921 Britain separated Transjordan from Palestine, exempting it from the provisions of the Balfour Declaration. As Class A mandates, all three were to be given independence when it was determined that they were able to stand on their own. In the case of Iraq and Transjordan, Arab dignitaries were given royal status in preparation for the eventual independence of these areas. Prince Faisal became the king of Iraq, and Prince Abdullah I ibn Hussein became the amir of Transjordan. The League of Nations confirmed these mandates in 1922, some of which outlived the international organization under which they were formed. The first mandate to obtain independence was Iraq, in 1932, followed by Syria and Lebanon in 1941. Transjordan, now Jordan, gained its independence in 1946. Palestine, much of which is now Israel, gained independence in 1948.

Bibliography

Antonius, George. The Arab Awakening: The Story of the ArabNational Movement. London: H. Hamilton, 1938.

Sontag, Raymond J. A Broken World, 1919 - 1939. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

— DANIEL E. SPECTOR

The Treaty of Versailles was the agreement negotiated during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 that ended World War I and imposed disarmament, reparations, and territorial changes on the defeated Germany. The treaty also established the League of Nations, an international organization dedicated to resolving world conflicts peacefully. The treaty has been criticized for its harsh treatment of Germany, which many historians believe contributed to the rise of Nazism and Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

President Woodrow Wilson played an important role in ending the hostilities and convening a peace conference. When the United States entered the war in January 1917, Wilson intended to use U.S. influence to end the long cycle of peace and war in Europe and create an international peace organization. On January 8, 1918, he delivered an address to Congress that named Fourteen Points to be used as the guide for a peace settlement. Nine of the points covered new territorial consignments, while the other five were of a general nature. In October 1918 Germany asked Wilson to arrange both a general armistice based on the Fourteen Points and a conference to begin peace negotiations. On November 11 the armistice was concluded.

The Paris Peace Conference began in January 1919. The conference was dominated by David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Wilson of the United States, with Vittorio Orlando of Italy playing a lesser role. These leaders agreed that Germany and its allies would have no role in negotiating the treaty.

The first of Wilson's Fourteen Points stated that it was essential for a postwar settlement to have "open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view." Wilson's lofty vision, however, was undercut in Paris by secret treaties that Great Britain, France, and Italy had made during the war with Greece, Romania, and each other.

In addition, the European Allies demanded compensation from Germany for the damage their civilian populations had suffered and for German aggression in general. Wilson's loftier ideas gave way to the stern demands of the Allies.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles. The terms dictated to Germany included a war guilt clause, in which Germany accepted responsibility as the aggressor in the war. Based on this clause, the Allies imposed reparations for war damage. Though the treaty did not specify an exact amount, a commission established in 1921 assessed $33 billion of reparations.

The boundaries of Germany and other parts of Europe were changed. Germany was required to return the territories of Alsace and Lorraine to France and to place the Saarland under the supervision of the League of Nations until 1935. Several territories were given to Belgium and Holland, and the nation of Poland was created from portions of German Silesia and Prussia. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismantled, and the countries of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania were recognized. All German overseas colonies in China, the Pacific, and Africa were taken over by Great Britain, France, Japan, and other Allied nations.

France, which had been invaded by Germany in 1871 and 1914, was adamant about disarming Germany. The treaty reduced the German army to 100,000 troops, eliminated the general staff, and prohibited Germany from manufacturing armored cars, tanks, submarines, airplanes, and poison gas. In addition, all German territory west of the Rhine River (Rhineland), was established as a demilitarized zone.

The Treaty of Versailles also created the League of Nations, which was to enforce the treaty and encourage the peaceful resolution of international conflicts. Many Americans were opposed to joining the League of Nations, however, and despite Wilson's efforts, the U.S. Senate failed to ratify the treaty. Hence, instead of signing the Treaty of Versailles, the United States signed a separate peace treaty with Germany, the Treaty of Berlin, on July 2, 1921. This treaty conformed to the Versailles agreement except for the omission of the League of Nations provisions.

The Treaty of Versailles has been criticized as a vindictive agreement that violated the spirit of Wilson's Fourteen Points. The harsh terms hurt the German economy in the 1920s and contributed to the popularity of leaders such as Hitler who argued for the restoration of German honor through remilitarization.

The treaty that officially ended World War I, signed at the Palace of Versailles in France. The leading figures at the treaty negotiations were Premier Georges Clemenceau of France, Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Britain, and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States. The treaty was far more punitive toward Germany than Wilson's Fourteen Points; it required Germany to give up land and much of its army and navy and to pay extensive reparations for damages to civilians in the war. The treaty also created the League of Nations.

This article is about the Treaty of Versailles of 28 June 1919, at the end of World War I. For other uses, see Treaty of Versailles (disambiguation) .

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Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany
Front page of the version in English
Signed Location	28 June 1919 Versailles, France
Effective Condition	10 January 1920 Ratification by Germany and three Principal Allied Powers.
Signatories	German Reich  British Empire  France  Italy  Japan  United States Other Allied Powers  Belgium  Bolivia  Brazil  China  Cuba  Czechoslovakia  Ecuador  Greece  Guatemala  Haiti  Hejaz  Honduras  Liberia  Nicaragua  Panama  Peru  Poland  Portugal  Romania  Siam  Uruguay  Yugoslavia As part of the British Empire  Australia  Canada  South Africa  India  New Zealand
Depositary	French Government
Languages	French, English
Treaty of Versailles at Wikisource

The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I were dealt with in separate treaties. Although the armistice signed on 11 November 1918 ended the actual fighting, it took six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty.

Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial required Germany to accept sole responsibility for causing the war and, under the terms of articles 231-248 (later known as the War Guilt clauses), to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers. The total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion marks ($31.5 billion, £6,600 million) ^[1] in 1921. The Treaty was undermined by subsequent events starting as early as 1932 and was widely flouted by the mid-1930s.^[2]

The result of these competing and sometimes conflicting goals among the victors was compromise that left none contented: Germany was not pacified, conciliated nor permanently weakened. This would prove to be a factor leading to later conflicts, notably and directly the Second World War.^[3]

Contents 1 Negotiations 1.1 France's aims 1.2 Britain's aims 1.3 United States' aims 2 Content 2.1 Impositions on Germany 2.1.1 Legal restrictions 2.1.2 Military restrictions 2.1.3 Territorial changes 2.1.4 Shandong problem 2.1.5 Reparations 2.2 The creation of international organizations 2.3 Other 3 Reactions 3.1 Among the allies 3.2 In Germany 4 Violations 5 Historical assessments 6 See also 7 Further reading 8 Notes 9 References 10 External links

Negotiations

Negotiations between the Allied powers started on 18 January in the Salle de l'Horloge at the French Foreign Ministry, on the Quai d'Orsay in Paris. Initially, 70 delegates of 27 nations participated in the negotiations.^[4] Having been defeated, Germany, Austria, and Hungary were excluded from the negotiations. Russia was also excluded because it had negotiated a separate peace with Germany in 1918, in which Germany gained a large fraction of Russia's land and resources.

Signing in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles

Until March 1919, the most important role for negotiating the extremely complex and difficult terms of the peace fell to the regular meetings of the "Council of Ten", which comprised the heads of government and foreign ministers of the five major victors (the United States, France, Great Britain, Italy, and Japan). As this unusual body proved too unwieldy and formal for effective decision-making, Japan and — for most of the remaining conference — the foreign ministers left the main meetings, so that only the "Big Four" remained.^[5] After his territorial claims to Fiume (today Rijeka) were rejected, Italian Prime Minister, Vittorio Orlando left the negotiations (only to return to sign in June), and the final conditions were determined by the leaders of the "Big Three" nations: British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and American President Woodrow Wilson.

At Versailles, it was difficult to decide on a common position because their aims conflicted with one another. The result has been called the "unhappy compromise".^[6]

France's aims

Further information: Revanchism

From left, UK Prime Minister Lloyd George, Italian Prime Minister Orlando, French Prime Minister Clemenceau, and US President Wilson

While both American and British leaders wanted to come to a fair and reasonable deal, France's interests were much more aggressive and demanding as many of the battles had been fought on French soil. Although they had agreed after the treaty was signed many world leaders agreed that some of France's demands were far too harsh and unsympathetic. France had lost some 1.5 million military personnel and an estimated 400,000 civilians to the war. (See World War I casualties) To appease the French public, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau wanted to impose policies meant to cripple Germany militarily, politically, and economically, so as never to be able to invade France again.^{[citation needed]} Clemenceau also particularly wished to regain the rich and industrial land of Alsace-Lorraine, which had been stripped from France by Germany in the 1871 War.^{[citation needed]} Clemenceau wanted the Rhineland to be separated from Germany as it was a key area of industry.^{[citation needed]} This land also acted as a buffer zone between France and Germany in case of repeated attack.^{[citation needed]}

Britain's aims

Further information: Heavenly Twins (Sumner and Cunliffe)

Prime Minister David Lloyd George supported reparations but to a lesser extent than the French. Lloyd George was aware that if the demands made by France were carried out, France could become the most powerful force on the continent, and a delicate balance could be unsettled.^{[citation needed]} Lloyd George was also worried by Woodrow Wilson's proposal for "self-determination" and, like the French, wanted to preserve his own nation's empire. Like the French, Lloyd George supported secret treaties and naval blockades.^{[citation needed]}

Prior to the war, Germany had been Britain's main competitor and its second largest trading partner,^[7] making the destruction of Germany at best a mixed blessing.^{[citation needed]} Lloyd George managed to increase the overall reparations payment and Britain's share by demanding compensation for the huge number of widows, orphans, and men left unable to work as a result of war injuries.^{[citation needed]}

United States' aims

Main article: Fourteen Points

There had been strong non-interventionist sentiment before and after the United States entered the war in April 1917, and many Americans were eager to extricate themselves from European affairs as rapidly as possible.^{[citation needed]} The United States took a more conciliatory view toward the issue of German reparations. Before the end of the war, President Woodrow Wilson, along with other American officials including Edward Mandell House, put forward his Fourteen Points, which he presented in a speech at the Paris Peace Conference.

Content

Impositions on Germany

Legal restrictions

• Article 227 charges former German Emperor, Wilhelm II with supreme offence against international morality. He is to be tried as a war criminal.
• Articles 228-230 tried many other Germans as war criminals.
• Article 231 (the "War Guilt Clause") lays sole responsibility for the war on Germany, which is to be accountable for all damage to civilian populations of the Allies.

Military restrictions

Part V of the treaty begins with the preamble, "In order to render possible the initiation of a general limitation of the armaments of all nations, Germany undertakes strictly to observe the military, naval and air clauses which follow."^[8] Germany was also forbidden to unite with Austria to form a larger Nation to make up for the lost land

• The Rhineland will become a demilitarized zone administered by Great Britain and France jointly.
• German armed forces will number no more than 100,000 troops, and conscription will be abolished.
• Enlisted men will be retained for at least 12 years; officers to be retained for at least 25 years.
• German naval forces will be limited to 15,000 men, 6 battleships (no more than 10,000 tons displacement each), 6 cruisers (no more than 6,000 tons displacement each), 6 destroyers (no more than 800 tons displacement each) and 12 torpedo boats (no more than 200 tons displacement each). No submarines are to be included.
• The manufacture, import, and export of weapons and poison gas is prohibited.
• Armed aircraft, tanks and armored cars are prohibited.
• Blockades on ships are prohibited.
• Restrictions on the manufacture of machine guns (e.g. the Maxim machine gun) and rifles (e.g. Mauser 1898 rifles).

Territorial changes

Germany after Versailles:      Administered by the League of Nations      Annexed by neighbouring countries      Weimar Germany

Germany's borders in 1919 had been established forty-five years earlier at the country's creation in 1871. Territory and cities in the region had changed hands repeatedly for centuries, including at various times being owned by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Poland, and Kingdom of Lithuania. However, Germany laid claim to lands and cities that it viewed as historically "Germanic" centuries before Germany's establishment as a country in 1871. Other countries disputed Germany's claim to this territory. In the peace treaty, Germany agreed to return disputed lands and cities to various countries.

Germany was compelled to yield control of its colonies, and would also lose a number of European territories. The province of West Prussia would be ceded to the restored Poland, thereby granting it access to the Baltic Sea via the "Polish Corridor" which Prussia had annexed in the Partitions of Poland. This turned East Prussia into an exclave, separated from mainland Germany.

This section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (June 2009)

• Alsace and much of Lorraine, both originally German-speaking territories, were part of France, having been annexed by France's King Louis XIV who desired the Rhine as a natural border. After approximately two centuries of French rule, Alsace and the German-speaking part of Lorraine were ceded to Germany in 1871 under the Treaty of Frankfurt. In 1919 both regions were returned to France.

• Northern Schleswig was returned to Denmark following a plebiscite on 14 February 1920 (area 3,984 km², 163,600 inhabitants (1920)).^{[citation needed]} Central Schleswig, including the city of Flensburg, opted to remain German in a separate referendum on 14 March 1920.^{[citation needed]}

• Most of the Prussian provinces of Province of Posen (now Poznan) and of West Prussia which Prussia had annexed in the Partitions of Poland (1772–1795) were ceded to Poland (area 53,800 km², 4,224,000 inhabitants (1931)) without a plebiscite. Most of the Province of Posen had already come under Polish control during the Great Polish Uprising of 1918-1919.

• The Hultschin area of Upper Silesia was transferred to Czechoslovakia (area 316 or 333 km², 49,000 inhabitants) without a plebiscite.^{[citation needed]}

• The eastern part of Upper Silesia was assigned to Poland, despite the Upper Silesia plebiscite resulting in 717,122 votes being cast for Germany and 483,514 for Poland.

• The area of the towns Eupen and Malmedy went to Belgium despite a plebiscite to the contrary. The Vennbahn railway was also transferred to Belgium.

• The area of Soldau in East Prussia, an important railway junction on the Warsaw-Danzig route, was transferred to Poland without a plebiscite (area 492 km²).^[9]

• The northern part of East Prussia known as the Memelland or Memel Territory was placed under the control of France and was later annexed by Lithuania.

• From the eastern part of West Prussia and the southern part of East Prussia, after the East Prussian plebiscite a small area was ceded to Poland.

• The province of Saarland was to be a under the control of the League of Nations for 15 years, after which a plebiscite between France and Germany, was to decide to which country it would belong. During this time, coal would be sent to France. The region was then called the Saargebiet (German: Saar Area) and was formed from southern parts of the German Rhine Province and western parts of the Bavarian Palatinate under the Saar statute of the Versailles Treaty of 28. 6. 1919 (Article 45–50).

• The strategically important port of Danzig with the delta of the Vistula River on the Baltic Sea was separated from Germany as the Freie Stadt Danzig (Free City of Danzig). This created the so-called Polish Corridor, giving Poland access to the sea.

• Austria was forbidden from merging with Germany.

Shandong problem

Main article: Shandong Problem

Article 156 of the treaty transferred German concessions in Shandong, China, to Japan rather than returning sovereign authority to China. Chinese outrage over this provision led to demonstrations and a cultural movement known as the May Fourth Movement and influenced China not to sign the treaty. China declared the end of its war against Germany in September 1919 and signed a separate treaty with Germany in 1921.

Reparations

Main article: World War I reparations

Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles assigned blame for the war to Germany; much of the rest of the Treaty set out the reparations that Germany would pay to the Allies.

The total sum of war reparations demanded from Germany — around £6,600 million— was decided by an Inter-Allied Reparations Commission. In 1921, it was reduced to 132 billion Reichsmarks (£4.99 billion).^[10]

It could be seen that the Versailles reparation impositions were partly a reply to the reparations placed upon France by Germany through the 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt signed after the Franco-Prussian War; critics^[who?] of the Treaty argued that France had been able to pay the reparations (5,000,000,000 francs) within 3 years while the Young Plan of 1929 estimated German reparations to be paid until 1988.^[11] Indemnities of the Treaty of Frankfurt were in turn calculated, on the basis of population, as the precise equivalent of the indemnities imposed by Napoleon I on Prussia in 1807.^[12]

The Versailles Reparations came in a variety of forms, including coal, steel, intellectual property (eg. the trademark for Aspirin) and agricultural products, in no small part because currency reparations of that order of magnitude would lead to hyperinflation, as actually occurred in postwar Germany (see 1920s German inflation), thus decreasing the benefits to France and the United Kingdom.

The reparations in the form of coal were a big part in punishing Germany. The Treaty of Versailles made out Germany to be responsible for the destruction of coal mines in Northern France, parts of Belgium, and parts of Italy. Therefore, France was awarded full possession of Germany's coal-bearing Saar basin. Also, Germany was forced to provide France, Belgium, and Italy with deliveries of millions of tons of coal for ten years. However, within a few years, Germany, under the control of Adolf Hitler, stopped these deliveries of coal; therefore violating the Treaty of Versailles.^{[citation needed]}

A German author expressed the view that Germany would be finishing to pay off its World War I reparations until 2020.^[13]

The creation of international organizations

Part I of the treaty was the Covenant of the League of Nations which provided for the creation of the League of Nations, an organization intended to arbitrate international disputes and thereby avoid future wars.^[14] Part XIII organized the establishment of the International Labour Organization, to promote "the regulation of the hours of work, including the establishment of a maximum working day and week, the regulation of the labour supply, the prevention of unemployment, the provision of an adequate living wage, the protection of the worker against sickness, disease and injury arising out of his employment, the protection of children, young persons and women, provision for old age and injury, protection of the interests of workers when employed in countries other than their own recognition of the principle of freedom of association, the organization of vocational and technical education and other measures"^[15] Further international commissions were to be set up, according to Part XII, to administer control over the Elbe, the Oder, the Niemen (Russstrom-Memel-Niemen) and the Danube rivers.^[16]

Other

The Treaty contained a lot of other provisions (economic issues, transportation, etc.). One of the provisions was the following:

"ARTICLE 246. Within six months from the coming into force of the present Treaty, ... Germany will hand over to His Britannic Majesty's Government the skull of the Sultan Mkwawa which was removed from the Protectorate of German East Africa and taken to Germany."

Reactions

Among the allies

Clemenceau had failed to achieve all of the demands of the French people, and he was voted out of office in the elections of January 1920. French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, who felt the restrictions on Germany were too lenient, declared, "This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years."^[17]

Influenced by the opposition of Henry Cabot Lodge, the United States Senate voted against ratifying the treaty. Despite considerable debate, Wilson refused to support the treaty with any of the reservations imposed by the Senate. ^[18] As a result, the United States did not join the League of Nations, despite Wilson's claims that he could "predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the method by which to prevent it."^[19]

Wilson's friend Edward Mandell House, present at the negotiations, wrote in his diary on 29 June 1919:

"I am leaving Paris, after eight fateful months, with conflicting emotions. Looking at the conference in retrospect, there is much to approve and yet much to regret. It is easy to say what should have been done, but more difficult to have found a way of doing it. To those who are saying that the treaty is bad and should never have been made and that it will involve Europe in infinite difficulties in its enforcement, I feel like admitting it. But I would also say in reply that empires cannot be shattered, and new states raised upon their ruins without disturbance. To create new boundaries is to create new troubles. The one follows the other. While I should have preferred a different peace, I doubt very much whether it could have been made, for the ingredients required for such a peace as I would have were lacking at Paris."^[20]

After Wilson's successor Warren G. Harding continued American opposition to the League of Nations, Congress passed the Knox-Porter Resolution bringing a formal end to hostilities between the United States and the Central Powers. It was signed into law by Harding on 21 July 1921.^[21]

In Germany

See also: Stab-in-the-back legend

German delegates in Versailles: Professor Dr. Walther Schücking, Reichspostminister Johannes Giesberts, Justice Minister Dr. Otto Landsberg, Foreign Minister-Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau, Prussian State President Robert Leinert, and financial advisor Dr. Carl Melchior.

On 29 April the German delegation under the leadership of the Foreign Minister Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau arrived in Versailles. On 7 May when faced with the conditions dictated by the victors, including the so-called "War Guilt Clause", von Brockdorff-Rantzau replied to Clemenceau, Wilson and Lloyd George: We know the full brunt of hate that confronts us here. You demand from us to confess we were the only guilty party of war; such a confession in my mouth would be a lie.^[22] Because Germany was not allowed to take part in the negotiations, the German government issued a protest against what it considered to be unfair demands, and a "violation of honour"^[23] and soon afterwards, withdrew from the proceedings of the Treaty of Versailles.

Germans of all political shades denounced the treaty—particularly the provision that blamed Germany for starting the war—as an insult to the nation's honour. They referred to the treaty as "the Diktat" since its terms were presented to Germany on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Germany's first democratically elected Chancellor, Philipp Scheidemann refused to sign the treaty and resigned. In a passionate speech before the National Assembly on 12 March 1919, he called the treaty a "murderous plan" and exclaimed,

Which hand, trying to put us in chains like these, would not wither? The treaty is unacceptable.^[24]

After Scheidemann's resignation, a new coalition government was formed under Gustav Bauer. After being informed that the army was not capable of any meaningful resistance, the new government recommended signing the treaty. The National Assembly voted in favour of signing the treaty by 237 to 138, with 5 abstentions. The foreign minister Hermann Müller and Johannes Bell travelled to Versailles to sign the treaty on behalf of Germany. The treaty was signed on 28 June 1919 and ratified by the National Assembly on 9 July 1919 by a vote of 209 to 116.^[25]

Demonstration against the Treaty in front of the Reichstag building

Conservatives, nationalists and ex-military leaders condemned the peace and democratic Weimar politicians, socialists, communists, and Jews were viewed by them with suspicion, due to their supposed extra-national loyalties.^{[citation needed]} It was rumoured that the Jews had not supported the war and had played a role in selling out Germany to its enemies. Those who seemed to benefit from a weakened Germany, and the newly formed Weimar Republic, were regarded as having "stabbed Germany in the back" on the home front, by either opposing German nationalism, instigating unrest and strikes in the critical military industries or profiteering.^{[citation needed]} These theories were given credence by the fact that when Germany surrendered in November 1918, its armies were still on French and Belgian territory. Furthermore, on the Eastern Front, Germany had already won the war against Russia and concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In the West, Germany had seemed to have come close to winning the war with the Spring Offensive earlier in 1918.^{[citation needed]} Its failure was blamed on strikes in the arms industry at a critical moment of the offensive, leaving soldiers with an inadequate supply of materiel. The strikes were regarded by nationalists as having been instigated by traitors, with the Jews taking most of the blame.^{[citation needed]}

Violations

The German economy was so weak that only a small percentage of reparations was paid in hard currency.^{[citation needed]} Nonetheless, even the payment of this small percentage of the original reparations (132 billion Gold Reichsmarks) still placed a significant burden on the German economy. Although the causes of the devastating post-war hyperinflation are complex and disputed, Germans blamed the near-collapse of their economy on the Treaty, and some economists estimated that the reparations accounted for as much as one third of the hyper-inflation.^{[citation needed]}

The economic strain eventually reached the point where Germany stopped paying the reparations agreed in the Treaty of Versailles. As a result French and Belgian forces invaded and occupied the Ruhr, a heavily industrialised part of Germany along the French-German border. German workers offered 'passive resistance', meaning that they refused to work in the factories as long as the French controlled them.

Some significant violations (or avoidances) of the provisions of the Treaty were:

• In 1919 the dissolution of the General Staff appeared to happen; however, the core of the General Staff was hidden within another organization, the Truppenamt, where it rewrote all Heer (Army) and Luftstreitkräfte (Air Force) doctrinal and training materials based on the experience of World War I.^{[citation needed]}
• On 16 April 1922 representatives of the governments of Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Rapallo Treaty at a World Economic Conference at Genoa in Italy. The treaty re-established diplomatic relations, renounced financial claims on each other and pledged future cooperation.
• In 1932 the German government announced it would no longer adhere to the treaty's military limitations, citing the Allies' violation of the treaty by failing to initiate military limitations on themselves as called for in the preamble of Part V of the Treaty of Versailles.
• In March 1935 Adolf Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles by introducing compulsory military conscription in Germany and rebuilding the armed forces. This included a new Navy (Kriegsmarine), the first full armoured divisions (Panzerwaffe), and an Air Force (Luftwaffe).
• In June 1935 the United Kingdom effectively withdrew from the treaty with the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement.
• In March 1936 Hitler violated the treaty by reoccupying the demilitarized zone in the Rhineland.
• In March 1938 Hitler violated the treaty by annexing Austria in the Anschluss.
• In September 1938 Hitler with approval of France, Britain and Italy violated the Treaty by annexing the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.
• In March 1939 Hitler violated the treaty by occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia.
• On 1 September 1939 Hitler violated the treaty by invading Poland, thus initiating World War II in Europe.

Historical assessments

In his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes referred to the Treaty of Versailles as a "Carthaginian peace", a misguided attempt to destroy Germany on behalf of French revanchism, rather than to follow the fairer principles for a lasting peace set out in President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, which Germany had accepted at the armistice. He stated: "I believe that the campaign for securing out of Germany the general costs of the war was one of the most serious acts of political unwisdom for which our statesmen have ever been responsible."^[3] Keynes had been the principal representative of the British Treasury at the Paris Peace Conference, and used in his passionate book arguments that he and others (including some US officials) had used at Paris.^[26] He believed the sums being asked of Germany in reparations were many times more than it was possible for Germany to pay, and that these would produce drastic instability. ^[27]

French Resistance economist Étienne Mantoux disputed that analysis. During the 1940s, Mantoux wrote a book titled, "The Carthaginian Peace, or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes" in an attempt to rebut Keynes' claims; it was published after his death.

More recently it has been argued (for instance by historian Gerhard Weinberg in his book "A World At Arms"^[28]) that the treaty was in fact quite advantageous to Germany. The Bismarckian Reich was maintained as a political unit instead of being broken up, and Germany largely escaped post-war military occupation (in contrast to the situation following World War II.)

The British military historian Correlli Barnett claimed that the Treaty of Versailles was "extremely lenient in comparison with the peace terms Germany herself, when she was expecting to win the war, had had in mind to impose on the Allies". Furthermore, he claimed, it was "hardly a slap on the wrist" when contrasted with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that Germany had imposed on a defeated Russia in March 1918, which had taken away a third of Russia's population (albeit of non-Russian ethnicity), one half of Russia's industrial undertakings and nine-tenths of Russia's coal mines, coupled with an indemnity of six billion marks.^[29] Eventually, even under the "cruel" terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany's economy had been restored to its pre-war status.

Barnett also claims that, in strategic terms, Germany was in fact in a superior position following the Treaty than she had been in 1914. Germany's eastern frontiers faced Russia and Austria, who had both in the past balanced German power. But Barnett asserts that, because the Austrian empire fractured after the war into smaller, weaker states and Russia was wracked by revolution and civil war, the newly restored Poland was no match for even a defeated Germany.

In the West, Germany was balanced only by France and Belgium, both of which were smaller in population and less economically vibrant than Germany. Barnett concludes by saying that instead of weakening Germany, the Treaty "much enhanced" German power.^[30] Britain and France should have (according to Barnett) "divided and permanently weakened" Germany by undoing Bismarck's work and partitioning Germany into smaller, weaker states so it could never disrupt the peace of Europe again.^[31] By failing to do this and therefore not solving the problem of German power and restoring the equilibrium of Europe, Britain "had failed in her main purpose in taking part in the Great War".^[32]

Regardless of modern strategic or economic analysis, resentment caused by the treaty sowed fertile psychological ground for the eventual rise of the Nazi party. Indeed, on Nazi Germany's rise to power, Adolf Hitler resolved to overturn the remaining military and territorial provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. Military build-up began almost immediately in direct defiance of the Treaty, which, by then, had been destroyed by Hitler in front of a cheering crowd. "It was this treaty which caused a chain reaction leading to World War II," claimed historian Dan Rowling (1951). Various references to the treaty are found in many of Hitler's speeches and in pre-war Nazi propaganda.^{[citation needed]}

French historian Raymond Cartier points out that millions of Germans in the Sudetenland and in Posen-West Prussia were placed under foreign rule in a hostile environment, where harassment and violation of rights by authorities are documented.^[33] Cartier asserts that, out of 1,058,000 Germans in Posen-West Prussia in 1921, 758,867 fled their homelands within five years due to Polish harassment.^[33] In 1926, the Polish Ministry of the Interior estimated the remaining number of Germans at less than 300,000.^{[citation needed]} These sharpening ethnic conflicts would lead to public demands of reattaching the annexed territory in 1938 and become a pretext for Hitler's annexations of Czechoslovakia and parts of Poland.^[33]

See also

World War I portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Treaty of Versailles

• Aftermath of World War I
• Causes of World War II For other related causes of the war
• International Opium Convention, incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles
• Dawes Plan
• Minority Treaties
• Neutrality Acts
• Small Treaty of Versailles
• Treaty of Trianon

Further reading

• The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years, Boemeke, Manfred F., Gerald D. Feldman, and Elisabeth Gläser, editors. Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 1998.

Notes

1. ^ The West Encounters and Transformations. Atlas Ed. Vol. II. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2007. p. 806
2. ^ Viault, Birdsall S. (1990). Schaum's Outline of Modern European History. McGraw-Hill Professional. p. 471. http://books.google.com/books?id=hXaJLfcIBuoC. 
3. ^ ^{a b} The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes at Project Gutenberg
4. ^ Lentin, Antony (1985). Guilt at Versailles: Lloyd George and the Pre-history of Appeasement. Routledge. p. 84. ISBN 9780416411300. 
5. ^ Alan Sharp, "The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919", 1991.
6. ^ Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1930-39,250; quoted in Derek Drinkwater: Sir Harold Nicolson and International Relations: The Practitioner as Theorist, p. 139.
7. ^ "One has to acknowledge that Germany is, with her ambitious plans for world politics, maritime dominance and military domination, the only disturbing factor". The State Secretary in the London Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sir Charles Hardinge on 30 October 1906.
8. ^ Treaty of Versailles, Part V at Wikisource.
9. ^ Nasze miasto: Historia: Lata 1701 - 1871 - dzialdowo.pl.
10. ^ Timothy W. Guinnane (January 2004). "Vergangenheitsbewältigung: the 1953 London Debt Agreement]" (PDF). Center Discussion Paper no. 880. Economic Growth Center, Yale University. http://www.econ.yale.edu/growth_pdf/cdp880.pdf. Retrieved 2008-12-06. 
11. ^ Braun, Hans-Joachim (1990). The German Economy in the Twentieth Century. Routledge. p. 46. ISBN 0415021014. 
12. ^ A.J.P. Taylor, Bismarck The Man and the Statesman. New York: Vintage Books. 1967, p. 133.
13. ^ Jörg Friedrich, Von deutschen Schulden, Berliner Zeitung, 9 October 1999 [1]
14. ^ Treaty of Versailles, Part I: Covenant of the League of Nations at Wikisource.
15. ^ Treaty of Versailles, Part XIII: Constitution of the International Labour Office at Wikisource.
16. ^ Treaty of Versailles, Part XII at Wikisource.
17. ^ R. Henig, Versailles and After: 1919 – 1933 (London: Routledge, 1995) p. 52.
18. ^ United States Senate: A Bitter Rejection.
19. ^ WOODROW WILSON: Appeal for Support of the League of Nations.
20. ^ Bibliographical Introduction to "Diary, Reminiscences and Memories of Colonel Edward M. House".
21. ^ Wimer, Kurt; Wimer, Sarah (1967), "The Harding Administration, the League of Nations, and the Separate Peace Treaty", The Review of Politics 29 (1): 13–24, http://www.jstor.org/pss/1405810 
22. ^ Foreign Minister Brockdorff-Ranzau when faced with the conditions on May 7th: "Wir kennen die Wucht des Hasses, die uns hier entgegentritt. Es wird von uns verlangt, daß wir uns als die allein Schuldigen am Krieg bekennen; ein solches Bekenntnis wäre in meinem Munde eine Lüge". 2008 School Projekt Heinrich-Heine-Gesamtschule, Düsseldorf http://www.fkoester.de/kursbuch/unterrichtsmaterial/13_2_74.html
23. ^ 2008 School Projekt Heinrich-Heine-Gesamtschule, Düsseldorf http://www.fkoester.de/kursbuch/unterrichtsmaterial/13_2_74.html
24. ^ Lauteinann, Geschichten in Quellen Bd. 6, S. 129.
25. ^ Koppel S. Pinson (1964). Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization (13th printing ed.). New York: Macmillan. p. 397 f. 
26. ^ Markwell, Donald, John Maynard Keynes and International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace, Oxford University Press, 2006.
27. ^ Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919 Ch VI. quote: The Treaty includes no provisions for the economic rehabilitation of Europe,--nothing to make the defeated Central Empires into good neighbors, nothing to stabilize the new States of Europe, nothing to reclaim Russia; nor does it promote in any way a compact of economic solidarity amongst the Allies themselves; no arrangement was reached at Paris for restoring the disordered finances of France and Italy, or to adjust the systems of the Old World and the New. The Council of Four paid no attention to these issues, being preoccupied with others,--Clemenceau to crush the economic life of his enemy, Lloyd George to do a deal and bring home something which would pass muster for a week, the President to do nothing that was not just and right. It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic problems of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of the Four. Reparation was their main excursion into the economic field, and they settled it as a problem of theology, of polities, of electoral chicane, from every point of view except that of the economic future of the States whose destiny they were handling.
28. ^ Reynolds, David. (February 20, 1994). "Over There, and There, and There." Review of: "A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II," by Gerhard L. Weinberg. New York: Cambridge University Press.
29. ^ Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (London: Pan, 2002), p. 392.
30. ^ Barnett, p. 316.
31. ^ Barnett, p. 318.
32. ^ Barnett, p. 319.
33. ^ ^{a b c} La Seconde Guerre mondiale, Raymond Cartier, Paris, Larousse Paris Match, 1965, quoted in: Die "Jagd auf Deutsche" im Osten, Die Verfolgung begann nicht erst mit dem "Bromberger Blutsonntag" vor 50 Jahren, by Pater Lothar Groppe, © Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung / 28. August 2004.

References

• Andelman, David (2008). A Shattered Peace. London: J. Wiley. ISBN 9780471788980. 
• Demarco, Neil (1987). The World This Century. London: Collins Educational. ISBN 0003222179. 
• Macmillan, Margaret (2001). Peacemakers. London: John Murray. ISBN 0719559391. 
• Markwell, Donald (2006). John Maynard Keynes and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198292368. 
• Nicolson, Harold (2001). Peacemaking, 1919. London: Simon Publications. ISBN 193154154X. 
• Wheeler-Bennett, Sir John (1972). The Wreck of Reparations, being the political background of the Lausanne Agreement, 1932. New York: H. Fertig. 

External links

• Photographs of the document
• The consequences of the Treaty of Versailles for today's world
• Peace Treaty?
• Text of Protest by Germany and Acceptance of Fair Peace Treaty
• "Versailles Revisted" (Review of Manfred Boemeke, Gerald Feldman and Elisabeth Glaser, The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years. Cambridge, UK: German History Institute, Washington, and Cambridge University Press, 1998), Strategic Studies 9:2 (Spring 2000), 191-205
• My 1919 - A film from the Chinese point of view, the only country that did not sign the treaty

v • d • e World War I treaties Sykes–Picot • St.-Jean-de-Maurienne • French–Armenian • Damascus Protocol London • Brest-Litovsk • Batum • Versailles • Saint-Germain-en-Laye • Neuilly-sur-Seine • Trianon • Sèvres • Rapallo • Alexandropol • Moscow • Cilicia • Ankara • Kars • Lausanne Following Montreux Convention See also: Fourteen Points • Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire

v • d • e World War I European theatre: (Balkans · Western Front · Eastern Front · Italian Front) Middle Eastern theatre: (Caucasus · Mesopotamia · Sinai and Palestine · Gallipoli · Persia) African theatre: (South-West · West · East · North) Asian and Pacific theatre: (Siege of Tsingtao) Atlantic Ocean · Mediterranean Major participants (People) Entente Powers Russian Empire/Republic · French Empire: France, Vietnam · British Empire: United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa · Italy · Romania · United States · Serbia · Portugal · China · Japan · Belgium · Montenegro · Greece · Armenia · Brazil Central Powers Germany · Austria–Hungary · Ottoman Empire · Bulgaria Timeline Pre-conflicts Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) · Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912) · First Balkan War (1912–1913) · Second Balkan War (1913) Prelude Origins · Sarajevo assassination · July Ultimatum 1914 Battle of the Frontiers · Battle of Cer · First Battle of the Marne · Battle of Tannenberg · Battle of Galicia · Battle of the Masurian Lakes · Battle of Kolubara · Battle of Sarıkamış · Race to the Sea  · First Battle of Ypres 1915 Second Battle of Ypres · Battle of Gallipoli · Battles of the Isonzo · Great Retreat · Conquest of Serbia · Siege of Kut 1916 Erzerum Offensive · Battle of Verdun · Lake Naroch Offensive · Battle of Asiago · Battle of Jutland · Battle of the Somme · Brusilov Offensive · Conquest of Romania 1917 Capture of Baghdad · Second Battle of Arras · Kerensky Offensive · Third Battle of Ypres · Battle of Caporetto · Battle of Cambrai 1918 Armistice of Erzincan · Treaty of Brest-Litovsk · Spring Offensive · Hundred Days Offensive · Meuse-Argonne Offensive · Battle of Megiddo · Battle of Vittorio Veneto · Armistice with Germany · Armistice with Ottoman Empire Other conflicts Maritz Rebellion (1914–1915) · Indo-German Conspiracy (1914–1919) · Easter Rising (1916) · Russian Revolution (1917) · Finnish Civil War (1918) Post-conflicts Russian Civil War (1917–1921) · Armenian–Azerbaijani War (1918–1920) · Georgian–Armenian War (1918) · German Revolution (1918–1919) · Hungarian–Romanian War (1918–1919) · Greater Poland Uprising (1918–1919) · Estonian War of Independence (1918–1920) · Latvian War of Independence (1918–1920) · Lithuanian Wars of Independence (1918–1920) · Ukrainian War of Independence (1917–1921) · Polish–Soviet War (1919–1921) · Polish–Lithuanian War (1920) · Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) · Turkish War of Independence including the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1923) · Russian invasion of Georgia (1921) · Irish Civil War (1922–1923) Aspects Warfare Military engagements · Naval warfare · Air warfare · Cryptography · Poison gas · Railways · Technology · Trench warfare · Total war · Surviving veterans Civilian impact / atrocities Casualties · Spanish flu · Rape of Belgium · Ottoman People: (Armenian Genocide · Assyrian Genocide · Pontic Greek Genocide) · Female roles · Literature Agreements / Treaties Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire · Sykes-Picot • St.-Jean-de-Maurienne • French-Armenian • Damascus • Paris Peace Conference · Treaty of Brest-Litovsk · Treaty of Lausanne · Treaty of London · Treaty of Neuilly · Treaty of St. Germain · Treaty of Sèvres · Treaty of Trianon · Treaty of Versailles Consequences Aftermath · "Fourteen Points" · League of Nations Category · Portal World War I from Wiktionary · WWI Textbooks from Wikibooks · WWI Quotations from Wikiquote · WWI Source texts from Wikisource · WWI Images & media from Commons · WWI News stories from Wikinews

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