The allies should have given Germany a harsh treaty?

Answer 1

There are differing views on whether the Treaty of Versailles was too harsh. This was certainly the dominant view in the 1920's and 1930's. Many historians still present the treaty as unimaginably harsh.

However, the Versailles treaty was not nearly as harsh as - for example - the treatment of Germany after World War II. After all, Germany managed to recover from the treaty sufficiently to invade and terrorise most of Europe 20 years later in World War II.

The reality is that the Treaty of Versailles was a compromise between the major Allied powers (Britain, France and the U.S.). France's two dominant objectives were rebuilding from the war, most of which had been fought on French soil, and making sure that Germany could never threaten France again (this was the second invasion from Germany in 40 years). So the French government was pushing for a very harsh treaty that would turn over German industerial resources (like the coal and factories of the Ruhr Valley) to French control, make Germany pay for the damage done to France, and place strict limits on the size of the German armed forces.

Like the French, Britain wanted the size of Germany's military reduced, particularly its navy. However, the British were worried about crushing Germany too harshly, since they needed to rebuild their export economy and Germany was a major potential trading partner. They also were wary of any one power dominating Europe. So even though France was their ally, they did not want to permanently cripple Germany since that might mean that France would become overwhelmingly dominant.

The U.S. government was conflicted. President Woodrow Wilson wanted to set up a new international order of openness and co-operation in order to prevent future wars. But the American public were disappointed with the results of the war - they felt that they should never have become involved in the power squabbles of the European countries and wanted to return to America's traditional policy of being isolated from world politics. Wilson managed to get the creation of the League of Nations included in the Treaty, but the US government had little interest in imposing a settlement on Germany that would leave resentment in Germany. And the US Senate refused to ratify the treaty and join the league, leaving the League enormously weaker from the start.

As a result, the treaty was painful enough to cause German resentment and unhappiness, while not being strong enough to stop Germany from ever rising to power again.

The dilemma of the creation of the treaty had no right answer - every possibility had its own potential problems. There is no guarantee that a harsher Treaty would have secured the peace of Europe, since the biggest threat to peace was really the fact that all powers were too focused on their own concerns and too worried that acting to stop future agression would burden them with another enormously costly war. With America and Britain both basically washing their hands of Europe, and with France too weak on its own to maintain the post-treaty settlement, there was little chance for a permanent peace.