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TREATY OF VERSAILLES |
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by Wikipedia
The Treaty of Versailles (1919) was the peace treaty
which officially ended World War I between the Allied and Associated
Powers and Germany. It was signed exactly 5 years after the
assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the event that triggered
the start of the war. Although the armistice signed on November 11,
1918 put an end to the actual fighting, it took six months of
negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude a peace
treaty. Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most
important and controversial provisions required Germany and its
allies to accept full responsibility for causing the war and, under
the terms of articles 231-248, disarm, make substantial territorial
concessions and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed
the Allies. The Treaty was undermined by subsequent events starting
as early as 1922 and was widely flouted by the mid thirties.
The aims of the victors 
Left to Right, Prime Minister David Lloyd George
of the United Kingdom, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Prime Minister
Georges Clemenceau of France, and President Woodrow Wilson of the
United States of America
Even before meeting in Versailles, the leaders of
France, Britain, and the United States had stated their differing
objectives for the peace conference. France had wanted Germany to be
punished, Britain wanted a relatively strong, economically viable
Germany as a counterweight to French and Russian dominance in
Continental Europe, and the United States wanted the creation of a
permanent peace as quickly as possible, with financial compensation
for its military expenditures.
The result of these competing and sometimes incompatible goals among the victors was a compromise that left nobody satisfied. Germany was neither crushed nor conciliated, which, in retrospect, did not bode well for the future of Germany, Europe or the world as a whole. France's aims
France had suffered very heavy casualties during the
war (some 1.4 million military and 400,000 civilians dead; see World
War I casualties), and much of the western front had been fought on
French soil. Thus, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau largely
represented the people of France in that he wanted revenge upon the
German nation. Clemenceau wanted to impose policies deliberately
meant to cripple Germany militarily, politically, and economically.
Clemenceau's intentions were therefore simple: punitive reparations and Germany’s military to be not only weakened for the time being, but permanently weakened so as never to be able to invade France again. Clemenceau also wanted to symbolically destroy the old, militaristic Germany—something that could have been achieved by never allowing the pre-1914 politicians back into politics and by hanging the Kaiser (who had abdicated towards the end of the war and fled to the Netherlands). He also wanted to protect secret treaties and impose naval blockades around Germany; so that France could control trade imported to and exported goods from the defeated country. Clemenceau was the most radical member of the Big Four, and received the nickname "Le Tigre" (Tiger) for this reason. Most Frenchmen agreed that France should be given control of many of Germany's factories. Coal from the Ruhr industrial region was transported to France by train. French military had taken over towns in key locations such as Gau Algesheim, forcing homelessness upon its inhabitants. German railroad workers sabotaged coal shipments to France. Around 200 German railroad workers involved in sabotage were executed by French authorities. In addition, France felt that Germany should be punished territorially. It demanded the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France, which was a territory that had been annexed by France in the 17th century, but was retaken by Germany in 1871. Clemenceau also wanted to guard against the possibility of an attack ever coming from Germany again, and demanded a demilitarization of the Rhineland in Germany, and Allied troops to patrol the area. This was called a "territorial safety zone". Much of France was in ruins, with extensive damage to historic and important buildings and resources. George Clemenceau of France wanted reparations from Germany to rebuild the war-torn country. In all, approximately 750,000 houses and 23,000 factories had been destroyed, and money was demanded to pay for reconstruction. They also wanted to drastically reduce the number of soldiers in the German army to a controllable point. As part of the reparations, France wanted to be given control of many of Germany's factories. France not only wanted to punish Germany; it wanted to preserve its empire and colonies. While America put forward a belief in national or ethnic "self-determination", France and Britain were also strongly motivated by a desire to hold onto their empires. Furthermore, France felt that Germany’s colonies should be taken from it and distributed among the victors. Clemenceau's aims can be summarized by the 4 'R's, as follows:
Britain's aims
Though Britain had not been invaded, many British soldiers died on the front line in France; so many people in Britain also wanted revenge. Prime Minister David Lloyd George supported severe 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 extremely powerful in Central Europe, and a delicate balance could be unsettled. Although he wanted to ensure this didn't happen, he also wanted to make Germany pay. 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. This position was part of the competition between two of the world's greatest empires, and their battle to preserve them. Like the French, Lloyd George also supported naval blockades and secret treaties. It is often suggested that Lloyd George represented the middle ground between the idealistic Wilson and the vengeful Clemenceau. However, his position was a great deal more delicate than it first appears. The British public wanted to punish Germany in a similar fashion to the French for its apparent sole responsibility for the outbreak of the war, and had been promised such a treaty in the 1918 election that Lloyd George had won. There was also pressure from the Conservatives (who were part of the coalition government) demanding that Germany be punished severely in order to prevent such a war in the future as well as preserving Britain’s empire. Lloyd George did manage to increase the overall reparations payment and Britain’s share by demanding compensation for widows, orphans, and men left unable to work through injury. Also, he wanted to maintain and possibly increase Britain’s colonies, and both he and Clemenceau felt threatened by Wilson’s 'self-determination,' which they saw as a direct threat to their respective empires. However, Lloyd George was aware of the potential trouble that could come from an embittered Germany, and he felt that a less harsh treaty that did not engender vengeance would be better at preserving peace in the long run. Another factor was that Germany was Britain’s second largest trade partner, and a reduced German economy due to reparations would lower Britain’s trade. Moreover, he (and Clemenceau) recognized that America’s status as an economic superpower would lead to the U.S. becoming a military superpower in the future, and subsequently, Wilson’s idealistic stance could not be laughed at if Britain and France were to remain on good terms with the United States. This helps to understand why the League of Nations, Wilson’s main idea (along with self-determination), was apparently jumped at by Britain and France when Wilson arrived at the peace conference. Furthermore, Britain wanted to maintain the 'Balance of Power' — no country within Europe being allowed to become a great deal more powerful than the others. If France's wishes were carried out, then not only would Germany be crippled, but France would soon become the main superpower, and so disrupt the Balance of Power in two ways. Lloyd George's aims can be summarized as follows:
United States of America
Fourteen Points Since there had been strong isolationist sentiment before and after the United States entered the war in April 1917, many Americans felt eager to extricate themselves from European affairs as rapidly as possible. The United States took a more conciliatory view towards the issue of German reparations. Americans also wanted to ensure the success of future trading opportunities and favourably collect on the European debt. Before the end of the war, President Woodrow Wilson, along with other American officials including Edward Mandell House, put forward his Fourteen Points which were less harsh than what the French or British wanted and which the German public thought that the Treaty would be based around, giving them hope, if albeit false. Wilson also did not want any more secret diplomacy, e.g. secret alliances, treaties etc. He also demanded that Germany should have a reduction in armament, which means that their army would be reduced to a smaller size to make another war completely out of the question. He also wanted other nations to do the same, limiting the risk of war further, as he makes clear in point IV. Here is a section from Woodrow Wilson's speech given during the Paris Peace Conference:
Negotiations
 The Palace of Versailles, where the treaty was signed
Negotiations between the Allied powers started on
January 18 in the Salle de l'Horloge at the French Foreign Ministry,
commonly known by its location, the Quai d'Orsay. Initially, 70
delegates of 26 nations participated in the negotiations. 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 1917, in which Germany
gained a large fraction of Russia's land and resources.
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" (head of government and foreign minister) composed 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.[1] After Italy left the negotiations (only to return to sign in June) having its territorial claims to Fiume rejected, the final conditions were determined by the leaders of the "Big Three" nations: United States, France and Great Britain. The "Big Three"[2] that negotiated the treaty consisted of Prime Minister David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States of America. The Prime Minister of Italy, Vittorio Orlando, played a minor part in the discussions. Germany was not invited to discuss the treaty. At Versailles, it was difficult to decide on a common position because their aims conflicted with one another. The result was an "unhappy compromise".[3] Henry Kissinger called the treaty a "brittle compromise agreement between American utopism and European paranoia -- too conditional to fulfil the dreams of the former, too tentative to alleviate the fears of the latter."
Initial rejection of the terms by Germany
On April 29, the German delegation under the leadership of the foreign minister Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau arrived in Versailles. On May 7, the anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, the Germans finally received the peace conditions agreed upon by the victors. Terms imposed by the treaty on Germany included partitioning a certain amount of its own territory to a number of surrounding countries, being stripped of all of its overseas colonies, particularly those in Africa, and limiting its ability to make war again, by restrictions on the size of its military. Because Germany was not allowed to take part in the negotiations, the German government issued a protest to what it considered to be unfair demands, and soon afterwards withdrew from the proceedings. A new German government accepts the treaty On June 20, a new government under Chancellor Gustav Bauer was installed in Germany after Philipp Scheidemann resigned. Germany finally agreed to the conditions with 237 vs. 138 votes on June 23. On June 28, 1919[4] the new German foreign minister Hermann Müller and the minister of transport Johannes Bell agreed to sign the treaty, and it was ratified by the League of Nations on January 10, 1920.
Treaty terms
Overview The terms of the Treaty, which Germany had no choice but to accept, were announced on May 7, 1919. Germany lost:
Territorial Restrictions on Germany
Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia became independent
states (acquired by Germany from Russia at Brest-Litovsk).
Military Restrictions on Germany
Legal Restrictions on Germany
Territorial losses
On its eastern frontier Germany was forced to cede to the newly independent Poland the province of West Prussia, thereby granting Poland access to the Baltic Sea, while Germany lost land access to the province of East Prussia. Danzig was declared a free city under the permanent governance of the League of Nations. Much of the province of Posen, which, like West Prussia, had been acquired by Prussia in the late 18th-century partitions of Poland, was likewise granted to the restored Polish state. A significant portion of coal-rich and industrially developed Upper Silesia was also transferred from Germany to Poland, as the result of a later plebiscite.
Germany was also compelled to yield control of its
colonies. Although these colonies had proven to be economic
liabilities, they had also been symbols of the world-power status
that Germany had gained in the 1880s and '90s. 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.
Besides the loss of the German colonial empire the territories Germany lost were:
Reparations
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 due was decided by an Inter-Allied Reparations Commission. The war reparations that Entente demanded from Germany was 226 billion Reichsmarks in gold (around £11.3 billion), then reduced to 132 billion Reichsmarks. In 1921, this number was officially put at £4,990,000,000, or 132 billion marks. 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. Note however that the amount of the reparations demanded in the treaty of Versailles were comparatively larger (5B Francs vs. 132B Reichsmark). 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.[5] The Versailles Reparations came in a variety of forms, including coal, steel, intellectual property (eg. the patent for Aspirin) and agricultural products. The standard view is that the reparations, particularly forcing Germany to accept the entire blame, were the cause of Germany's economic woes and the concomitant rise of Nazism to power. League of Nations The treaty provided for the creation of the League of Nations, a major goal of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. The League of Nations was intended to arbitrate international disputes and thereby avoid future wars. Only three of Wilson's Fourteen Points were realized, since Wilson was compelled to compromise with Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Orlando on some points in exchange for retaining approval of Wilson's "fourteenth point," the League of Nations.
Reaction to the treaty
Reaction of the Allies
In the eyes of the French people, Clemenceau failed to achieve all of their demands through the Treaty of Versailles. As a result, he was voted out of office in the elections of January 1920. Britain as a whole was at first conten penis. t, because it succeeded in securing more favourable German eastern frontiers, e.g. plebiscites on areas previously assigned to Poland (Masuria, southern Warmia, Upper Silesia) and creation of the Free City of Danzig. Even then Britain felt that the Treaty was too harsh to Germany, causing dissatisfaction that might potentially lead to trouble in the future. In the United States, it was seen as Europe’s problem, but it was also widely believed that the Treaty was too harsh [citation needed]. 
United States U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge who
opposed ratification of the Treaty of Versailles
The United States Senate refused to ratify the
Treaty of Versailles in 1919, making it invalid in the United States
and effectively hamstringing the nascent League of Nations
envisioned by Wilson. The largest obstacle faced in the
ratification of the Treaty of Versailles was the opposition of Henry
Cabot Lodge. It has also been said that Wilson himself was the
second-largest obstacle, primarily because he refused to support the
treaty with any of the alterations proposed by the United States
Senate. As a result, America did not join the League of Nations,
despite Wilson claiming that he could:
"... predict with absolute certainty that if the United States of America does not join the League of Nations, then there will be another war within 20 years." [citation needed]
Those who were present at negotiations were also not
convinced with the Treaty, as Edward Mandell House wrote in his
diary on the 29th 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." [citation needed]
Reaction in Germany
The treaty evoked an angry and hostile reception in Germany from the moment its contents were made known. The Germans were outraged and horrified at the result -- since Wilson's idealistic fourteen points had painted the picture of a different outcome. They did not feel that they were responsible for starting the war nor did they feel as though they had lost. The German people had understood the negotiations at Versailles to be a peace conference and not a surrender. At first, the new government refused to sign the agreement, and the German navy sank its own ships in protest of the treaty. The sinking hardened Allied attitudes and the Allies demanded, by ultimatum, that Germany sign the treaty within twenty-four hours. The alternative was understood to be a resumption of hostilities, with the fighting now on German soil. Faced with this crisis, the German provisional government in Weimar was thrown into upheaval. “What hand would not wither that binds itself and us in these fetters?” asked Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann who then resigned rather than agree to the Treaty. Army chief Paul von Hindenburg did the same, after declaring the army unable to defend Germany against Western attack. With four hours to go German President Friedrich Ebert agreed to the terms. The German delegation to Paris signed the treaty on June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Conservatives, nationalists and ex-military leaders began to speak critically about the peace and Weimar politicians, socialists, communists, and Jews were viewed with suspicion due to their supposed extra-national loyalties. It was rumoured that they had not supported the war and had played a role in selling out Germany to its enemies. These November Criminals, or those who seemed to benefit from the newly formed Weimar Republic, were seen to have "stabbed them in the back" on the home front, by either criticizing German nationalism, instigating unrest and strikes in the critical military industries or profiteering. In essence the accusation was that the accused committed treason against the "benevolent and righteous" common cause. These theories were given credence by the fact that when Germany surrendered in November 1918, its armies were still in French and Belgian territory. Not only had the German Army been in enemy territory the entire time on the Western Front, but on the Eastern Front, Germany had already won the war against Russia, concluded with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In the West, Germany had seemed to come close to winning the war with the Spring Offensive. Contributing to the Dolchstoßlegende, its failure was blamed on strikes in the arms industry at a critical moment of the offensive, leaving soldiers without an adequate supply of materiel. The strikes were seen to be instigated by treasonous elements, with the Jews taking most of the blame. This overlooked Germany's strategic position and ignored how the efforts of individuals were somewhat marginalized on the front, since the belligerents were engaged in a new kind of war. The industrialization of war had dehumanized the process, and made possible a new kind of defeat which the Germans suffered as a total war emerged. Nevertheless, this myth of domestic betrayal resonated among its audience, and its claims would codify the basis for public support for the emerging Nazi Party, under a racialist-based form of nationalism. The anti-Semitism was intensified by the Bavarian Soviet Republic, a Communist government which ruled the city of Munich for two weeks before being crushed by the Freikorps militia. Many of the Bavarian Soviet Republic's leaders were Jewish, a fact that allowed anti-Semitic propagandists to make the connection with "Communist treason".
Technical consequences
Since neither rockets nor glider aircraft were mentioned in the Versailles treaty, Germany spent money on these technologies, including Wernher von Braun's rocket experiments, which in no doubt helped the development of the future space industry. Large glider aircraft designs led to the design of the large Me-321 during World War II which later was motorized and become the Me-323, the largest land-based plane at the time.
Treaty violations
The German economy was so weak that only a small percentage of reparations were paid in money. However, even the payment of this small percentage of the original reparations (219 billion Gold Reichsmarks) still placed a significant burden on the German economy, accounting for as much as one third of post-treaty hyperinflation. Furthermore, the provisions forcing the uncompensated removal of resources and industrial equipment sowed further resentment. Some significant violations (or avoidances) of the provisions of the Treaty were:
Historical assessments
A common view is that France's Clemenceau was the most vigorous in his pursuit of revenge against Germany, the Western Front of the war having been fought chiefly on French soil. This treaty was felt to be unreasonable at the time because it was a peace dictated by the victors that put the full blame for the war on Germany. Many modern historians, however, argue that was an over-simplification. Henry Kissinger called the treaty a "brittle compromise agreement between American utopianism and European paranoia — too conditional to fulfil the dreams of the former, too tentative to alleviate the fears of the latter." In his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes referred to the Treaty of Versailles as a "Carthaginian peace".[6] The French economist Étienne Mantoux wrote a reply to Keynes titled The Carthaginian Peace, or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes, in which he claimed many of the predictions Keynes said would result from the Treaty had not come to pass. For example, Keynes believed European output in iron would decrease but by 1929 iron output in Europe was up 10% from the 1913 figure. Keynes predicted that German iron and steel output would decrease but by 1927 steel output increased by 30% and iron output increased by 38% from 1913 (within the pre-war borders). Keynes also argued that German coal mining efficiency would decrease but labour efficiency by 1929 had increased on the 1913 figure by 30%. Keynes contended that Germany would be unable to export coal immediately after the Treaty but German net coal exports were 15 million tons within a year and by 1926 the tonnage exported reached 35 million. He also put forward the claim that German national savings in the years after the Treaty would be less than 2 billion marks: however in 1925 the German national savings figure was estimated at 6.4 billion marks and in 1927 7.6 billion marks. Keynes also believed that Germany would be unable to pay the 2 billion marks-plus in reparations for the next 30 years, but Mantoux contends that German rearmament spending was seven times as much as that figure in each year between 1933 and 1939.[1] More recently it has been argued (for instance by historian Gerhard Weinberg in his book A World At Arms[7]) that the treaty was in fact quite advantageous to Germany, the Bismarckian Reich being maintained as a political unit instead of being broken up, and Germany having 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 was she was expecting to win the war, had had in mind to impose on the Allies". Furthermore, 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, one half of Russia's industrial undertakings and nine-tenths of Russia's coal mines, coupled with an indemnity of six thousand million marks.[8] Barnett also claimed that in strategic terms Germany was in a superior position after the Treaty than in 1914, for then Germany had eastern frontiers with Russia and Austria, who had both in the past balanced German power. Now the Austrian empire was replaced with smaller, weaker states and Russia with Poland in between. In the West Germany was only balanced by France and Belgium, both of whom were smaller in population and economically than Germany. Barnett concluded by saying that instead of weakening Germany, the Treaty had made German power "much enhanced".[9] 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.[10] 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".[11] 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.
Alternative viewpoints
The interpretation that Germany was seriously weakened and humiliated by the Versailles Treaty has been disputed by some historians. Some arguments include:
Source: A World at Arms: A global history of World
War II, Gerhard L. Weinberg, Cambridge University Press, 2005 (2nd
edition), pp 15-16. ISBN 0521853168
References
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