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Treaty of Versailles

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The Treaty of Versailles of 1919 was the peace treaty which officially ended World War I between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany. After six months of negotiations which took place at the Paris Peace Conference, the treaty was signed as a follow-up to the armistice signed in November 1918 in Compiègne Forest (which had put an end to the actual fighting). Although there were many agreements to the treaty, one of the more important and recognized agreement required that Germany accept full responsibility for causing the war and, under the terms of articles 231-247, make reparations to certain of the Allies.

Terms imposed by the Treaty included Germany losing a certain amount of its territory to a number of surrounding countries, being stripped of all its overseas and African colonies, and its ability to make war again was limited by restrictions on the size of its military. Germany also acknowledged and agreed to respect the independence of Austria. Germany's foreign minister, Hermann Müller, undersigned it on June 28, 1919. The treaty was ratified by the League of Nations on January 10, 1920. In Germany the treaty caused shock and humiliation which contributed to the collapse of the Weimar Republic in 1933 and Adolf Hitler's rise to power.

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Conditions

Th aty had provided for the creation of the League of Nations, a major goal of US president Woodrow Wilson. The League of Nations was intended to arbitrate international disputes and thereby avoid future wars. Not all 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 the "fourteenth point", the League of Nations. 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. Other provisions included the loss of the German colonial empire and loss of some territories Germany had annexed or conquered in the relatively recent past:

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 on September 1919 and signed a separate new equal treaty with Germany in 1921.

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Military

F loss of Alsace-Lorraine after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the reparations required of France by Germany plus the deliberate destruction and plundering of Northern France by the retreating German army in the final days of war in 1918, contributed to the staunch position taken by France for reparations and the return of territory. Furthermore, the large number of casualties and massive economic damage resulting from the war (much of which was fought on French soil) caused a fear of future German aggression and an even greater sentiment for revenge.

The German Army was to be restricted to 100,000 men, there was to be no tanks or heavy artillery and no German General Staff. The German Navy was restricted to 15,000 men and no submarines while the fleet was limited to six battleships (of less than 10,000 tons), six cruisers and 12 destroyers. Germany was not permitted an air force (Luftwaffe). Finally, Germany was explicitly required to retain all enlisted men for 12 years and all officers for 25 years, so that only a limited number of men would have military training.

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Reparations and the War Guilt Clause

Woodrow Wilson with the American Peace Commissioners
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Woodrow Wilson with the American Peace Commissioners

In her book, Margaret Olwen MacMillan wrote that "from the start, France and Belgium argued that claims for direct damage should receive priority in any distribution of reparations. Belgium had been picked clean. In the heavily industrialized north of France, the Germans had shipped out what they wanted for their own use and destroyed much of the rest. Even as German forces were retreating in 1918, they found time to blow up France's most important coal mines." Article 231 of the Treaty (the 'war guilt' clause) held Germany solely responsible for all 'loss and damage' suffered by the Allies during the war and provided the basis for reparations. The total sum due was decided by an Inter-Allied Reparations Commission. In January 1921, this number was officially put at 269 billion gold marks, a sum that many economists deemed to be excessive. Later that year, the amount was reduced to 132 billion marks, which still seemed astronomical to most German observers, both because of the amount itself as well as the terms which would have required Germany to pay until 1987.

The economic problems that the payments brought, and German resentment at their imposition, are cited by many as one of the causes of the end of the Weimar Republic and the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, which eventually led to the outbreak of World War II. This theory was discounted in the book Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret Olwen MacMillan. In 1921, Carl Melchior, a WWI soldier and German financier with M. M. Warburg & CO who became part of the German negotiating team, thought it advisable to accept an impossible reparations burden. Melchior said: "We can get through the first two or three years with the aid of foreign loans. By the end of that time foreign nations will have realized that these large payments can only be made by huge German exports and these exports will ruin the trade in England and America so that creditors themselves will come to us to request modification." (Quote from: Lord D'Abernon, An Ambassador of Peace, Vol. 1, p. 194.) In any case, the reparations issue was used by some in Germany as nationalistic proganda.

The 1924 Dawes Plan modified Germany's reparation payments. In 1930, the Young Plan reduced further payments to US$26,350,000,000 to be paid over a period of 58½ years. In addition, the Young Plan divided the annual payment, set at about US$473 million, into two components, one unconditional part equal to one third of the sum and a postponable part for the remaining two-thirds. However, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression resulted in the Allies instituting a moratorium for 1931–32 during which the Lausanne Conference voted to cancel reparations. By this time Germany had paid only one eighth of the sum required under the Treaty of Versailles. However, the Lausanne agreement was contingent upon the United States agreeing to also defer payment of the war debt owed them by the Western European governments. The plan ultimately failed because of the U.S. Congress refusal to go along but in fact no more reparations were paid by Germany.

On Adolf Hitler's ascension to power, he resolved to overturn the remaining military and territorial provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.

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An unsatisfactory compromise between the victors

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
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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

The "Big Three" consisted of Prime Minister Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France, and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States of America. This would later be mirrored with the "Big Three" of WWII being Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Sir Winston Churchill. Giorgio Sonnino also served as an advisor from Italy (being the fourth in the alternate moniker "the Big Four") and Count Makino was also sent from Japan. But Germany was not invited to France,to discuss the treaty. At the Treaty of Versailles it was difficult to decide on a common position because their aims conflicted with one another. The result was said to be a compromise that nobody liked. Henry Kissinger called the treaty a "brittle compromise agreement between American utopism and European paranoia - too conditional to fulfill the dreams of the former, too tentative to alleviate the fears of the latter."

France had suffered very heavy casualties during the war (some 1.24 million military and 40,000 civilians dead; see World War I casualties), and much of the war had been fought on French soil. Much of the country 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. In 1871, France and Germany had also fought, with Germany recovering an area with a predominantly German-speaking population that had been annexed by France in the 17th century, Elsaß/Lothringen -Alsace-Lorraine. Clemenceau also wanted to guard against the possibility of an attack ever coming from Germany again, and demanded a demilitarisation of the Rhineland in Germany, and Allied troops to patrol the area. This was called a "territorial safety zone". 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.

Not only did France want 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. Clemenceau largely represented the people of France in that he (and many other Frenchmen) wanted revenge upon the German nation. Clemenceau also wanted to protect secret treaties and impose naval blockades around Germany, so that France could control trade imported to and exported from the defeated country. In effect, Clemenceau and many other French wanted to impose policies deliberately meant to cripple Germany militarily, politically, and economically. He was the most radical member of the Big Three, and received the nickname "Le Tigre" for this reason.

The United Kingdom had played a backseat role only in that the country itself was never invaded. Many British soldiers died on the front line in France, and so many people in Britain also wanted revenge as much as the French. Prime Minister 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.

On the other hand, US president Woodrow Wilson had very different views about how to punish Germany. He had proposed the Fourteen Points before the war ended, which were less harsh than what the French or British wanted. Since the American people had been in the war only since April 1917, they felt that they should get out of the European mess as rapidly as possible. President Wilson, however, wanted to institute a world policy that ensured that nothing like this could ever happen again. In order to maintain peace, the first attempt at a world court was created - the League of Nations. The theory was that if weaker and more fragile nations were attacked, others would guarantee protection from the aggressor.

In addition, Wilson strongly promoted the concept of "self-determination"--the idea that distinct national and/or ethnic groups should be self-governing. This notion of self-determination resulted in increased patriotic sentiment in many countries that were or had once been under the control of the old empires, and even received popular support in some of the imperial home countries. Self-determination was, and continues to be, a source of friction between different ethnic groups around the world as each group seeks to define and enhance its position in the world.

The acceptance by many peoples of the concept of self-determination was the beginning of the end for the empires, including those of Britain and France. Self-determination is partly the reason so many new countries were created in Eastern Europe; Wilson was not willing to agree to an increase in the size of Britain, France, or Italy. Poles fought against Germany to regain freedom in: the Greater Poland Uprising in Posen and three Silesian Uprisings in Upper Silesia.

Territorial adjustments were made with the aim of grouping together ethnic minorities in their own states, free from the domination of once powerful empires, specifically the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. Secret treaties were also to be discouraged, and Britain and France greeted a reduction in armaments by all nations with disapproval. This was supposed to reduce indirectly the ability of navies to create blockades.

The Big Three knew even before they met that they wanted to punish Germany. France wanted revenge, Britain wanted a relatively strong economically viable Germany as a counterweight to French dominance on Continental Europe, and the U.S. wanted the creation of a permanent peace as quickly as possible, as well as the destruction of the old empires. The result was a compromise which left nobody satisfied. Germany was neither crushed nor conciliated, which did not bode well for the future of Germany, Europe and the world as a whole. The Treaty of Versailles did cripple Germany's economy in the early 1920's and left it vulnerable to the equally devastating Great Depression of the early 1930's, which in turn paved the way for Nazism to receive popular support. Implementing reparations also failed to achieve its punitive aims insofar as Germany profited from the treaty by neither repaying most of its foreign loans in the following decade nor completing her indemnity payments.

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Alternative viewpoints

The interpretation that Germany was seriously weakened and humiliated by the Versailles Treaty has been disputed by some historians. Some of the facts cited include:

  • The commissions to supervise disarmament were withdrawn and the reparations payments were reduced and eventually cancelled, to mention just some of the changes made in Germany's favour. It is worth mentioning that the financial burden of reconstruction was shifted from Germany to those countries that were actually occupied and devastated by the war.
  • Germany's industry and economic potential were less affected than her European enemies, and although weakened by the war, Germany was relatively stronger vis-a-vis her enemies in 1919 than she had been in 1913.
  • The creation of Poland, so derided by the critics of Versailles, shielded Germany from her potentially most powerful adversary, Russia. Independent Poland thwarted the Bolshevik advance into a war-weakened Europe at the Battle of Warsaw in 1920, at a time when Germany faced Communist-inspired unrest and revolution.
  • The postwar situation in the Balkans left Germany infinitely more powerful than any of her eastern or south-eastern European neighbours, none of which showed any signs of working together against Germany.
  • In short, Germany was strong enough to dominate Europe once more within two decades of her defeat in World War One.

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

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Further reading

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See also

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External links

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