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TREATY OF VERSAILLES

For other treaties with this name, see Treaty of Versailles (disambiguation)

The Treaty of Versailles (1919) was the peace treaty which officially ended World War I between the Allied and Associated Powers and the German Empire. 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 provisions in the treaty, one of the more important and recognized required that Germany accept full responsibility for causing the war and, under the terms of articles 231-247, make reparations to certain members of the Allies.

Negotiations started on May 7, the anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. Terms imposed by the Treaty included Germany losing a certain amount of its own 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, signed 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 that contributed to the collapse of the Weimar Republic in 1933, especially because many Germans did not believe that they should accept the sole responsibility of Imperial Germany and its allies for starting the war.

Contents

Conditions

The treaty had provided for the creation of the League of Nations, a major goal of US president Wilson. The League of Nations was intended to arbitrate international disputes and thereby avoid future wars. Only four 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.

The common view has been 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 to Germany. This was over-simplistic. Some modern historians, however, argue that this clause was reasonable in that it reflected the harsh terms Germany had negotiated with Russia.

Besides the loss of the German colonial empire the territories Germany lost were:

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 treaty with Germany in 1921.

Military

The German Army was to be restricted to 100,000 men, there were 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 receive new military training.

Reparations and the War Guilt Clause

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 (2790 gold marks equalled 1 kilogram of pure gold), 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 1984.

The economic problems that the payments brought, and German resentment at their imposition, are usually cited as one of the more significant factors that led to the end of the Weimar Republic and the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, which eventually led to the outbreak of World War II. Some historians, such as Margaret Olwen MacMillan, have since disagreed with this assertion, originally popularised by John Maynard Keynes.

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.).

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 first glance, the reparations seem excessive. However, according to William R. Keylor in "Versailles and International Diplomacy", 'A relatively moderate increase in taxation and reduction in consumption in the Weimar Republic would have yielded the requisite export surplus to generate the foreign exchange needed to service the reparation debt.' In "American Reparations to Germany 1919-33", Stephen Schuker says that 'the Weimar Republic ended up paying no net reparations at all, employing the proceeds of American commercial loans to discharge its reparation liability before defaulting on its foreign obligations in the early thirties.'

An unsatisfactory compromise among 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
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 Four" consisted of Prime Minister David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, 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. Canada sent four delegates, including William Lyon Mackenzie King.

But Germany was not invited to France 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 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, 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 the French empire and colonies. While the US 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 Four, and received the nickname "Le Tigre" [The Tiger] 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 did not 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 the Permanent Court of International Justice was created, as part of 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.

In America, the debate about the Treaty was more factious than Wilson's strong determination presented on the world stage. U.S. Senate opinion on the Treaty of Versailles was divided into three distinct views:

  • Internationalists — Democrats loyal to President Woodrow Wilson who wanted the treaty to be ratified in its original form without any amendments or reservations. Some Internationalists were receptive to a small number of minor changes to the treaty.
  • Reservationists — This group claimed to be in favor of the treaty, but only after including a series of reservations prior to ratification. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts was the leader of this faction and was personally dedicated to frustrating the aims of his rival, President Wilson. Other senators in this group sincerely favored the treaty, but wanted some modification to protect vital American interests. The Reservationists were the largest of the three factions.
  • Irreconcilables — Isolationist senators, including Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, William E. Borah of Idaho and Hiram Johnson of California, opposed the treaty and American entry into the League of Nations under any circumstances. They had counseled against entering the war in the first place and now opposed participation in European affairs.

In the end, the Senate voted twice to reject the treaty, thus keeping the US out of the League. Congress passed a joint resolution later in 1921 declaring an end to the state of war with Germany.

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 Four 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, financial compensation for its military spendings 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. 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.

The Treaty of Versailles did however 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. On Nazi Germany's rise to power, Adolf Hitler resolved to overturn the remaining military and territorial provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. German military buildup began almost immediately, in direct defiance of the Treaty. "It was this treaty which caused a chain reaction leading to World War II" said historian Dan Rowling (1951).

Further reading

See also

External links

Preceding: Fourteen Points
Subsequent: League of Nations, Neutrality Acts