the treaty of versailles was unfair essay

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Arguments For and Against the Fairness of the Versailles Settlement

• ❖ They believed Germany only said that it was unable to meet the terms because it wanted to escape punishment .
• ❖ They thought it punished the defeated countries but gave them the opportunity to recover.
• ❖ Some people believed it wasn't harsh enough. The French, especially, were worried Germany would soon recover enough strength to challenge France again.
• ❖ In 1918 Germany itself had made a treaty with defeated Russia , the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk , that was much harsher than the Versailles Settlement .
• ❖ Germany had already agreed to pay reparations in the Armistice of November 1918.
• ❖ At the time, the First World War was the most devastating conflict the world had seen, and people saw it as the right thing for losing nations to be punished in this manner.
• ❖ 'History is written by the victors,' as the saying goes. In most wars it is common for the losers to agree to a harsh settlement.
• ❖ There were problems with the peace settlement, but the war had a huge impact on the geography of Europe. The peacemakers had to act quickly before the region became unstable so they did the best job they could.
• ❖ Some people, particularly in Germany, but also British politicians like J M Keynes, felt the Versailles Settlement was unfairly harsh for the following reasons:
• ❖ They had expected it to follow Wilson's 14 Points, but it differed from these significantly. Wilson's points were based on creating a fairer world for everyone; had they known the treaty would not be based on these principles, Germany might not have signed.
• ❖ They didn't believe Germany should accept the blame for the war. The causes of the war were complex; each leading European nation, including Britain, played a role in the tensions that led to war in 1914.
• ❖ They felt it was a revenge treaty , designed to make the Germans suffer.
• ❖ Many people feared it would lead to another war once Germany had recovered enough to take revenge.
• ❖ Six million Germans were displaced and had to live in other countries, despite Wilson's principle of self-determination . They feared persecution as they had been forced to accept responsibility for the war.
• ❖ The German people felt the treaty was a ' diktat ', a dictated peace, because they were not allowed to have a say at the conference.
• ❖ German was hugely affected economically by the war and felt it would never recover from the scale of reparations.
• ❖ The Treaty of Lausanne undermined any arguments about fairness regarding the Versailles Treaty .

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Treaty of Versailles Unfair

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The Treaty of Versailles: Fair or Unfair?

The Treaty of Versailles, signed June 28 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference, was a treaty created by the Allied powers that ended the war five years after it started. The treaty reprimanded and condemned Germany for its overt aggression that started the war. The Allied powers—specifically the Big Three of the United States, Great Britain, and France—sought reparation for damages resulting from the war. The treaty disallowed Germany from entering the League of Nations for fifteen years, gave France certain territories back, created a demilitarized zone, and weakened Germany’s armed forces. ((From  The Treaty of Versailles and After: Annotations of the Text of the Treaty))  The language in the treaty is demanding and forthright, as it does not resist in expressing its desire for reparations; Germany views many of the demands as impossible to meet or simply too strict. However, having lost significant amounts of resources, troops, and money as a result of the war, Germany subsequently forced to agree to the demands of set forth in the treaty as they had no choice. However, after ratification, the treaty was eventually revised, giving Germany much more breathing room.

The treaty was created not only to reprimand Germany, but to send a message to Germany and its allies that over-aggression is not accepted in the international community. Any disregard of the law would result in significant punishment. However, the Treaty of Versailles backfired on the Allied powers and the rest of the world, as the strict demands inspired German nationalism. In effect, the Treaty of Versailles inspired Germany to reignite its military, leading to the rise of Hitler and Germany’s power during World War II.

I’m interested to potentially look into this more in the future, whether that be personal research or through taking a World War I class. Though Germany deserved its punishment for starting the war, (some people may disagree) I’m wondering if the Allied powers envisioned such an angry response. Do you think the demands listed in the Treaty of Versailles were too much, or not? Why was Germany so angry? How could Germany have responded in a much more peaceful way? Or, do you think Germany really shouldn’t have been punished much at all? I’m curious to see your responses to this.

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No, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles Was Not Responsible for World War II

Although we typically think of November 11, 1918, as the end date of World War I , that day only marked the start of an armistice ending the actual fighting, not the official termination of the war. To bring about a formal conclusion to the Great War, the victorious Allied Powers (led by Britain, France, the United States and Italy) had to complete peace treaties with each of their opponents in the Central Powers (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire).  

The most important of these treaties was the Treaty of Versailles, ending the war with Germany that was produced by the Paris Peace Conference and signed June 28, 1919. Yet even before the treaty was signed, it sparked criticism and controversy. And when World War II erupted 20 years later, the treaty was maligned and blamed for causing the political, economic and military conditions that led to the 1939-45 global conflict.

In the decades since, generations of historians have written countless books and other works creating what “everyone knows ” about the 1919 Treaty of Versailles: The overly punitive treaty, imposed as “victors’ justice” on helpless Germany by the triumphant Allies, was chiefly responsible for making World War II inevitable. Its “war guilt” article humiliated Germany by forcing it to accept all blame for the war, and it imposed disastrously costly war reparations that destroyed both the post-World War I German economy and the democratic Weimar Republic. The treaty, therefore, ensured the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party . Moreover, the U.S. Senate’s refusal to ratify the treaty caused the collective security organization, the League of Nations, to fail because the United States was not a member. Furthermore, no less an authority than French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the World War I supreme Allied commander, apparently agreed with this assessment, famously complaining in 1919, “This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years!”

Yet while the Treaty of Versailles did result in a failed peace and another world war only two decades later, its real failures are not what we have been led to believe for over 90 years. When we examine the facts , it becomes clear that what “everyone knows” about the infamous treaty is simply wrong .

THE 1919 PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE: THE TIGER AND THE LOOT

From January 18 to June 28, 1919, 32 delegations representing 27 countries met in Paris to produce the Versailles Treaty officially ending the Allies’ war with Germany. Despite the large number of countries involved, the conference was dominated by the “Big Four” major Allied Powers: the United States, Great Britain, France and Italy. Anyone remotely familiar with the history of international diplomacy would not be shocked to learn that during the conference each of the Big Four representatives pursued his own agenda, which included goals that frequently conflicted with those of his counterparts.

President Woodrow Wilson decided to personally represent the United States at the conference, yet it is hard to imagine anyone more naively idealistic about the true nature of international relations. (See Special Feature , “War and Diplomacy,” July 2010 ACG .) Wilson was a bona fide intellectual and social “progressive,” but he often seemed insufferably self-righteous and his view of how nations conducted international relations was, at best, a triumph of hope over experience — he was convinced that “good will” among world leaders would overcome supposedly petty national interests and cynical balance of power politics. Wilson’s idealistic worldview is best captured in his “14 Points” statement, announced in January 1918, calling for free trade, freedom of the seas, open agreements between nations, the promotion of democracy and self-determination among peoples worldwide, and the establishment of the League of Nations to ensure territorial integrity and to maintain world peace.

Although the Big Four European members used Wilson’s 14 Points as enticing propaganda to help convince Germany to surrender in 1918, they represented colonial powers that hardly considered global “democracy and self-determination” in their national interests. Self-determination was applied in the Versailles Treaty when it suited the European members’ interests, but was ignored when it did not. Wilson found that to persuade his more pragmatic European allies to agree to his cherished League of Nations, he had to compromise on most of his other points.

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France was represented by its “Tiger,” Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. Since Germany had invaded France twice in the previous four decades in wars fought on French soil (in 1870 and 1914), Clemenceau’s principal goals were ensuring his country’s security against future German aggression, to include permanent demilitarization of the Rhineland (Germany west of the Rhine River) and restrictions on German military forces, and requiring Germany to pay reparations for the civilian damages wrought by its brutal, exploitative, four-year occupation of northern France and Belgium. During the occupation of northern France – an area containing nearly 60 percent of the country’s steel manufacture and 40 percent of its coal production – the Germans had confiscated and shipped back home what they wanted, and when they evacuated the region near the end of the war, they sabotaged much of what they had left behind. Clemenceau’s insistence that the German invaders be required to pay for the civilian damages they had caused in France and Belgium became the principal justification for the Versailles treaty’s war reparations articles.

Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who had held the post since 1916, represented Great Britain. Although he was considered the epitome of 20th-century liberalism and a social reformer, he proved ruthless enough to maintain Britain’s naval blockade that strangled Germany of vital food supplies for eight months after the November 1918 armistice. Tens of thousands of German civilians died of starvation or malnutrition-related illnesses before Britain finally lifted the blockade once Germany signed the Versailles treaty. Lloyd George largely accomplished his main goals, which were eliminating Germany’s High Seas Fleet as a threat to the Royal Navy and maintaining the British Empire. He even added to Britain’s colonial empire when it (along with France, Belgium and Japan) assumed “mandates” (colonies in all but name) over colonies the treaty stripped from Germany and the Ottoman Empire. Britain acquired Iraq, Palestine and Jordan in the Middle East and four former German colonies in Africa.

The major goal of Italy’s representative, Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, was “loot” in the form of increased territory for his country. Bribed by the Allies with promises of territorial gains, Italy entered the war in 1915 against Austria-Hungary and in 1916 against Germany. Thus Orlando was in Paris to collect, but Italy’s dismal battlefield record had hardly put him in a position to make demands. Orlando stormed out of the conference in April when it became clear that Italy would not receive all the territory it wanted.

The treaty signed June 28, 1919, in Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors comprised 440 articles in 426 pages (English text and French text on facing pages), plus annexes and maps. Its several parts notably included part I establishing the League of Nations; part II creating Germany’s postwar boundaries (Germany lost 13 percent of its territory and all of its colonies); part V imposing military restrictions on Germany’s armed forces; and part VIII specifying war reparations to be paid principally to France, Belgium, Britain and Italy for civilian damages caused by the German invasion and occupation.

After decades of propaganda and mythmaking, however, it is time to set the record straight by revealing what the Treaty of Versailles did not do.

WAR REPARATIONS: REVENGE OR REVISIONISM?

First and foremost, a stake should be driven once and for all through the heart of the most egregiously false claim about the Treaty of Versailles — that Germany was unfairly saddled with heavily punitive, disastrously costly war reparations that destroyed its postwar economy, caused crippling hyperinflation and doomed the democratic Weimar Republic. In fact, requiring defeated nations to pay reparations to the victors was a long-standing feature of treaties ending European wars. This penalty was not suddenly invented at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference to punish Germany; rather, it was simply “business as usual.” Germany had typically imposed similar penalties on countries it had defeated, including demanding billions of marks from Russia in the heavily punitive March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. (See “Treaty of Brest-Litovsk,” p. 45.) Significantly, Germany had forced France to pay billions in “indemnities” after its victory in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War – and German forces continued occupying part of France until payment was made. The French promptly paid in full, even though the cost was equal to 25 percent of their national income.

The next important point is two-fold: First, the reparations Germany was required to pay were for civilian damages caused by its invasion and occupation of Belgium and northern France. Second, the Allies calculated the amount based on Germany’s ability to pay, not on the actual cost of repairing those damages – which was much greater. The claim that the Versailles treaty required Germany to pay “the entire cost of the war” is completely false, as verified in Article 232, which stated that Germany was to pay “compensation for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allied and Associated Powers and to their property during the period of belligerency.”

Another revealing fact is that the figure Germany supposedly was required to pay for reparations — a hefty 132 billion marks – was intentionally misleading. The Allies never intended Germany to pay such a huge sum. It was only included in the treaty as “spin” — an effort to fool the (principally French) general public into thinking that Germany was going to be severely punished economically for its war depredations. As historian and economist Sally Marks, among others, has pointed out, the actual figure the Allies intended Germany to pay, and which they had calculated Germany could pay, was a more modest 50 billion marks. In fact, during treaty negotiations, the Germans had offered to pay 51 billion!

Yet Germany never paid even that much lower figure. Between 1920 and 1931 (when Germany suspended reparations payments indefinitely) it paid only 20 billion. But even this figure is misleading, since only 12.5 billion of it was paid in cash. The remainder was paid “in kind” through deliveries of coal, chemicals, lumber and railway assets. Moreover, the 12.5 billion in cash was from money Germany acquired through loans from bankers in New York. Germany not only received far more money in U.S. loans (27 billion) than it paid out in cash for reparations, in 1932 it also defaulted on these loans after paying back only a small percentage.

In effect, except for a few billion “in kind” payments, Germany paid no war reparations out of its own pocket. What “everyone knows” about Germany being crippled by war reparations therefore is a myth. French economist Etienne Mantoux surely was right when he wrote, “Germany was not unable to pay reparations, it was unwilling to pay them.”

HYPERINFLATION: 4 BILLION MARKS FOR A BEER

Closely related to the “crippling and punitive” war reparations myth is the claim that the reparations were the cause of the disastrous hyperinflation that ruined Germany’s economy between 1921 and 1924. Yet as noted, from 1920 to 1931, Germany, with the help of U.S. loans, paid only a small fraction of the reparations it was supposed to pay — hardly enough to ruin its economy.

The roots of Germany’s post-World War I disastrous hyperinflation stem from the beginning of the war when the Kaiser and his ministers decided how they would finance the costly conflict. Instead of imposing taxes to pay for the war, they decided to fund it by borrowing. The effect of this decision was to begin a steady devaluation of the German mark against foreign currencies. Germany’s solution to the problem — unwisely continued by the postwar Weimar government to solve its own economic woes — was to print more money. Predictably, this caused inflation, and as more money entered circulation, inflation rates increased.

The trigger that moved postwar Germany’s increasing inflation rates to the level of disastrous “hyperinflation” was the way the Weimar government chose to respond to the 1923 French occupation of Germany’s Ruhr industrial region after Germany continually defaulted on its reparations payments. The Weimar government encouraged and abetted “passive resistance” — such as work stoppages and strikes — to the French occupation and paid German workers for their cooperation by printing vast amounts of money. The result of this deliberate policy decision by Weimar politicians was to send inflation rates skyrocketing into “hyperdrive.” By November 1923, a loaf of bread cost Germans 3 billion marks, a pound of meat cost 36 billion, and a glass of beer was 4 billion.

Although the Weimar government conveniently blamed “war reparations” for causing the hyperinflation crisis, Germany was in fact paying no reparations at the time. Germany’s hyperinflation and economic catastrophe during the Weimar Republic years was due to its politically motivated economic policies, not “crippling” reparations payments to the Allies.

Moreover, the claim that hyperinflation led directly to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis flies in the face of reality. Revaluation of the German mark in 1924 stabilized the German economy, and by 1927 — years before Hitler’s rise to power — it was one of the world’s strongest (although Germany did later suffer economically in the global Great Depression, which between 1930 and 1933 created conditions Hitler exploited).

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‘WAR GUILT’: TRUTH OR LIE?

Perhaps the most contentious part of the Treaty of Versailles is Article 231, the so-called “war guilt” clause that has been egregiously mis -nicknamed and habitually misrepresented. Neither “guilt” nor “war guilt” is mentioned in the article, yet German politicians – first those in the Weimar Republic and later Hitler and the Nazis — used these terms to demonize the treaty in their efforts to sidestep Germany’s obligations. Although German propagandists in the 1920s and 1930s created the story that the treaty forced Germany to accept the humiliating “war guilt” clause assigning it blame for the entire war, historians have continued to echo this propaganda ever since. In fact, the German “war guilt” propaganda was so effective that during the 1920s many in the populations of Allied countries — particularly Britain — began accepting the idea, which helped sap the Allies’ will to rigorously enforce the treaty’s provisions.

When read by itself, Article 231 does appear to make the Germans’ “war guilt” claim seem plausible: “The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.” However, it is vitally important to place the article within the proper context of the treaty. It is the preamble to part VIII, regarding reparations, and not a “standalone” section solely intended to blame Germany for the war — which, if that had been the Allies’ intention, surely would have merited its own section. Clearly, the authors of the article, American diplomats Norman Davis and John Foster Dulles, merely intended it to establish Germany’s acceptance of its responsibility to pay the reparations for the civilian damages its military had wrought, as laid out in the subsequent articles (232-247) of part VIII.

Both Davis and Dulles were shocked when German politicians chose to interpret Article 231 as Germany taking full blame for World War I. Indeed, the exact same text was used in the Allied treaties with both Austria and Hungary, and neither of those nations ever considered that the language implied any “war guilt” on their part. Only German politicians — both for their own domestic political reasons and as a means to gain international sympathy — chose to interpret Article 231 as unfairly placing blame for the entire war on Germany.

Article 231, when correctly read in conjunction with Article 232 immediately following it, actually limits Germany’s responsibility for the war by requiring Germany to pay only for civilian damages caused by its invasion and occupation of Belgium and northern France. And, as noted, even that was further limited to what the Allies calculated Germany could pay.

Yet German propagandists in the Weimar and Nazi eras eagerly promoted what they termed the “war guilt lie ” — which right-wing politicians often linked with the equally false claim that “the German army was stabbed in the back” — to gain domestic and international support for their efforts to avoid compliance with the Versailles treaty provisions. But the term “war guilt lie ” more accurately should be applied to what the propagandists succeeded in making us believe all these years — the myth that the Treaty of Versailles unnecessarily humiliated Germany by forcing it to accept total blame for World War I.

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: ALWAYS DOOMED TO FAIL

The last enduring myth regarding what “everyone knows” about the Treaty of Versailles is that the U.S. Senate’s failure to ratify the treaty doomed the League of Nations to failure since the United States was not a member of the global security organization. Yet that claim assumes that the League would have been successful at preventing another world war if the United States had been a member. In fact, due to serious flaws in its concept, organization and procedure for settling international disputes or stopping aggression, the League of Nations could hardly have prevented predatory nations from doing whatever they wanted, whether or not the United States was a part of it.

Wilson’s vision for the League of Nations, as set out in the last of his 14 Points and codified as Part I of the Versailles Treaty, was a “general association of nations established to afford mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity of all nations great and small.” The pillars of the League were collective security, disarmament and settlement of international disputes through arbitration. Yet this was based on voluntary participation by league members – essentially relying on “good will.” The League of Nations had no standing military force to back up any decision it made, and if a nation disagreed with the League’s decision, it could simply “opt out” – as Nazi Germany (1933), Imperial Japan (1933) and Fascist Italy (1937) eventually did when they withdrew from the league after it tried to oppose their aggression.

The League’s only recourse was to try to impose international sanctions on an offending nation. But since these could be economically detrimental to the nations imposing them, this procedure ran counter to the national interests of many League members, whose response was typically to ignore the sanctions. Most often, League members preferred to deal individually with other nations, essentially reverting to traditional “balance of power” bilateral international relations. Increasingly, as the 1930s wore on the League became irrelevant in international affairs. Those who embrace the long-standing myth that the United States doomed the League to failure never seem to explain how U.S. membership in the League could have overcome the inherent fatal flaws in its organization and procedure.

Moreover, as Henry Kissinger noted, the general mood in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s (non-entanglement in European affairs), the abysmal shape of America’s military forces from 1919 until after 1939, and the inability of any American representative to the League to commit the United States to action without prior legislative approval would “not have made a significant difference” to what actually transpired.

Finally, one need only point out that the League of Nations’ successor organization, the United Nations — of which the United States is a founding member — has not been particularly successful at preventing wars and global conflict over the course of its existence.

After exposing the egregious but long-standing myths about the Treaty of Versailles, it is important to examine the real failures of the much-maligned treaty.

WHY THE TREATY REALLY FAILED

First, the Treaty of Versailles was not tough enough on Germany. In fact, as historian Correlli Barnett claimed, the treaty was “extremely lenient in comparison with the peace terms that Germany … had in mind to impose on the Allies” had Germany won the war. Barnett characterizes the Versailles treaty as “hardly a slap on the wrist” compared to the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that Germany imposed on defeated Russia. Germany’s claim, which countless historians have parroted, that the Versailles treaty was overly harsh and too punitive against Germany is, as Kissinger noted, “self-pitying nonsense.”

Even Marshal Foch’s oft-cited quote about the treaty being only “a 20 year armistice” is flagrantly misleading when presented out of context, as it often is. Foch was not criticizing the treaty as being too hard on Germany but was actually making the opposite point — that it was not punitive enough . He was lamenting that the treaty did not ensure that Germany’s armed forces and strategic position were permanently weakened , principally through perpetual French occupation of the Rhineland.

Second, despite the fact that Germany lost 13 percent of its territory and all of its colonies, it actually emerged from World War I in an overall more favorable strategic position than when it started the war. Germany’s colonies, essentially “prestige possessions” to bolster Kaiser Wilhelm’s ego, were an unnecessary drain on its economy. The Allies did Germany a favor by taking them away. The European territory Germany lost — principally a slice in the east to help form independent Poland, and Alsace and Lorraine in the west, which Germany had taken from France in 1871 — was not vital to German industry, which, unlike the industry in northern France and Belgium, had avoided wartime destruction. The eastern territory that was lost helped establish a buffer zone between Germany and the rising power in the East, the Soviet Union, while Germany’s other borders, save that with France, abutted a collection of weak new nations replacing the stronger ones that had bordered prewar Germany. Given Germany’s larger population and, after 1927, more robust economy than its European rivals, within a decade after World War I ended, Germany’s strategic position was greatly enhanced over what existed in 1914.

Perhaps the Allies’ gravest failure in the Versailles treaty was allowing Germany to voluntarily comply with the provisions, since Germany had no incentive to fulfill the obligations to which it had agreed. A closely related failure is that of Allied will to enforce the treaty. With isolationist America essentially “opting out” of the task, and the demoralized, increasingly pacifist British population suddenly getting a collective guilty conscience when it fell for German propaganda, it was left to France to try to enforce the treaty. Except for some half-hearted attempts — notably the 1923 occupation of the Ruhr industrial region in a vain attempt to get Germany to stop defaulting on reparations — France proved incapable of going it alone. In Germany’s clash of wills with its former World War I opponents, Germany won.

In effect, Germany simply ignored its obligations under the Treaty of Versailles. Although much has been made by historians about the military restrictions imposed on Germany — the dissolution of the German General Staff, limiting the size of the German army to only 100,000 men, armaments prohibitions, etc. — none of these restrictions were ever rigorously enforced, and Germany began violating them immediately. It was the democratic Weimar Republic in the early 1920s, not Hitler in the mid-1930s, that hid the treaty-banned German General Staff behind the façade of the innocuous-sounding “Truppenamt” (Troop Office) bureaucracy; Weimar politicians and military leaders who negotiated in the 1920s secret training facilities in Russia where German tank tactics and equipment, later to become “blitzkrieg,” were developed; Weimar officials who colluded with German military leaders to avoid the Versailles treaty restrictions, clandestinely training combat pilots; and the Weimar government that in 1932, a year before Hitler took power as chancellor, announced that Germany would no longer abide by the military restrictions imposed by the Versailles treaty.

Finally, and most tragically, one thing the Treaty of Versailles did not fail to do was to give German politicians — from Weimar democrats to Hitler’s Nazi thugs — a useful propaganda tool when they twisted the facts and lied about what was actually in the treaty to support their political agendas. Unfortunately, those lies and myths have become what “everyone knows” about the Treaty of Versailles.

Jerry D. Morelock , PhD, “Armchair General” Editor in Chief  Originally published in the November 2013 issue of Armchair General.

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Treaty of Versailles

After the devastation of World War I, the victorious powers imposed a series of treaties upon the defeated powers. Among the treaties, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles held Germany responsible for starting the war. Germany became liable for the cost of massive material damages. The shame of defeat and the 1919 peace settlement played an important role in the rise of Nazism in Germany and the coming of a second “world war” just 20 years later.

The treaty required demilitarization of the Rhineland, the loss of 13% of Germany’s prewar territories, and extensive reparation payments by Germany.

The treaty contained a "war guilt clause." This clause held Germany completely responsible for starting World War I.

The effects of World War I and its divisive peace echoed in the decades to come, giving rise to a second world war and genocide committed under its cover.

Background: The  Impact of World War I

World War I was one of the most destructive wars in modern history.  The opposing sides in World War I were the Entente Powers and the Central Powers.

Nearly ten million soldiers died. The enormous losses on all sides resulted in part from the introduction of new weapons like the machine gun and gas warfare. Military leaders failed to adjust their tactics to the increasingly mechanized nature of warfare. A policy of attrition, particularly on the Western Front, cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers.  

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No official agencies kept careful track of civilian losses during the war years. Scholars suggest that as many as thirteen million non-combatants died as a direct or indirect result of the war. The conflict uprooted or displaced millions of persons from their homes in Europe and Asia Minor.

Property and industry losses were catastrophic, especially in France, Belgium, Poland, and Serbia, where fighting had been heaviest.

Background: The "Fourteen Points"

In January 1918, some ten months before the end of World War I, US President Woodrow Wilson had written a list of proposed war aims which he called the “ Fourteen Points .”

Eight of these points dealt specifically with territorial and political settlements to accompany a victory of the Entente Powers (Great Britain, France, and Russia). One important point was the idea of national self-determination for ethnic populations in Europe. Other points focused on preventing war in the future. The last principle proposed a League of Nations to arbitrate international disputes. Wilson hoped his proposal would bring about a just and lasting peace: a “peace without victory.”

German leaders signed the armistice (an agreement to stop fighting) in the Compiègne Forest on November 11, 1918. Many of them believed then that the Fourteen Points would form the basis of the future peace treaty. But when the heads of the governments of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy met in Paris to discuss treaty terms, the European countries of the “Big Four” rejected this approach.  

After the devastation of World War I, the victorious Western powers (Great Britain, the United States, France, and Italy, known as the “Big Four”) imposed a series of treaties upon the defeated Central Powers (Germany, Austria–Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey).

Viewing Germany as the chief instigator of the conflict, the European Allied powers decided instead to impose harsh treaty terms upon defeated Germany. The treaty was presented to the German delegation for signature on May 7, 1919, at the Palace of Versailles near Paris. The Treaty of Versailles held Germany responsible for starting the war and liable for massive material damages.

Provisions of the Versailles Treaty

Germany lost 13 percent of its territory, including 10 percent of its population.    The Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to:

• concede Eupen-Malmédy to Belgium
• concede the Hultschin district to Czechoslovakia
• concede Poznan, West Prussia, and Upper Silesia to Poland
• return Alsace and Lorraine, annexed in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War, to France.

  The treaty called for:

• demilitarization and occupation of the Rhineland
• special status for the Saarland under French control
• referendums to determine the future of areas in northern Schleswig on the Danish-German frontier and parts of Upper Silesia on the border with Poland.

Further, all German overseas colonies were taken away from Germany and became League of Nation Mandates. The city of Danzig (today Gdansk), with its large ethnically German population, became a Free City.

Perhaps the most humiliating portion of the treaty for defeated Germany was Article 231, commonly known as the "War Guilt Clause." This clause forced the German nation to accept complete responsibility for starting World War I. As such, Germany was to be held liable for all material damages.

France's premier, Georges Clemenceau, in particular, insisted on imposing enormous reparation payments. While aware that Germany would probably not be able to pay such a towering debt, Clemenceau and the French still greatly feared rapid German recovery and a new war against France.

The French sought to limit Germany's potential to regain its economic superiority and also to rearm. The German army was to be limited to 100,000 men. Conscription was forbidden. The treaty restricted the Navy to vessels under 10,000 tons, with a ban on the acquisition or maintenance of a submarine fleet. Germany was forbidden to maintain an air force.

Finally, Germany was required to conduct war crimes proceedings against the Kaiser and other leaders for waging aggressive war. The subsequent Leipzig Trials, without the Kaiser or other significant national leaders in the dock, resulted largely in acquittals. They were widely perceived as a sham, even in Germany.

Impact of the Treaty

The harsh terms of the peace treaty did not ultimately help to settle the international disputes which had initiated World War I. On the contrary, the treaty got in the way of inter-European cooperation and intensified the underlying issues which had caused the war in the first place.

For the populations of the defeated powers—Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria—the peace treaties came across as unfair punishment. Their governments quickly resorted to violating the military and financial terms of the treaties. This was the case whether the governments were democratic as in Germany or Austria, or authoritarian in the case of Hungary and Bulgaria. Efforts to revise and defy provisions of the peace became a key element in their foreign policies and became a destabilizing factor in international politics.

A “dictated peace?”

The newly formed German democratic government saw the Versailles Treaty as a “dictated peace” ( Diktat ). The war guilt clause, huge reparation payments, and limitations on the German military seemed particularly oppressive to most Germans. To many Germans, the treaty seemed to contradict the very first of  Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which called for transparency in peace negotiations and diplomacy. Revision of the Versailles Treaty was one of the platforms that gave radical right-wing parties in Germany such credibility to mainstream voters in the 1920s and early 1930s. Among these parties was Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party.

Promises to rearm, reclaim German territory, remilitarize the Rhineland, and regain European and world prominence after the humiliating defeat and peace appealed to ultranationalist sentiment. These promises helped some average voters to overlook the more radical tenets of Nazi ideology.

The reparations and a general inflationary period in Europe in the 1920s caused spiraling hyperinflation of the German Reichsmark by 1923. This hyperinflationary period combined with the effects of the Great Depression (beginning in 1929) to undermine the stability of the German economy. These conditions wiped out the personal savings of the middle class and led to massive unemployment. Such economic chaos contributed to social unrest and the instability of the fragile Weimar Republic .

Stab-in-the-Back Legend

Finally, the efforts of the Western European powers to marginalize Germany through the Versailles Treaty undermined and isolated German democratic leaders.

Some in the general population believed that Germany had been “stabbed in the back” by the “November criminals”—those who had helped to form the new Weimar government and negotiate the peace. Many Germans “forgot” that they had applauded  the fall of Germany’s emperor, initially welcomed parliamentary democratic reform, and celebrated the armistice. They recalled only that the German Left—commonly seen as Socialists, Communists, and Jews—had surrendered German honor to a shameful peace.

This Dolchstosslegende (stab-in-the-back legend) helped to discredit the German socialist and liberal circles who were most committed to Germany's fragile democratic experiment. The difficulties caused by social and economic unrest in the aftermath of World War I and its peace undermined democratic solutions in Weimar Germany.

German voters ultimately found this kind of leadership in Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.

View The Path to Nazi Genocide .

Critical Thinking Questions

What national interests guided the terms of the Treaty?

How and why might the German public have been surprised by the terms of the Treaty?

How did conditions in Germany and Europe at the end of World War I contribute to the rise and triumph of Nazism in Germany?

How can knowledge of the events in Germany and Europe before the Nazis came to power help citizens today respond to threats of genocide and mass atrocity in the world?

Given that many historians agree that the Treaty was a major factor in setting the stage for World War II, what lessons can be taken from the choices made by the victorious Powers?

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The government’s instructions to the German peace delegation that went to Versailles , France, at the end of April 1919 show how wide was the gap between German and Allied opinion. In German eyes, the break with the past was complete, and the Wilsonian program of self-determination and equality of rights as set out in the Fourteen Points was binding on both sides. The fact that the Allied powers refused to permit negotiations and the character of the terms presented on May 7 provoked bitter indignation throughout all classes in Germany .

Germany was called on to cede Alsace-Lorraine to France; the industrial area of Upper Silesia , most of Posen ( Poznań ), and so-called West Prussia to Poland ; North Schleswig to Denmark ; and three small frontier districts to Belgium . Danzig ( Gdańsk ) was to become a free city, independent of Germany; East Prussia was separated from the rest of the Reich by Polish Pomorze ; and Memel was placed under French administration before eventually being ceded to Lithuania . In Europe alone (without counting the German colonies, all of which were ceded to the Allies), Germany lost about 27,188 square miles (over 70,000 square km) of territory with a total population of over 7,000,000. The union of Austria with the Reich , which was advocated in both countries, would have compensated for these losses but was expressly forbidden by the treaty.

The left bank of the Rhine was to be occupied by Allied troops for 5 to 15 years to ensure the execution of the treaty’s terms. The left bank, and the right bank to a depth of 31 miles (50 km), were to be permanently demilitarized. Germany was to lose the rich coal fields of the Saar for 15 years, at the end of which a plebiscite was to be held. Until then the Saar was to be governed by the League of Nations and its coal mines administered by France.

A decision on reparations was deferred until 1921, but the Germans were to make a provisional payment of 20 billion marks in gold as well as deliveries in kind. Prewar commercial agreements with foreign countries were canceled. German foreign financial holdings were confiscated, and the German merchant marine was reduced to less than one-tenth of its prewar size. At the same time, the Allies were to enjoy most-favoured-nation rights in the German market for five years.

The German army was to be limited to 100,000 officers and men, and conscription was forbidden. The German general staff was to be dissolved . Great quantities of war matériel were to be handed over, and the future manufacture of munitions was rigidly curtailed. German naval forces were to be reduced to a similar scale, while the possession of military aircraft was forbidden. Inter-Allied control commissions were set up with wide rights of supervision to make sure that the disarmament clauses were carried out. A list of those accused of violating the laws and customs of war was to be prepared, and those named were to be handed over to the Allies for trial. Finally, as justification for their claims to reparations, the Allies inserted the famous war-guilt clause, article 231:

The Allied governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.

All the German political parties united in a solemn protest against these terms. The Allies were declared to have flagrantly violated the principles of a just peace proclaimed by Woodrow Wilson , and the belief that Germany had been tricked into signing the armistice was widespread. The only concession of importance that the German delegation was able to secure was the promise of a plebiscite in Upper Silesia. In June the Allies presented an ultimatum, and the German government had to face the alternatives of signing the peace treaty or submitting to an invasion of their country. Scheidemann, who was personally opposed to acceptance, resigned when his cabinet was unable to agree. He was succeeded by Gustav Bauer , who formed an administration supported by the Social Democrats and the Centre but without the Democrats, most of whom joined the Nationalists (Deutschnationale Volkspartei) and the People’s Party (Deutsche Volkspartei) in opposition. On June 23 a majority of the assembly, persuaded that there was no alternative , voted in favour of acceptance, and the treaty was signed at Versailles on June 28.

The Allies’ insistence that the republic should accept a peace settlement universally regarded in Germany as unjust and humiliating contributed powerfully to weakening the new regime. The republic never succeeded in breaking its association with the capitulation of 1918 and the signature of the peace treaty in 1919. For neither of these could the republic’s leaders justly be held responsible, but the legend that the German army had never been defeated but instead had been stabbed in the back by republicans, socialists, and Jews—“the November criminals”—was assiduously repeated by the enemies of the republic. In the mood of resentment created by the treaty, the claim was readily accepted by many Germans. The republican leaders, to whose sense of responsibility the nation owed the preservation of its unity and the avoidance of far worse disasters in the critical year that followed the request for an armistice, had to endure a campaign of vilification that represented them as traitors to the fatherland.

The Treaty of Versailles

Written by: bill of rights institute, by the end of this section, you will:.

• Explain the causes and consequences of U.S. involvement in World War I

Suggested Sequencing

Use this Decision Point at the end of Chapter 10 to allow students to explore the U.S. role in the conclusion of World War I.

From 1914 to 1917, the president and Congress debated America’s stance toward the war in Europe. Once the United States had been drawn into the conflict in April 1917, their attention turned to debating how best to execute the war and to shape the peace to come after the successful conclusion to the conflict. Guided by progressive ideals, President Woodrow Wilson’s vision was to create a new world order as part of the Treaty of Versailles, in which a league of nations would ensure that this, indeed, was “the war to end all wars.” During the treaty ratification process, Wilson had to decide whether he would fight for this goal without compromising or whether he would work with the Senate to get most of what he wanted.

Wilson’s idealistic vision was challenged in Congress by Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. Lodge had opposed Wilson’s neutrality policy during the war and opposed the Treaty of Versailles after the war. During the peacemaking process, the conservative Lodge was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and led the fight against the ratification of the Wilson peace plan, which he viewed as unconstitutional and threatening to American national sovereignty and traditional foreign policy principles. Lodge had to decide whether to obstruct the ratification of the treaty or find areas of compromise with the president.

Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, pictured here in 1916, led the group in Congress whose members opposed President Wilson’s peace plan.

The outbreak of war in August 1914 had prompted President Wilson to urge Americans to be “impartial in thought as well as in action.” Lodge thought neutrality was unsound and impractical and wanted to support the Allied powers. In May 1915, a German U-boat (submarine) sank the passenger liner  Lusitania , killing 1,200 people, including 128 Americans. Wilson asserted that Americans were “too proud to fight” and instead pursued peace for the good of the world. Lodge and his friend Theodore Roosevelt thought the president’s response was feeble idealism inappropriate to the tragedy.

In 1916, Wilson spoke at a meeting of the League to Enforce the Peace. In that speech, he articulated a vision of an association of nations that would keep the peace and end warfare. An international body of nations would stop aggression rather than relying on the existing balance-of-power diplomacy and system of alliances among sovereign nations. Wilson’s ideas culminated in his “peace without victory” speech of January 22, 1917, in which he promoted “the future security of the world against wars.” The new world order was to be rooted in a community of power to achieve peace.

Only a week later, Germany announced it would unleash unrestricted U-boat warfare, gambling that it could starve Great Britain and the Allies into submission before the United States entered the conflict. On April 2, the president went to Congress and asked for a declaration of war. Wilson said the United States must “make the world safe for democracy” by destroying autocracy in Europe and vindicating “the principles of peace and justice” in the world. Congress obliged by declaring war a few days later.

The American Expeditionary Forces were made up of approximately two million troops and helped support the war-weary English and French troops when the United States entered World War I. Pictured are officers of the AEF c. 1918.

As American troops fought in Europe, Wilson worked out his vision of a just and peaceful postwar order. In January 1918, he delivered his Fourteen Points speech, in which he argued for freedom of the seas, a reduction in arms, and national self-determination of ethnic minorities. Most important, Wilson developed his idea of a league of nations. The covenant, or agreement, of the League was the “key to the whole settlement,” as he saw it.

Wilson made several blunders preparing for the peace conference in Versailles. During the 1918 midterm congressional elections, he had made blatantly partisan appeals, stating that Republican dissent with administration policies was unpatriotic. Republicans then won control of both houses of Congress, making Lodge the Senate’s majority leader and the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which considered the peace treaty. Wilson made additional missteps by not inviting any Republicans or senators onto the Versailles peace conference delegation and not consulting with Lodge before he left for Paris. Yet he needed the support of two-thirds of the Senate for the peace treaty to be ratified.

Wilson had a sense of providential destiny about his vision for the League of Nations and his own leadership. Against the recommendations of his advisors, he decided to be the first president to travel overseas to negotiate a peace treaty, because he believed no one else could achieve his goals. When he arrived in Europe in December 1918, millions celebrated him in Paris, London, and Rome, which fed his vanity and sense of moral purpose.

The president briefly returned to the United States in February 1919. On the evening of February 26, Senator Lodge and other members of the Foreign Relations Committee attended a dinner at the White House. Lodge sat impassively while the president spoke about a league of nations to keep the peace. Then he asked Wilson a series of questions. The answers confirmed Lodge’s fear that Article X of the Treaty of Versailles would commit the United States to a war against an aggressor nation that attacked another nation, thus bypassing the constitutional requirement that Congress retain the power to declare war.

Lodge believed in this constitutional principle and opposed committing U.S. troops to conflicts around the world based on the vote of an international body. He and other senators also feared that the League would supersede the Monroe Doctrine, which had asserted American preeminence in the western hemisphere for a century. Wilson was adamant that “you cannot dissect the Covenant from the treaty without destroying the whole vital structure.”

On the evening of March 2, Lodge worked at his home with two other senators to draft a Senate resolution expressing their opposition to the League of Nations. Thirty-nine Republicans signed it, and even some Democrats supported the measure. About a dozen senators were “irreconcilables,” who refused to support the treaty regardless of a compromise, and 40 were “reservationists” who were willing to ratify if Wilson compromised on Article X.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pictured here in 1919, was led by Henry Cabot Lodge (fifth from the left) and worked to garner support from fellow senators to block Wilson’s peace plan.

On March 3, Lodge delivered an important speech opposing the League of Nations. He criticized Article X for violating the United States’ national sovereignty and Congress’s prerogative to declare war, and he cited the danger that Americans would be forced to send their young men overseas to stop aggressor nations. He stated, “I want to keep America as she has been—not isolated, not prevent her from joining other nations for these great purposes—but I wish her to be master of her fate.” In the Senate, Lodge packed the Foreign Relations Committee with handpicked opponents of the League of Nations.

When President Wilson returned to the United States that summer, he broke with precedent and on July 10 presented the treaty to the Senate in person while addressing the body. As he walked into the chamber with the bulky treaty under his arm, Lodge jokingly asked, “Mr. President, can I carry the treaty for you?” Wilson retorted, “Not on your life.” In his speech, President Wilson asked the Senate rhetorically, “Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?”

During committee hearings in August, Lodge repeated his concern that Article X violated the principles of the Constitution. He asserted that no American soldier or sailor could be sent overseas to fight a war “except by the constitutional authorities of the United States.” In addition, Lodge worried that membership in the League of Nations would bind the United States to fight in wars around the globe. He thought the primary goal of American foreign policy was to protect American national interests. He said, “Our first ideal is our country. . . We would not have our country’s vigor exhausted or her moral force abated, by everlasting meddling and muddling in every quarrel, great and small which affects the world.”

In September, Wilson further provoked Lodge and other opponents by taking the case for the League of Nations directly to the American people. His speaking tour was consistent with his view of American politics, in which congressional government was messy and the separation of powers an outdated principle. Instead, a strong president needed to act as a national leader who guided the nation in right principles through rhetoric. Large crowds applauded his message that the League was the “cause of mankind,” but the tour was soon cut short when the president suffered a debilitating stroke on October 2, which incapacitated him for months. From his sickbed, he refused any compromise because removing Article X “cuts the very heart out of the treaty.”

Early in the morning of November 19, 1919, spectators flooded the Senate gallery, jockeying for a good vantage point to view the historic debate and the vote on the treaty. Members of the press were there to report the outcome for their newspapers. The 68-year-old Senator Lodge captivated most people’s attention.

This political cartoon, created by John T. McCutcheon in 1918, depicts the U.S. Senate objecting to a marriage between the United States and its “foreign entanglement” bride via the League of Nations. (credit: The Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum)

The senators debated the treaty during a 10-hour marathon, hearing from all sides, and then prepared to vote. Prodded by Wilson, who told them not to compromise, they rejected the treaty with reservations by a vote of 55–39. A vote was then taken on the treaty without reservations, as the Wilson administration wanted. It was also defeated, by a nearly identical vote of 53–38. Several Democrats begged Wilson to compromise, but he refused. The president deluded himself that he could “bring this country to a sense of its great opportunity and greater responsibility” if only his health improved. When the treaty came up for another vote in mid-November, Wilson obstinately said, “Let Lodge compromise. Let Lodge hold out the olive branch.” The treaty was voted down again, and then for a final time on March 19, 1920.

Throughout the debate over the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, President Wilson and Senator Lodge rooted their positions in very different visions of American diplomacy. Wilson thought the only way to achieve a lasting peace and new world order was a league of nations. Lodge wanted to preserve American national sovereignty and protect American national interests. This debate between idealism and realism continued to define the course of American foreign relations during the twentieth century.

Review Questions

1. Woodrow Wilson’s plans for the postwar peace was most strongly challenged by

• Henry Cabot Lodge, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
• Theodore Roosevelt, former president of the United States
• the United States House of Representatives
• supporters of the League of Nations

2. For President Woodrow Wilson, the “future security of the world against wars” most likely centered on

• restoration of a balance of power between France and Germany
• creation of a new world order based on a community of nations
• dominance of the United States in European politics
• retreat from American interventionism and internationalism

3. President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points included all the following except

• self-determination for ethnic minorities
• freedom of the seas
• a league of nations
• promotion of European autocracy

4. A major misstep in President Wilson’s promotion of his peace plan after World War I was his

• failing to invite any Republicans or members of the Senate to the Versailles Peace Conference
• publicly outlining his Fourteen Points peace plan
• asking Congress for a declaration of war in 1917
• travelling overseas to attend the Versailles Peace Conference

5. The chief objection of the U.S. Senate to the Treaty of Versailles was

• the war reparations clause demanded by the European allies
• the war guilt clause aimed at Germany
• the self-determination proposal for ethnic minorities
• Article X of the League Covenant calling for collective security

6. Ultimately, the U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles, stating that it violated

• the Senate’s constitutional power to negotiate treaties
• the President’s constitutional power to declare war
• national sovereignty
• a Supreme Court decision

7. Senate ratification of the Treaty of Versailles required President Wilson to gain the support of

• the “irreconcilables”
• the isolationists
• the internationalists
• the reservationists

Free Response Questions

• Compare President Woodrow Wilson’s and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge’s foreign policy goals at the end of World War I.
• Analyze the reasons the U.S. Senate ultimately refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles.

AP Practice Questions

“Resolved (two-thirds of the senators present concurring therein), that the Senate advise and consent to the ratification of the treaty of peace with Germany concluded at Versailles on the 28th day of June, 1919, subject to the following reservations and understandings . . . 1. . . . The United States shall be the sole judge as to whether all Its international obligations and all its obligations under the said Covenant have been fulfilled . . . 2. The United States assumes no obligation to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other country or to interfere in controversies between nations . . . 4. The United States reserves to itself exclusively the right to decide what questions are within its domestic jurisdiction . . . 9. The United States shall not be obligated to contribute to any expenses of the League . . . unless and until an appropriation of funds . . . shall have been made by the Congress of the United States.”

Henry Cabot Lodge, “Reservations with Regard to the Versailles Treaty,” November 19, 1919

Refer to the excerpt provided.

1. The position outlined in the excerpt is most consistent with

• the message of Washington’s Farewell Address
• the establishment of the Monroe Doctrine
• the United States’ entry into the Spanish-American War
• the treaty ending the war with Mexico

2. What was a direct result of the trend evident in the excerpt?

• An end to Progressive economic reforms
• Growing support for American isolationism in the 1920s
• Ratification of the women’s suffrage amendment
• The United States taking the lead in the League of Nations

3. Which of the following statements best supports the position outlined in the excerpt?

• Changing world conditions necessitated American internationalism.
• States’ rights did not extend to international relations.
• The U.S. Constitution established a system of checks and balances.
• Direct election of U.S. senators freed the Senate from the influence of special interests.

Primary Sources

Lodge, Henry Cabot. “Constitution of the League of Nations.” February 28, 1919.  https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/LodgeLeagueofNations.pdf

Wilson, Woodrow. “Joint Address to Congress Leading to a Declaration of War Against Germany.” April 2, 1917.  https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=61&page=transcript

Wilson, Woodrow. “Peace Without Victory.” January 22, 1917.  http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=3898

Wilson, Woodrow. “President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points.” January 8, 1918.  https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/wilson14.asp

Suggested Resources

Berg, A. Scott.  Wilson . New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2013.

Cooper, John Milton Jr.  Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Cooper, John Milton Jr.  The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Cooper, John Milton Jr.  Woodrow Wilson: A Biography . New York: Knopf, 2009.

O’Toole, Patricia.  The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made . New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018.

Widenor, William C.  Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980.

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The 10 Key Terms of the Treaty of Versailles

11 Jan 2021

This educational video is a visual version of this article and presented by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Please see our AI ethics and diversity policy for more information on how we use AI and select presenters on our website.

The signing of the Treaty of Versailles formally concluded the First World War, and in doing so arguably paved the way for the Second. Indeed it has been described as a holding measure, one that brought about a long interlude of armistice rather than a period of true peace.

Different demands by the ‘Big Three’

It was signed on 28 June 1919 in the Versailles Palace in Paris, and consisted of 440 articles setting out the terms for Germany’s punishment. The principal signatories and shapers of the Treaty were the ‘Big Three’ – David Lloyd George (Britain), Georges Clemenceau (France) and Woodrow Wilson (USA).

They all brought different demands to bear on the Treaty.

Clemenceau wanted Germany brought to its knees, rendered utterly incapable of invading France again.

Wilson, appalled by the savagery and devastation of the war, advocated reconciliation and a sustainable rebuilding of Europe.

Lloyd George was torn between wanting to build a strong Germany as a bulwark against communism, and public pressure to ‘Make Germany Pay.’

In the end the Treaty had the following key terms:

1. Germany was exluded from joining the newly established League of Nations

Founded as a method of avoiding war, the League of Nations was an international organization created at the end of World War One as one of US President Wilson’s fourteen points for peace.

Under Articles 1-26, Germany was not allowed to join. However, under the Weimar Republic, Germany was later admitted to the League of Nations through a resolution passed on 8 September 1926.

2. The Rhineland had to be demilitarised

Under Article 42, all fortifications in the Rhineland and 31 miles east of the river were to be demolished and new construction was forbidden. The German territory to the west of the Rhine, toegther with the bridgeheads, was also to be occupied by Allied troops for 5-15 years to ensure the execution of the treaty’s terms.

The Occupation of the Ruhr, part of the demilitarised Rhineland, by French soldiers in 1923. (Image Credit: Bundesarchiv / CC )

3. The Saar, with its rich coalfields, were given to France for 15 years

Article 45 directed this as compensation for the destruction of the coal-mines in the north of France, and as part payment towards reparations due from Germany.

4. Germany had to make substantial territorial concessions

The Treaty of Versailles reduced Germany’s European territory by roughly 13%, and stripped Germany of all its overseas territories and colonies. They lost control of:

• Alsace Lorraine (France)
• Eupen and Malmedy (Belgium)
• North Schleswig (Denmark)
• Hulschin (Czechoslovakia)
• West Prussia, Posen and Upper Silesia (Poland)
• Saar, Danzig and Memel (League of Nations)
• All gains from the Treaty of Brest Litovsk (Russia)
• All colonies (League of Nations – given to France and Britain as ‘mandates’)

German territorial losses after World War One. (Image Credit: 52 Pickup / CC).

5. Germany was forbidden to unite with Austria Under Article 80, this was prohibited without the consent of the League of Nations.

(Less than two decades later, on 12 March 1938, following German pressure to the collapse the Austrian Government, German troops crossed into Austria. The following day Hitler announced the Anschluss: the annexation of Austria by Germany).

6. Germany had to cut its army to 100,000 men

This was set out in Article 163. These men were to be in a maximum of seven infantry and three cavalry divisions (Article 160). Conscription was also forbidden and the German general staff was to be dissolved – officers who previously belonged to any formations of the army who were not retained in the units allowed to be maintained were forbidden to take part in any military exercise, whether theoretical or practical (Article 175).

Workmen decommission a heavy gun, to comply with the treaty. (Image Credit: Bundesarchiv / CC ).

7. Germany could retain only six battleships and was to have no submarines

Article 181 also stated that all other warships had to be placed in reserve or devoted to commercial purposes.  The manpower of the navy was not to exceed 15,000 men, including manning for the fleet, coast defences, signal stations, administration, other land services, officers and men of all grades and corps (Article 183).

S.M. Linienschiff Zähringen, which was disarmed and reorganised after the Treaty of Versailles.

8. Germany was not allowed to have an air force

Neither military or naval air forces were allowed under Article 198, which also required Germany to hand over all aerial related materials. Germany was also forbidden to manufacture or import aircraft or related material for a period of six months following the signing of the treaty.

9. Germany had to accept the blame for starting the war

This was Article 231 of the treaty, often known as the ‘War Guilt Clause’.

Germany had to accept responsibility for the losses and damages caused by the war “as a consequence of the … aggression of Germany and her allies.” Although the article didn’t specifically use the word ‘guilt’, the Allies used this Article as a legal basis and justification for Germany to pay their claims to reparations for the war.

This was one of the most controversial points of the treaty. The Germans viewed this clause as a national humiliation, forcing them to accept full responsibility for causing the war. They were angry that they hadn’t been allowed to negotiate, and deemed the Treaty a diktat – dictated peace.

German delegates in Versailles: Professor Walther Schücking, Reichspostminister Johannes Giesberts, Justice Minister Otto Landsberg, Foreign Minister Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau, Prussian State President Robert Leinert, and financial advisor Carl Melchior. (Image Credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R01213 / CC ).

10. Germany had to pay $31.4 billion in reparations

In 1921 the total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion gold marks (£6.6 billion – roughly equivalent to £284 billion in 2021).

Whilst key figures at the time (such as economist John Maynard Keynes), thought the reparations in Article 232 too harsh, prominent figures on the Allied side (such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch), thought the treaty treated Germany too leniently.

Economically these reparations went on to cripple Germany. Afterwards, they defaulted in 1923, but despite  The Dawes and Young Plans re-scheduling Germany’s payments, eventually Hitler refused to pay altogether. It took Germany 92 years to repay its World War One reparations.

Trains loaded with machinery deliver their cargo in 1920 as reparation payment in kind. (Image Credit: Bundesarchiv / CC ).

The Treaty of Versailles  blamed German aggression as a key cause of the First World War. Germany’s economy, already hit hard by the costs of more than four years of fighting, now had to meet ‘the diktat’ of reparations – a total of $31.4 billion.

Germany’s economy struggled through the 1920s, encountering hyperinflation in 1923 followed by a heavy slump as the world fell into depression from October 1929. These struggles catalysed the rise of extremism in Germany and the steady collapse of the Weimar Republic .

A substantial constituency in Britain in particular believed that the Treaty of Versailles was too harsh and would destabilise and create resentment in Germany.

Meanwhile in France Ferdinand Foch , who was not happy with the outcome of the Treaty remarked,

“This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years”.

Both beliefs proved prophetic.

Resurrected as a National Socialist state, the German people were susceptible to Hitler’s assertive, confident rhetoric – Germany had been dealt a harsh hand and should not be ashamed of its strength and militarism.

The Treaty also factored into the disastrous policy of appeasement – many British and French alike were unwilling to confront Germany for addressing what seemed to be legitimate grievances.

I cannot imagine any greater cause for future war that that the German people…should be surrounded by a number of small states… each containing large masses of Germans clamouring for reunion. David Lloyd George, March 1919

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The Great War: Evaluating the Treaty of Versailles

Council of Four at the WWI Paris peace conference, May 27, 1919 (candid photo) (L - R) Prime Minister David Lloyd George (Great Britian) Premier Vittorio Orlando, Italy, French Premier Georges Clemenceau, President Woodrow Wilson

Wikimedia Commons

Although at the postwar peace talks President Woodrow Wilson wished above all to prevent future wars, the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended World War I, is widely considered to have contributed to the rise to power of the Nazi party in Germany. Was the Treaty of Versailles a legitimate and justified attempt by the victorious powers to ensure that Germany would never again pose a military threat? Or did the Treaty, as the Nazis and many other politicians in Germany claimed, place an unfair and unnecessarily punitive burden on Germany? Was the supposed unfairness of the Treaty a significant contributor to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany—or was it merely a convenient rhetorical tool for German politicians to exploit? If the unfairness of the Treaty were indeed a cause of fascism in Germany, how do we explain the rise of fascism in Italy (which fought on the side of the allies in World War I) or the existence of fascist movements in Britain, the Netherlands, and other Western democracies in the 1930s?

By studying a variety of primary sources, maps, and supporting documents concerning the post-war peace process, students will develop a context for evaluating whether the treaty was a viable, fair one, and for considering some of the complex questions this issue raises about the historical causality and responsibility. The lesson fits within a larger unit on World War I, and some prior knowledge of the causes and events of the war is assumed.

Guiding Questions

Were the terms of the Treaty of Versailles fair and justified?

To what extent was the Treaty of Versailles successful?

Was the Treaty of Versailles a turning point for U.S. foreign policy?

Learning Objectives

Evaluate the motives and aims of the Treaty of Versailles.

Evaluate the arguments presented regarding the treatment of Germany following WWI. 

Evaluate how each country's unique wartime experience informed its motives at the Peace Conference.

Evaluate the consequences of key provisions regarding self-determination, reparations, alliances, colonialism, and armaments. 

Assess the short and long term consequences of the Treaty of Versailles in Europe and globally. 

Lesson Plan Details

NCSS.D1.1.9-12. Explain how a question reflects an enduring issue in the field.

NCSS. D2.Civ.6.9-12. Critique relationships among governments, civil societies, and economic markets.

NCSS.D2.His.1.9-12. Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.

NCSS.D2.His.2.9-12. Analyze change and continuity in historical eras.

NCSS.D2.His.3.9-12. Use questions generated about individuals and groups to assess how the significance of their actions changes over time and is shaped by the historical context.

NCSS.D2.His.4.9-12. Analyze complex and interacting factors that influenced the perspectives of people during different historical eras.

NCSS.D2.His.5.9-12. Analyze how historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives.

NCSS.D2.His.12.9-12. Use questions generated about multiple historical sources to pursue further inquiry and investigate additional sources.

NCSS. D3.1.9-12. Gather relevant information from multiple sources representing a wide range of views while using the origin, authority, structure, context, and corroborative value of the sources to guide the selection.

• Review Hitler's April 17, 1923 speech , available here as a downloadable PDF, denouncing the treaty.
• Review Articles 42–50 and 231–235, and skim Articles 159–213, of the Treaty of Versailles ; the text is from the EDSITEment resource Great War Primary Documents Archive . Another webpage containing the text in its entirety, The Versailles Treaty , is available from the EDSITEment-reviewed from Internet Public Library, which has a page specifically devoted to World War I History.
• Review background information on the treaty and the German reaction, available through two resources from the History Department at Colby College, and reviewed by the Center for the Liberal Arts , an EDSITEment resource: " Germany's Responsibility for the War " and " The Weimar Republic: the Treaty of Versailles ."
• Read background information on the treaty's place in the subsequent rise to power of the Nazis, available at the EDSITEment resource U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum : " Treaty of Versailles, 1919 ." The article points out that the Treaty was a useful rhetorical device for the Nazis and other right-wing parties, which could brandish it as evidence of the traitorous actions of democratic parties that had accepted the terms of the treaty. The article also makes the point that in the years following 1921, the date the Treaty took effect, the Treaty was altered in Germany's favor, and that "with the occupation of the Rhineland on March 7, 1936, all military restrictions (which had already been violated before Hitler's accession to power) became null and void."
• Maps of Europe before, during, and after World War I are available through the Department of History at the United States Military Academy. The Map Library contains these contrasting maps: Europe in 1914 and Europe in 1919 ; The World in 1914 and The World in 1919 .
• Besides teaching students about the contents of the Treaty of Versailles, this lesson raises challenging questions about historical causality and responsibility. Students have an innate sense of what is and isn't fair and may have strong feelings about the fairness (or not) of the Treaty. Provided in the Introduction, and in activity 5, are some questions for discussion that may help your students think about—or rethink—the implications of the positions they take in activity 5.

Activity 1. Motives for the Treaty: the Trauma of World War I

Begin by sharing with your students the enormous and unprecedented human costs of the Great War. This will give them a context for considering the motivations of the allied powers in imposing the Treaty of Versailles, and for judging whether or not the terms of the Treaty were justified. By comparing the numbers of casualties and total troops mobilized, students will also have a basis for understanding the differing positions taken by the countries that drew up the Treaty.

Begin by examining death and casualty tolls from France and the United States, respectively. For a brief look, students may use the Diagram: Deaths by Countries in Thousands at the Great War Primary Documents Archive . For a more in-depth look, with information not only on deaths, but on total casualties and total mobilized men, have students look at the diagram Casualties: First World War , produced by the Spartacus Educational Network in Great Britain, a link from Center for the Liberal Arts . Have students note not only the total deaths and casualties, but also particularly the percentage of casualties relative to total mobilized. Also have students examine photographs of destruction along the western front in France. The three sets of Before and After photographs from the Great War Primary Documents Archive will probably suffice, although you may also wish to have students include some or all of the following: Ruins of Vaux , Ruins of Arras Cathedral , and Ruins of the Arras Hotel de Ville . What level of destruction do these pictures indicate? What are some emotions evoked when viewing these images? What happened to the originally charming and vibrant Village of Esnes? Why is it significant that major civic buildings such as the Courthouse (Palace of Justice), cathedral, and City Hall (Hotel de Ville) were destroyed? Can you envision what these buildings and towns may have looked like before the war? How long do you think it would take to rebuild these buildings and communities? How much do you think it would cost? Can a community ever really recover from such destruction? Ask students to speculate, based on this information, how France's goals for the postwar settlement might differ from U.S. goals. What might France fear? What would France probably want with respect to Germany? Why? Would those desires be reasonable? Why or why not? Why might the U.S. be able to take a more idealistic perspective?

The following video from the Khan Academy offers a summation of the lead up to the Paris Peace Conference after the Great War and the issues that needed to be resolved. 

Activity 2. Drawing Up the Treaty: France and the United States

Next have students read excerpts from President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points speech to Congress from the Great War Primary Documents Archive . Specifically, first have students read the last two paragraphs of Wilson's speech (the part before the actual enumeration of the points). What does Wilson say are the goals of the United States? What is his hope for the world and for the postwar talks? Then have students read the first paragraph right after the enumeration of the Fourteen Points. What is Wilson's stated attitude toward Germany? How would this attitude differ from France's? Again, in the context of the information from activity #1 above, why might the U.S. be more inclined than France to take an idealistic perspective?

Activity 3. Optional activity: A Treaty of the Victors

Have students write out a list, based on their knowledge, of what they believe would be the most important respective postwar goals for France, Germany, and the United States. Each country should have at least 5 items, ranked from most important to least important. (You may wish to start students out with one or two items, such as have Germany pay for the war or establish a peace-keeping body.) Break students into groups of three, each of whom represents one of these countries, and have students spend approximately 20-30 minutes attempting to negotiate an agreement centered around these goals. When time is up, discuss the process and share the various results. Were there any common goals? Were compromises made? Which country was most pleased with how the negotiations turned out? Most displeased? On balance, did each country feel it had achieved its most important goal? Were there any particular impasses or impediments to agreements?

Be sure to inform students that in reality, Germany was not represented at the settlement talks. Later in the lesson, after considering the real treaty, ask how Germany's presence might have altered the peace process. (An alternative activity would be to do the above activity with only France and the United States represented; this has the advantage of being closer to the historical reality.)

Activity 4. The Terms of the Treaty

• Now have students begin to consider the actual terms of the peace treaty with respect to Germany. First have students analyze before and after maps of Europe and the world. (See Preparing to Teach section for several options for maps to use in this activity.) How much European land did Germany lose? Which regions specifically? To which countries did this land go? What land worldwide was lost by Germany? To which countries did this land go?
• Students should then read Sections III and IV (Articles 42-50) of the treaty for the terms pertaining to the Rhineland and the Saar Basin; these articles are in the treaty section Political Clauses For Europe . (Preparing to Teach section above for links to the treaty.) Have students locate these regions on a map. Why were these clauses probably inserted? What benefits did these clauses give France? Was it reasonable to establish the demilitarized Rhineland buffer zone? How would the terms regarding the Saar Basin affect the German economy? How would Germany probably react to these terms?
• Next have students read the treaty for the terms pertaining to Germany's military, in the treaty section Military, Naval and Air Clauses . What were the terms for Germany? What sovereign powers did Germany lose? How might these clauses have satisfied France? How would Germany probably react? Have students discuss whether it is reasonable to disarm a former enemy belligerent.
• Students should then read the treaty for the terms pertaining to Germany's war guilt and reparations, in the treaty section Reparations . First discuss the infamous "war guilt clause," Article 231. Why does it single out Germany and not the other Central Powers? Based on their knowledge (again, it is assumed that students will have already spent time learning the causes of the war), is this clause accurate? Does Germany warrant more responsibility than other countries? Do the Allies bear any responsibility? As preparation, for this discussion, you may wish to have students read the aforementioned background essays that discuss the extent of German guilt. (See Preparing to Teach section for links to these essays.) Then discuss the sections on reparations, especially Articles 232-235. How much was Germany to pay? How might this affect the German economy?

Activity 5. The German Response

• Have students read the German Reply Memorandum to the treaty, written by the German Foreign Minister Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, available here as a downloadable PDF. Explain that Germany was allowed to fashion a reply to the treaty draft, but its terms were summarily rejected by the Allies. What objections does Germany raise to the treaty? Are these objections valid? Should the Allies have modified the treaty in any way to address these points?
• Now have students read Hitler's April 17, 1923 speech , available here as a downloadable PDF, denouncing the treaty. (Ideally students will already be familiar with the circumstances behind the Weimar Republic. If not, explain to students that the German Kaiser abdicated at the close of World War I, to be succeeded by a democratic republic known as the Weimar Republic. It was representatives of the Weimar Republic who signed the Versailles Treaty.) Discuss his speech. Why is Hitler so vitriolic concerning the Weimar Republic? What does he blame the Weimar Republic for? What other goals does he link to the elimination of the treaty? What imagery does he use? What actions is he alluding to at the end? How might this speech appeal to the emotions of the listener? Consider how the treaty may have contributed to the rise of Nazism, and by extension, World War II. Would Hitler have been able to give such a powerful speech or to find a receptive audience if the treaty had been different?
• Once students have had a chance to consider their positions on this question, discuss with your class some of the larger issues of causality and responsibility that are raised by this exercise. Some questions are: What are our sources for gauging the German response? Can we trust them? Might German politicians in the 1930s have had something to gain by exploiting the bitterness of defeat? If we believe that the terms of the treaty were unfair, does this mean that the allies bear responsibility in some fashion for subsequent developments in Germany? That the German response was justified?
• You may also want to discuss questions raised in the Introduction about other explanations for the appeal of fascism in Germany. Antisemitism was sometimes framed in terms of the supposed "unfair" advantages that Jewish bankers and merchants had taken of hardworking Germans (you can read more about antisemitism and the rise of fascism in Germany at the Holocaust Learning Center, a resource from the U.S. Holocaust Museum).

Meeting of the Minds seminar : Students assume the role of a representative they have researched and participate in a seminar as if they are that person. Students utilize research collected using primary sources, interpret those sources from the perspective of the person they are portraying, and participate in a discussion to persuade others and defend their positions. Some of the nations in attendance at the Paris Peace Conference to be represented include:

• United States of America
• Great Britain
• South Africa
• New Zealand

At the conclusion of the "Meeting of the Minds" discussion, students reflect on the research process, the discussion, and what they learned by arguing from someone else's perspective. This can be modified to small group discussions that each include the same competing perspectives/representatives rather than a whole group seminar. It is recommended that small groups include more than the "Big Four" nations (United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy) so as to more accurately represent the global nature of the Paris Peace Conference and set the stage for World War II. 

Questions to investigate, organize research around, and discuss from the perspective of the representatives students are portraying during the Meeting of the Minds seminar can include:

• What should be done about Germany's military?
• What should be done about Germany's colonies?
• Should Germany be required to pay reparations for war damages?
• What is meant by self-determination and which nations will be included?
• What should be done about those nations that make up the British Commonwealth?
• What new economic policies will we implement to protect international trade interests?
• What power should a League of Nations have and will you join?
• What will the new map of Europe look like (borders, capital cities, flags, etc.)? 
• Have students research other postwar settlements, such as the peace terms of the Congress of Vienna after the Napoleonic Wars, and compare them to the Treaty of Versailles. Some sample questions to consider: What were the victors' goals at the Congress of Vienna? Were they different than the goals of the victors in 1919? Was the 1815 settlement a harsh one toward France? What happened to the government of France after the Napoleonic Wars, and how did this compare to what happened to the government of Germany? What territorial adjustments were made after the Napoleonic Wars, and how did these adjustments compare to the 1919 adjustments? The Congress of Vienna settlement is widely credited with keeping Europe out of a continent-wide war for 100 years (in fact, until World War I!). Why might it have been so successful at keeping the peace, whereas the Versailles settlement collapsed after only two decades? Students should conduct their own research for this expansion activity, but following are some basic background sites for students to begin with (all are linked to the EDSITEment resource, Internet Public Library): "Europe in Retrospect: International Order and Domestic Strife," produced by Britannia Encyclopedia Online; and "Congress of Vienna," a student essay from Chico High School in Chico, California.
• Hold a discussion/debate or give a written assignment exploring what, if any, are the victor's obligations after a war is over. To what extent should a defeated wartime enemy be punished? Is harsh punishment practical? Worthwhile? legitimate?

Recommended Websites

• President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points
• June 28, 1919: The Peace Treaty of Versailles
• Before and After Photographs
• Photographs of Destruction
• Diagram: Deaths by Countries in Thousands
• " Germany's Responsibility for the War "
• " The Weimar Republic: the Treaty of Versailles "
• Casualties: First World War
• " Treaty of Versailles, 1919 "
• Europe in 1914
• Europe in 1919
• The World in 1914
• The World in 1919
• " Europe in Retrospect: International Order and Domestic Strife "
• " Congress of Vienna "

Materials & Media

The great war: evaluating the treaty of versailles: worksheet 1, the great war: evaluating the treaty of versailles: worksheet 2, related on edsitement, united states entry into world war i: a documentary chronology, african-american soldiers in world war i: the 92nd and 93rd divisions.

How the Treaty of Versailles Contributed to Hitler's Rise

Its provisions left Germany in ruins, fertile ground for the Nazis

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In 1919, a defeated Germany was presented with peace terms by the victorious powers of World War I . Germany wasn’t invited to negotiate and was given a stark choice: sign or be invaded. Perhaps inevitably, given the years of mass bloodshed German leaders had caused, the result was the Treaty of Versailles . But from the start, the terms of the treaty caused anger, hate, and revulsion across German society. Versailles was called a diktat , a dictated peace. The German Empire from 1914 was split up, the military carved to the bone, and huge reparations demanded. The treaty caused turmoil in the new, highly troubled Weimar Republic , but, although Weimar survived into the 1930s, it can be argued that key provisions of the Treaty contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler .

The Treaty of Versailles was criticized at the time by some voices among the victors, including economists such as John Maynard Keynes. Some claimed the treaty would simply delay a resumption of war for a few decades, and when Hitler rose to power in the 1930s and started a second world war, these predictions seemed prescient. In the years after World War II, many commentators pointed to the treaty as being a key enabling factor. Others, however, praised the Treaty of Versailles and said the connection between the treaty and the Nazis was minor. Yet Gustav Stresemann, the best-regarded politician of the Weimar era, was constantly trying to counter the terms of the treaty and restore German power.

The 'Stabbed in the Back' Myth

At the end of World War I, the Germans offered an armistice to their enemies, hoping negotiations could take place under the "Fourteen Points" of Woodrow Wilson . However, when the treaty was presented to the German delegation, with no chance to negotiate, they had to accept a peace that many in Germany saw as arbitrary and unfair. The signatories and the Weimar government that had sent them were seen by many as the " November Criminals ."

Some Germans believed this outcome had been planned. In the later years of the war, Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff had been in command of Germany. Ludendorff called for a peace deal but, desperate to shift the blame for defeat away from the military, he handed power to the new government to sign the treaty while the military stood back, claiming it hadn’t been defeated but had been betrayed by the new leaders. In the years after the war, Hindenburg claimed the army had been "stabbed in the back." Thus the military escaped blame.

When Hitler rose to power in the 1930s, he repeated the claim that the military had been stabbed in the back and that surrender terms had been dictated. Can the Treaty of Versailles be blamed for Hitler's rise to power? The terms of the treaty, such as Germany's acceptance of blame for the war, allowed myths to flourish. Hitler was obsessed with the belief that Marxists and Jews had been behind the failure in World War I and had to be removed to prevent failure in World War II.

The Collapse of the German Economy

It can be argued that Hitler may not have taken power without the massive economic depression that struck the world, including Germany, in the late 1920s. Hitler promised a way out, and a disaffected populace turned to him. It can also be argued Germany’s economic troubles at this time were due—at least in part—to the Treaty of Versailles.

The victors in World War I had spent a colossal sum of money, which had to be paid back. The ruined continental landscape and economy had to be rebuilt. France and Britain were facing huge bills, and the answer for many was to make Germany pay. The amount to be repaid in reparations was huge, set at $31.5 billion in 1921, and, when Germany couldn't pay, reduced to $29 billion in 1928.  

But just as Britain's effort to make American colonists pay for the French and Indian War backfired, so did reparations. It wasn’t the cost that proved the problem since reparations had been all but neutralized after the 1932 Lausanne Conference, but the way the German economy became massively dependent on American investment and loans. This was fine when the American economy was surging, but when it collapsed during the Great Depression Germany’s economy was ruined as well. Soon six million people were unemployed, and the populace became drawn to right-wing nationalists. It’s been argued that the economy was liable to collapse even if America’s had stayed strong because of Germany's problems with foreign finance.

It also has been argued that leaving pockets of Germans in other nations via the territorial settlement in the Treaty of Versailles was always going to lead to conflict when Germany tried to reunite everyone. While Hitler used this as an excuse to attack and invade, his goals of conquest in Eastern Europe went far beyond anything that can be attributed to the Treaty of Versailles.

Hitler's Rise to Power

The Treaty of Versailles created a small army full of monarchist officers, a state within a state that remained hostile to the democratic Weimar Republic and that succeeding German governments didn’t engage with. This helped create a power vacuum, which the army tried to fill with Kurt von Schleicher before backing Hitler. The small army left many ex-soldiers unemployed and ready to join the warring on the street.

The Treaty of Versailles contributed greatly to the alienation many Germans felt about their civilian, democratic government. Combined with the actions of the military, this provided rich material Hitler used to gain support on the right. The treaty also triggered a process by which the German economy was rebuilt based on U.S. loans to satisfy a key point of Versailles, making the nation especially vulnerable when the Great Depression hit. Hitler exploited this, too, but these were just two elements in Hitler’s rise. The requirement for reparations, the political turmoil over dealing with them, and the rise and fall of governments, as a result, helped keep the wounds open and gave right-wing nationalists fertile ground to prosper.

" The Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, German Reparations, and Inter-allied War Debts ." U.S. Department of State .

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How the Treaty of Versailles and German Guilt Led to World War II

By: Sarah Pruitt

Updated: June 29, 2023 | Original: June 29, 2018

When Germany signed the armistice ending hostilities in the First World War on November 11, 1918, its leaders believed they were accepting a “peace without victory,” as outlined by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points . But from the moment the leaders of the victorious Allied nations arrived in France for the peace conference in early 1919, the post-war reality began to diverge sharply from Wilson’s idealistic vision.

Five long months later, on June 28—exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo—the leaders of the Allied and associated powers, as well as representatives from Germany, gathered in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles to sign the final treaty. By placing the burden of war guilt entirely on Germany, imposing harsh reparations payments and creating an increasingly unstable collection of smaller nations in Europe, the treaty would ultimately fail to resolve the underlying issues that caused war to break out in 1914, and help pave the way for another massive global conflict 20 years later.

None of the defeated nations at the Paris Peace Conference weighed in

Formal peace negotiations opened in Paris on January 18, 1919, the anniversary of the coronation of German Emperor Wilhelm I at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. World War I had brought up painful memories of that conflict—which ended in German unification and its seizure of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine from France—and now France intended to make Germany pay.

The “Big Four” leaders of the victorious Allied nations (Woodrow Wilson of the United States, David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France and, to a lesser extent, Vittorio Orlando of Italy) dominated the peace negotiations. None of the defeated nations were invited to weigh in, and even the smaller Allied powers had little say. Though the Versailles Treaty, signed with Germany in June 1919, was the most famous outcome of the Paris Peace Conference, the Allies also had separate treaties with Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey, and the formal peacemaking process wasn’t concluded until the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in July 1923.

The treaty was lengthy and ultimately did not satisfy any nation.

The Versailles Treaty forced Germany to give up territory to Belgium, Czechoslovakia and Poland, return Alsace and Lorraine to France and cede all of its overseas colonies in China, Pacific and Africa to the Allied nations. In addition, it had to drastically reduce its armed forces and accept the demilitarization and Allied occupation of the region around the Rhine River. Most importantly, Article 231 of the treaty placed all blame for inciting the war squarely on Germany and forced it to pay several billion in reparations to the Allied nations.

Faced with the seemingly impossible task of balancing many competing priorities, the treaty ended up as a lengthy and confusing document that satisfied no one. “It literally is an attempt to remake Europe,” says Michael Neiberg, professor of history at U.S. Army War College and author of The Treaty of Versailles: A Concise History (2017). “I’m not one of those people who believes the treaty made the Second World War inevitable, but I think you could argue that it made Europe a less stable place.”

In Wilson’s vision of the post-war world, all nations (not just the losers) would reduce their armed forces, preserve the freedom of the seas and join an international peacekeeping organization called the League of Nations. But his fellow Allied leaders rejected much of his plan as naive and too idealistic. The French, in particular, wanted Germany to pay a heavy price for the war, including loss of territory, disarmament and payment of reparations, while the British saw Wilson’s plan as a threat to their supremacy in Europe.

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Treaty of Versailles

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Aside from affecting Germany, the Treaty of Versailles might have caused the Great Depression.

Many people, even at the time, agreed with the British economist John Maynard Keynes that Germany could not possibly pay so much in reparations without severe risks to the entire European economy. In his later memoir, U.S. President Herbert Hoover went so far as to blame reparations for causing the Great Depression .

But though most Germans were furious about the Treaty of Versailles, calling it a Diktat (dictated peace) and condemning the German representatives who signed it as “November criminals” who had stabbed them in the back, in hindsight it seems clear that the treaty turned out to be far more lenient than its authors might have intended. “Germany ended up not paying anywhere near what the treaty said Germany should pay,” Neiberg says, adding that hardly anyone had expected Germany to be able to pay the entire amount.

And despite the loss of German territory, “there were plenty of people who understood as early as 1919 that the map actually gave Germany some advantages,” Neiberg points out. “It put small states on Germany’s borders, in eastern and central Europe. It eliminated Russia as a direct enemy of Germany, at least in the 1920s, and it removed Russia as an ally of France. So while the treaty looked really harsh to some people, it actually opened up opportunities for others.”

The war guilt clause was more problematic. “You have to go back to 1914, when most Germans believed they had entered the war because Russia had mobilized its army,” explains Neiberg. “To most Germans in 1919, and not just those on the right, blaming Germany specifically for the war made no sense. Especially when they did not put a war guilt clause on Austria-Hungary, which you could reasonably argue were the people that actually started this.”

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New European borders, the League of Nations and Germany reparations.

Taken as a whole, the treaties concluded after World War I redrew the borders of Europe, carving up the former Austro-Hungarian Empire into states like Yugoslavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia. As Neiberg puts it: “Whereas in 1914, you had a small number of great powers, after 1919 you have a larger number of smaller powers. That meant that the balance of power was less stable.”

The Versailles Treaty also included a covenant for the League of Nations , the international organization that Woodrow Wilson had envisioned would preserve peace among the nations of Europe and the world. But the U.S. Senate ultimately refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty due to its opposition to the League, which left the organization seriously weakened without U.S. participation or military backing.

Meanwhile, Germany’s economic woes, exacerbated by the burden of reparations and general European inflation, destabilized the Weimar Republic, the government established at the end of the war. Due to lasting resentment of the Versailles Treaty, the National Socialist (Nazi) Party and other radical right-wing parties were able to gain support in the 1920s and early ‘30s by promising to overturn its harsh provisions and make Germany into a major European power once again.

The Versailles Treaty made World War II possible, not inevitable.

In 1945, when the leaders of the United States, Great Britain and Soviet Union met at Potsdam, they blamed the failures of the Versailles Treaty for making another great conflict necessary and vowed to right the wrongs of their peacekeeping predecessors. But Neiberg, like many historians, takes a more nuanced view, pointing to events other than the treaty—including the United States not joining the League of Nations and the rise of the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union—as necessary elements in understanding the path to the Second World War.

“In my own personal view as a historian, you need to be really careful directly connecting events that happened 20 years apart,” he says. “A different treaty produces a different outcome, yes. But you shouldn’t draw inevitability. It’s part of the recipe, but it’s not the only ingredient.”

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HISTORIC ARTICLE

Jun 28, 1919 ce: treaty of versailles.

On June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, France.

Social Studies, U.S. History, World History

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On June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, France. The treaty was one of several that officially ended five years of conflict known as the Great War— World War I . The Treaty of Versailles outlined the conditions of peace between Germany and the victorious Allies, led by the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. Other Central Powers (significantly, Austria-Hungary) signed different treaties with the Allies.

The Treaty of Versailles is one of the most controversial armistice treaties in history. The treaty ’s so-called “war guilt” clause forced Germany and other Central Powers to take all the blame for World War I . This meant a loss of territories, reduction in military forces, and reparation payments to Allied powers.

Some historians think the Treaty of Versailles was, in the words of British economist John Maynard Keynes, “one of the most serious acts of political unwisdom for which our statesmen have ever been responsible.” They say it contributed to German economic and political instability that allowed for the formation of the National Socialists (Nazis) just a year later.

Other historians note that the Treaty of Versailles was actually very restrained—Germany and other Central Powers were not occupied by Allied forces after the war. However, it would take Germany several decades to pay off their reparations. The treaty was also much more lenient than the armistice treaty (the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk) Germany forced on Russia when that nation negotiated an exit from the war a year earlier.

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The Treaty of Versailles was signed by Germany and the Allied Nations on June 28, 1919, formally ending World War One. The terms of the treaty required that Germany pay financial reparations, disarm, lose territory, and give up all of its overseas colonies. It also called for the creation of the League of Nations, an institution that President Woodrow Wilson strongly supported and had originally outlined in his Fourteen Points address. Despite Wilson's efforts, including a nationwide speaker tour, the Treaty of Versailles was rejected by the United States Senate twice, in 1919 and 1920. The United States ultimately signed a separate peace treaty with Germany in 1921, although it never joined the League of Nations.

• Treaty of Versailles External Treaties and other International Agreements of the United States of America, 1776-1949 , volume 2, page 43, compiled by Charles I. Bevans (electronic copy from HathiTrust).

How American Press Announced Signing of Peace Treaty . 1919. Newspaper Pictorials: World War I Rotogravures, 1913-1919. Library of Congress Serial and Government Publications Division.

"Big Four" . 1919. Bain Collection. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Helen Johns Kirtland and Lucian Swift Kirtland, photographers. The Greatest Moment in History . 1919. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

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Q&A: What Does the Versailles Treaty Teach Us About the Aftermath of War?

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On Jan. 10, 1920, the controversial Treaty of Versailles — which established the terms for peace at the end of World War I — went into effect. In Carol Helstosky’s class on the War to End All Wars, typically offered during spring quarter, the treaty provides students a lot to ponder and debate. Via an email exchange, Helstosky, who serves as chair of the University of Denver’s Department of History , offered the DU Newsroom a crash course in the treaty’s provisions and far-reaching ramifications.

The Treaty of Versailles is famous for both solving and creating problems. What were the treaty’s major accomplishments? 

The treaty, signed on June 28, 1919, was the product of conflict between the Allied victors. The United States hoped to achieve, in Woodrow Wilson’s words, “peace without victory,” and Britain hoped to put Germany back on its economic feet. Meanwhile, France and other Allied nations wanted just compensation for the physical, moral and economic devastation of the war. Given the contradictory aims of reparations and future stability, statesmen found themselves in a terrible bind. The Allied nations ultimately rejected the idea of peace without victory in favor of making Germany pay for causing the war (in their minds) and for perpetuating and escalating the conflict for four long years. The treaty forced Germany to surrender colonies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific; cede territory to other nations like France and Poland; reduce the size of its military; pay war reparations to the Allied countries; and accept guilt for the war.

What were the treaty’s most controversial provisions?

We tend to think the reparations payments were controversial, but these provisions must be viewed in proper historical context. Reparations and harsh peace settlements were not unusual. For example, when Russia surrendered to Germany in 1917, Germany issued extraordinarily harsh peace terms under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (these terms were invalidated by the Paris peace settlements). While there were a few vocal critics of the Versailles Treaty’s economic provisions, many citizens of the nations that fought for four years felt the settlement did not go far enough. Indeed, one could ask what was the economic value of 10 million soldiers’ lives lost on all sides of the conflict?

Equally controversial, perhaps, were the territorial adjustments dictated by the Versailles Treaty as well as other postwar treaties. These adjustments led to resettlement of populations, and in central and eastern Europe, new nations were carved out of old empires. New nations were created, but they were unstable and vulnerable, given that they had little support or funding from more established nations.  

What was the treaty’s impact on everyday German citizens? 

No one in Germany was happy with the settlement, and the Allies threatened Germans with military invasion to get them to sign the treaty. After four years of war and sacrifice, German citizens felt humiliated to accept blame for the war and territorial loss. Equally important, the economic provisions of the treaty slowed the nation’s postwar recovery. Slow economic growth and popular dissatisfaction were difficult to manage, especially for the new Weimar Republic, and political leaders struggled to manage the growing volume of complaints. When the government defaulted on payments in 1923, France and Belgium lost patience and occupied the Ruhr mining region. In response, the German government printed more currency to pay the French, sending German citizens into hyperinflation, which wiped out the savings of the middle class. By the mid-1920s, the German economy recovered, and the United States helped Germany renegotiate reparations payments with the Dawes Plan. Germany managed to rebuild and recover after the war, but not at a pace that satisfied everyone.

Many historians have assigned the treaty some responsibility for the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. How so?

It is certainly true that far right parties in Germany used the Versailles Treaty to resist and reject German democracy and the Weimar Republic, probably because the treaty was so unpopular among German citizens. It is also true that Adolf Hitler frequently railed against the Versailles Treaty in his speeches and promised to reverse the treaty’s provisions if elected leader of Germany. The Versailles Treaty was one of many factors that led to the rise of radical political parties, but it is important to remember that across Europe, citizens were looking for radical solutions to their problems. When I talk about the aftermath of World War I in my classes, for example, I emphasize that the peace settlement created political upheaval in victorious nations as well as in Germany. Italy was on the Allied side and fought for the promise of land after signing the Treaty of London in 1915. After the war, however, Italian politicians returned from Paris empty-handed because secret treaties were invalidated by statesmen during the peace negotiations. Furious Italian nationalists launched protests and occupied the city of Fiume (now Rijeka), thumbing their noses at the peace settlement and defying the government’s authority. The Nazis, Italian Fascists and other radical politicians attempted to rally people against democratic governments by using the Treaty of Versailles as a vehicle of discontent.

A hundred years later, what does the treaty have to teach us about the aftermath of war? 

The First World War had complex origins, and the war was fought over the course of four years, wiping out an entire generation of young men and creating massive social, political and cultural upheavals. In my class on World War I, we spend 10 weeks closely studying the war, and we still have many questions and concerns at the end of the quarter. When we discuss the Versailles Treaty, my students conclude that it was an impossible task for any one treaty, conference or settlement to put European nations back on track after such a grueling and complicated war. They also conclude that it seems unfair to blame the Treaty of Versailles for the Second World War. How could individual actors be able to see or understand what was going to happen? I agree with my students on both counts.

For those who want to learn more about the treaty, what suggestions do you have for additional reading?

This list of books should get you started:

• David Andelman’s “A Shattered Peace. Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today” (2008)

• Robert Gerwarth’s “The Vanquished. Why the First World War Failed to End” (2016)

• Erik Goldstein’s “The First World War Peace Settlements, 1919–1925 ” (2013)

• Margaret MacMillan’s “Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World” (2002)

• Alan Sharp’s “The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking after the First World War, 1919–1923” (2018)

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