WORLD WAR 1
TREATY OF VERSAILLES:
World War I officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France, on June 28, 1919; it took force on January 10, 1920. Negotiated among the Allied powers with little participation by Germany, its 15 parts and 440 articles reassigned German boundaries and assigned liability for reparations.
The treaty was drafted during the Paris Peace Conference in the spring of 1919, which was dominated by the national leaders known as the “Big Four”—David Lloyd George of Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, Woodrow Wilson of the United States, and Vittorio Orlando of ItalyAfter strict enforcement for five years, the French assented to the modification of important provisions. Germany agreed to pay reparations under the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan, but those plans were cancelled in 1932, and Hitler’s rise to power and subsequent actions rendered moot the remaining terms of the treaty.
The treaty was drafted during the Paris Peace Conference in the spring of 1919, which was dominated by the national leaders known as the “Big Four”—David Lloyd George of Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, Woodrow Wilson of the United States, and Vittorio Orlando of ItalyAfter strict enforcement for five years, the French assented to the modification of important provisions. Germany agreed to pay reparations under the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan, but those plans were cancelled in 1932, and Hitler’s rise to power and subsequent actions rendered moot the remaining terms of the treaty.
GERMANY AND TREATY OF VERSAILLES:
- Germany was to accept the blame for starting the war, under the terms of the ‘War guilt’ clause.
- Germany was then told to reduce its army to 100,000 men and have only six battleships in its navy.
- The population and territory of Germany was reduced by about 10 percent by the treaty.
- Germany was not allowed to build any airplanes, submarines or tanks.
- Germany had to pay £6,600 million in reparations to the countries that had won the war.
- All Germany’s colonies were given to France, Britain and other countries
- Germany was forbidden to unite with Austria.
- Germany was to demilitarize the Rhineland
- Alsace-Lorraine went back to France.
- Germany lost other land too:
- A strip of land, the Polish Corridor, was given to Poland, cutting East Prussia off from the rest of Germany.
- The Sudetenland was given to Czechoslovakia.
The League of Nations was an international diplomatic group developed
after World War I as a way to solve disputes between countries before
they erupted into open warfare. The league was not a success and did not bring peace to the world.
THE LOSS & PAYMENTS:
The war guilt clause of the treaty deemed Germany the aggressor in the war and consequently made Germany responsible for making reparations to the Allied nations in payment for the losses and damage they had sustained in the war. It was impossible to compute the exact sum to be paid as reparations for the damage caused by the Germans, especially in France and Belgium, at the
time the treaty was being drafted, but a commission that assessed the losses incurred by the civilian population set an amount of $33 billion in 1921. Although economists at the time declared that such a huge sum could never be collected without upsetting international finances, the Allies insisted that Germany be made to pay, and the treaty permitted them to take punitive actions if Germany fell behind in its payments.
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| MAP OF GERMANY AFTER TREATY OF VERSAILLES |
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