NSW HSC Modern History

The fighting on the Western Front ended with the armistice of 11 November 1918, but the peace settlement was made over the following eighteen months at the Paris Peace Conference, which opened in January 1919. The defeated powers were not allowed to negotiate; they were handed terms and told to sign. Five separate treaties were drawn up, one for each of the defeated powers, and the one with Germany, the Treaty of Versailles, shaped the politics of the interwar years more than any other.

The aims of the victors

The settlement was driven by three men, each wanting something different. Woodrow Wilson, the American president, had set out his Fourteen Points in January 1918: open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, a reduction in armaments, self-determination for national groups and a League of Nations to settle disputes. He wanted a peace that would not leave the defeated nation bitter. Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister, came from a country that had been invaded twice in fifty years and whose north-east had been devastated, so he wanted Germany permanently weakened and France made secure. David Lloyd George, the British prime minister, wanted to protect British trade, the navy and the empire and to see Germany punished, but he also feared that a crushed Germany would turn to revolution or seek revenge, and he wanted it to recover as a trading partner. Vittorio Orlando of Italy and the Japanese delegation also took part, but the decisions were largely made by the first three.

Because the aims conflicted, Versailles was a compromise. Wilson gave way on reparations and on the security of France in order to get his League, Clemenceau gave up his demand that the Rhineland be separated from Germany in return for a guarantee of British and American help if France were attacked, and Lloyd George held a middle position between them.

The Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919

The terms fall under four headings.

Territory

Germany lost Alsace and Lorraine to France, which had been taken in 1871, and small areas to Belgium (Eupen and Malmedy) and to Denmark (North Schleswig, after a plebiscite). Most of Posen and West Prussia went to the restored state of Poland, which gave Poland access to the sea through the Polish Corridor and left East Prussia cut off from the rest of Germany. Danzig, a mainly German city, became a free city under League supervision. The coalfields of the Saar were placed under League control for fifteen years, with the coal going to France, after which a plebiscite would decide the Saar's future. Germany lost all its overseas colonies, which became mandates under the League of Nations, administered by Britain, France, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Altogether Germany lost around 13 per cent of its European territory and about a tenth of its population.

Military limits

The German army was limited to 100,000 volunteers, conscription was banned, and Germany was forbidden tanks, heavy artillery, military aircraft and submarines. The navy was restricted to a few small warships. The Rhineland was demilitarised, and Allied troops occupied it for up to fifteen years. Union with Austria (Anschluss) was forbidden.

War guilt and reparations

Article 231, the so-called war guilt clause, made Germany and its allies responsible for the loss and damage caused by the war. It was used to justify reparations. The sum was not set at Versailles; it was fixed in 1921 by the Reparations Commission at 132 billion gold marks, to be paid in instalments. Germans saw the clause as a national humiliation, though the Allies saw it mainly as a legal basis for compensation.

The League of Nations

The Covenant of the League was included in each of the peace treaties. Germany was not allowed to join, and neither was Russia.

The other treaties

Austria signed the Treaty of St Germain (1919), which forbade union with Germany and recognised the independence of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Poland; the Austro-Hungarian empire was broken up. Hungary lost large territories in the Treaty of Trianon (1920), and Bulgaria lost land and access to the Aegean in the Treaty of Neuilly (1919). The Ottoman empire was dealt with in the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), which Turkish nationalists under Mustafa Kemal rejected and reversed by force; it was replaced in 1923 by the Treaty of Lausanne, which recognised modern Turkey's borders. The former Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire became mandates, with Britain taking Palestine, Iraq and Transjordan, and France taking Syria and Lebanon.

Consequences

In Germany

Almost all Germans thought the treaty was unjust. They called it a Diktat, a dictated peace, because they had no say in it, and they resented the war guilt clause, the loss of territory with German-speaking populations, the army limits and the reparations. Many believed Germany had not really been beaten and that the army had been betrayed by politicians at home, the myth later known as the stab in the back. The politicians who had signed the armistice and the treaty were hated as the "November criminals". This resentment weakened the new democratic Republic from its beginning and was later exploited by nationalist parties, including the Nazis.

In Europe

The treaties created new states, such as Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Poland, and the principle of self-determination was applied to many peoples, but not consistently. Millions of Germans found themselves in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and Hungary, Austria and Bulgaria were all left with grievances. The new states were often weak and were divided by their own minorities. France kept looking for security through alliances with the new states of the east, since the American and British guarantees it had been promised were not fulfilled.

In the wider world

The United States Senate refused to ratify the treaty and the League Covenant, so the United States never joined the League and made a separate peace with Germany in 1921. Italy was angry at what it saw as a "mutilated victory", since it did not receive all the territory promised to it in secret in 1915, and this resentment helped Mussolini. Japan was dissatisfied that its proposal for a racial equality clause was rejected, although it did take over Germany's Pacific islands north of the equator and German rights in Shandong in China. The Shandong decision caused outrage in China and led to the May Fourth Movement of 1919.

Reparations in practice

Germany paid only part of what was demanded. In January 1923 French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr when Germany fell behind on deliveries, and passive resistance and the printing of money by the German government led to hyperinflation. The Dawes Plan (1924) reorganised payments and brought in American loans, and the Young Plan (1929) reduced the total and extended the period of payment. Reparations were suspended in 1932.

Interpretations

The economist John Maynard Keynes, who attended the conference as a British adviser, argued in 1919 that the treaty was too harsh and would ruin the European economy. Many later historians have argued the opposite, that the treaty was less severe than it seemed, since Germany remained united and potentially the strongest power in Europe, and that its real weakness was that it was too harsh to be accepted by Germany and too lenient to keep Germany permanently weak. The settlement depended on the Allies enforcing it, and that depended on the United States, Britain and France staying together, which they did not.