Effects of Versailles treaty still felt today

“WE AGREED the consequences of many parts of the proposed treaty would ultimately bring destruction.”

This was the sentiment of General Jan Smuts and British economist John Maynard Keynes after receiving a copy of the Versailles Treaty. After the defeat of Germany and the Central Powers at the end of World War I in November 1918, the scene was set to negotiate a peace settlement.

As this year marks the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles in June, it is significant to reflect on this pivotal treaty.

US president Woodrow Wilson had warned a punitive peace would “leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which the terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand”. Yet, his Fourteen Points and creation of the League of Nations gave a breath of hope.

On January 18, 1919, the Paris Peace Conference convened with representatives from across the world. The historian Robert Elson said, though, that the conference was simply too big, while the main decision-making was made by the so-called “Big Four”.

With the Allied spokesmen of David Lloyd George for Britain, Georges Clemenceau for France, Woodrow Wilson for the US and Vittorio Orlando for Italy – the future of the world was to be reshaped. Russia was not present as it was torn by civil war. Smaller nation-states were created from the broken-up Ottoman (Turkish) and Austro-Hungarian Empires, such as Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia, while the Polish Corridor was provided to the Poles to gain access to the sea. In the East, Japan claimed possession of German colonies in China and the Pacific.

Within the Big Four there were differences in attitude because Brit- ain and America were protected by sea, whereas France felt vulnerable on the German border. Clemenceau wanted a weakened Germany and the Rhineland to serve as a buffer zone against it. In response to Wilson, he sarcastically stated: “God gave us ten commandments and we broke them. Wilson gave us his Fourteen Points, and we shall see.”

There appeared to be a leniency towards punitive measures from Wilson and to a lesser extent from Lloyd George with his liberal stance. As Britain sought to ensure the supremacy of the seas and anti-German public feeling, he had to give in to their demand of “squeezing the German orange till the pips squeak”. Italy, who had been promised territorial gains, had been denied them by Wilson for the sake of peace, prompting Orlando to leave the conference, although he would later return to sign. Thereafter the “Big Three” took the main decisions.

Wilson and Lloyd George envisaged a stable Germany in the heartland of Europe as a barrier against the communist threat. However, due to pressure from Clemenceau, the Allied leaders agreed that Germany be demilitarised, forbidding the building of submarines and allowing no air force at all. The coal-rich area of the Saar, Alsace Lorraine, and northern Schleswig were granted to France and Denmark respectively. The Germany colonies were to be annexed by either the British or French in trust.

Against Wilson’s objection, Lloyd George and Clemenceau demanded that Germany pay full war reparations. What waited for the Germans were even more humiliating: their acceptance of Article 231, “the responsibility for causing all the loss and damage… by the ‘aggression’ of Germany”.

A German delegation was summoned to receive the peace terms at Versailles, outside Paris, the same place where Bismarck proclaimed the German Empire in the Franco-Prussian War. The Germans were outraged but compelled to accept the “war guilt”.

Finally, on June28, 1919, the Germans signed the treaty

The utter humiliation for Germany created the resentment that would fuel the fires of Adolf Hitler and his national socialists. The American historian, Mark Albertson, argued that contrary to the German opinion of the severity of the treaty, the German state as principle nation in Europe remained largely intact.

To Wilson’s disappointment, his plea to his fellow citizens for a more sympathetic world peace faltered, and the US never ratified the treaty. Its enforcement, left mainly to Britain and France, later proved a failure with Hitler’s violations of the treaty – laying the seeds of an even more disastrous World War II.

One hundred years later, according to Albertson, “the war is not over” as demonstrated in the Middle East where inter-ethnic conflicts could be ascribed to the colonial territorial divisions of the Ottoman Empire dating from Versailles. The treaty was a dictated peace with little concern for reconciliation and failing dismally to preserve peace.

“Wilson and Lloyd George envisioned a stable Germany as a barrier against communist threat