Versailles: winners & losers
Over 100 years ago the victorious allies of WWI gathered to redraw maps and cast judgment on their defeated foes. The result was one of the most significant treaties in history
How the world was reshaped a century ago
When The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919 the world was still spinning in a postwar stupor. It had taken over half a year of Allied negotiations for the settlement to be fulfilled, entering completion some seven months after the gunfire had ceased on the Western Front. Poignantly, it was also exactly five years to the day since Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrohungarian throne had been assassinated.
Signed in the gleaming Hall of Mirrors in Paris’ Palace of Versailles, the treaty – which is also known as the Treaty of Peace – was inscribed by representatives of the Allied forces along with two German politicians, Johannes Bell and Hermann Müller, and marked the accredited end of the First World War. Consisting of 15 sections and 440 articles, its conditions were mostly discussed among and imposed by the Allied victors, with no participation from the German government.
Many clauses in the treaty were particularly harsh on Germany – the country was stripped of 25,000 square miles of land, the newlyenforced League of Nations mandate handed
its territories over to the Allies, its armed forces were mostly demobilised, and it was held culpable for all damages “as a consequence of [their] aggression”.
This has since provoked much critical debate among historians as to the part that the agreement played in laying the foundation for conflicts that would follow – most notably the Second World War – for both the terms that were laid out and for the deliberate exclusion of Germany in the proceedings. Renowned military historian, author, and battlefield guide Paul Reed agrees that the declaration’s conditions paved the way in the inter-war period. “Some countries, like France, tried to make [the Treaty of] Versailles the punishment,” he says. “In many ways it was: the removal of land, the suppression of the right to have armed forces, the reparation payments – all of this and more created resentment, because it pushed the post-war Weimar Republic into a spiral, allowing extremes of Left and Right to flourish.”
Article 231 of the treaty – known informally as the War Guilt Cause – is one of the most widely-discussed and controversial components of the agreement, due to it requiring Germany to accept both full blame for the four-year conflict and full responsibility for the restoration and reparation process – which they accepted grudgingly and which, almost certainly, incited much of the resentment that was to follow.
The article states, “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.”
“It’s the most interesting part of [the treaty] to me,” continues Reed. “The Allies extracting money from Germany to assist with the rebuilding of the old battlefield areas helped to bring down the economy of Weimar Germany, enable the rise of the Nazis, and, in many ways, what was to be the Second World War.”
At the start of the Allied negotiations, there was a ‘Council of Ten’, with two representing delegates from Great Britain, France, the
United States, Italy, and Japan. This became a ‘Council of Five’, with a board formed of each country’s foreign minister and this in turn became the ‘Big Four’, with the leaders of Great Britain, France, the United States, and Italy –
“ARTICLE 231 OF THE TREATY – KNOWN INFORMALLY AS THE WAR GUILT CAUSE – IS ONE OF THE MOST WIDELY-DISCUSSED AND CONTROVERSIAL COMPONENTS OF THE AGREEMENT”
the latter withdrawing for a time, making it the ‘Big Three’. They met over 100 times during the six months prior to the treaty being signed, with each country having its own particular aims.
France, the most damaged, intended to place the blame on Germany and make sure that it accepted full culpability for its reparation. French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was eager to secure and strengthen his nation – and to do so through the economical, territorial, and military weakening of the German state. He told President of the United States Woodrow Wilson, “America is far away, protected by the ocean. Not even Napoleon himself could touch England. You are both sheltered; we are not.” Clemenceau accepted an alliance with Great Britain, in cases of future combat, along with confirmation that the Rhineland – an expanse of area along the Rhine in western Germany – would be demilitarised and occupied by France for the following 15 years.
Compared to its French ally, Great Britain had endured little devastation over the previous four years, though the nation and its public were mostly just as in favour of coercing Germany into fulfilling all damage payments and demobilising them as much as possible, in order to avoid further conflict. Privately Prime Minister of Great Britain David Lloyd George was opposed to this and was keen to both keep Germany as a key trading partner and to maintain a European balance of power between the nations. He was, too, less concerned with the German army and more focused on ensuring that the Royal Navy was the largest naval force worldwide.
Wilson, representing the United States, was an eager advocate for peace, the rebuilding of a strong European economy, and the introduction of the new League of Nations mandate to maintain harmony. He, like Lloyd George, was against severely harsh treatment of Germany and voted against the occupation of German territories.
Although the British public received the treaty with approval, the government and Commonwealth response was varied, with some believing that the imposed conditions from the French were unnecessarily vengeful and greedy, and that the German nation was being forced to sign the declaration without any kind of compromise. Field Marshal Jan Smuts, the soon-to-be South African Prime Minister, publicly denounced the treaty and his disappointment that “a new international order and a fairer, better world are not written in [it]”.
In France the population broadly rejoiced and there was much cheering, singing, and dancing outside of the Palace of Versailles upon the treaty’s signing, although its agreed clauses would soon backfire on Clemenceau. The extreme Right found it to be too lenient on Germany, with not enough recompense for France’s significant loss, and the prime minister was defeated at the following year’s elections.
Italy’s response to the treaty was entirely
negative. The country had not been wellsupported during the negotiations and was not given requested control of territories, including Dalmatia and Rijeka – both parts of Croatia, and Vittorio Orlando, the nation’s prime minister at the time, lost his governmental position only one week before the treaty was signed. The failings of Italy in the discussions and the implications it held preceded the imminent institution of Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship only a few years later – a reign that would, in turn, serve as inspiration for Adolf Hitler’s totalitarian regime.
“Hitler was able to weaponise Versailles,” says Reed. “With it, he was able to show how Germany had been unjustly, harshly treated and how, by agreeing to it, the ‘traitors’ of the Weimar period had ‘betrayed’ Germany. If you create an underdog, create resentment, people will fight back. It created the perfect world for extreme politics to develop and take hold. Versailles created the perfect storm of a country punished and allowed men, like Hitler, to step into that political void and motivate people to want to seek ‘justice’.”
Germany’s Foreign Minister Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-rantzau was particularly opposed to the treaty’s outcome. To the ‘Big Three’, he said, “We know the full brunt of hate that confronts us here. You demand from us to confess we were the only guilty party of war; such a confession in my mouth would be a lie.” German politics united in its denouncement of the treaty, referring to it as the ‘Diktat’, due to its imposition upon their nation and Philipp Scheidemann, the government official elected to sign on behalf of Germany prior to the introduction of Bell and Müller, resigned rather than be the signatory.
Following this, a coalition government was formed underneath Gustav Bauer and, though many still publicly condemned it, the Weimar National Assembly voted in favour of signing the treaty – believing that they wouldn’t be able to sustain another Allied attack – with 237 votes against 138. Those who supported the treaty were regarded as ‘traitors’ to the German nation and to have given cause to their ultimate defeat in the conflict. This, in turn, instigated domestic unrest and riots – and undoubtedly facilitated the political unrest that was to follow.
“In retrospect, the treaty was too harsh on Germany,” Reed says. “Its army had to be curtailed, but the treaty went too far; the French wanted revenge. What Versailles proved is that if you punish a nation and force it to its knees, it creates the perfect conditions for resentment and the desire to forcibly settle the unjustness of such an arrangement – which is exactly what Europe witnessed 20 years later.”
“VERSAILLES CREATED THE PERFECT STORM OF A COUNTRY PUNISHED AND ALLOWED MEN, LIKE HITLER, TO STEP INTO THAT POLITICAL VOID AND MOTIVATE PEOPLE TO WANT TO SEEK ‘JUSTICE’”