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Negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference established the terms of post–World War I peace between the Allies and Germany, and culminated in the Treaty of Versailles signed on 28 June 1919. The process and the terms were highly controversial, and ultimately the League of Nations it established was ineffectual. The ensuing dissatisfaction, malaise, and revolt would eventually lead to World War II.
The Treaty of Versailles was the first and most important of the treaties that ended World War I. Signed at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris on 28 June 1919, the treaty was the product of the Paris Peace Conference. In essence the treaty established the terms of peace between the victorious “Allied and Associated Powers” (principally the United States, the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan) and Germany.
The Paris Peace Conference itself opened on 18 January 1919. The key participants included U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, French prime minister Georges Clemenceau, British prime minister David Lloyd George, and Italian prime minister Vittorio Orlando. The victorious powers required almost four months to agree on the terms of peace. In addition, the conference determined the shape of the new League of Nations and the International Labor Organization. Only in late April, when a draft treaty was at last agreed upon, were the Germans invited to Versailles. Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, a career diplomat, led the German peace delegation representing the new Weimar Republic.
Quite apart from the terms of the treaty, the process of peace making at Versailles was intensely controversial. Participants gave little thought to the consolidation of Germany’s new democracy. The treaty was handed to the Germans, as a virtual fait accompli, at a ceremony at the Trianon Palace Hotel on 7 May 1919. Clemenceau warned that no roundtable negotiations would be contemplated. On 29 May the German delegation submitted a formidable list of counterproposals, complaining that the terms were scarcely reconcilable with either the spirit or the letter of President Wilson’s liberal speeches of 1918. In response, however, the victorious powers offered few amendments. On 16 June Clemenceau demanded a German signature to the treaty within five days (later extended to seven days) and threatened to resume the war if Germany failed to sign. Therefore, the German government was under immense pressure. In particular, the continuation of the economic blockade throughout the armistice period worsened a serious food crisis inside Germany that weakened the government’s bargaining position. The socialist-led government of Philipp Scheidemann resigned rather than sign the treaty as it stood. But a new socialist-led coalition government, under Otto Bauer, bowed to the inevitable and sent emissaries to sign.
Territorial Terms
The principal territorial terms of the treaty imposed significant transfers of territory from the former German Empire to its neighbors. Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France (restoring the border of 1815– 1870). In the East a territory of 43,000 square kilometers, forming the greater part of the provinces of Posen and West Prussia, was ceded to Poland. This territory, often referred to as the “Polish Corridor,” separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany. The city of Danzig, at the north of the Polish Corridor, was made a “free city” under the administration of the League of Nations. Memel in East Prussia was also ceded and eventually incorporated into Lithuania. In the west small border territories around Eupen and Malmedy were ceded to Belgium. Postwar plebiscites (votes) were also imposed in order to settle new territorial boundaries in a number of disputed zones: in Schleswig (resulting in the transfer of one zone in north Schleswig to neutral Denmark in 1922), in East Prussia (resulting in Germany’s retention of territory around Allenstein and Marienwerder in 1920), and in Upper Silesia (resulting in the division of the province between Germany and Poland in 1922). In addition to these territorial changes, the Rhineland, including three key bridgeheads beyond the Rhine River, was subjected to military occupation for fifteen years by Allied and Associated troops. The Saar River basin was transferred to the administration of the League of Nations for fifteen years (to be followed by a plebiscite), during which time the coal mines of the area were to be placed under French ownership. The greatest transfers of territory, however, took place in colonial possessions. Germany was deprived of its entire colonial empire. Under a complex system of League of Nations mandates, the former German colonies, containing almost 13 million people, passed to the administration of the victorious powers.
The military terms of the treaty achieved Germany’s effective disarmament. The army was reduced, by stages, to a maximum of 100,000 men, on the basis of voluntary enlistment. The Rhineland was demilitarized with respect to German arms and fortifications. The navy was reduced to a tiny fraction of its former size, and Germany was not permitted to possess any battleships of the dreadnought class, nor any submarines. Germany was not permitted to retain any air force. The German government offered little resistance to these provisions but insisted that disarmament should be applied to all nations.
Reparations
Germany especially resented the economic and financial provisions of the treaty. This resentment arose from the controversy surrounding reparations. During the war President Wilson, although rejecting the prospect of any punitive indemnity, had conceded the justice of reparations. Other victorious powers, and Britain in particular, hoped to achieve an indemnity within an expanded claim for reparations. At Paris, much to the chagrin of his own advisers, Wilson surrendered to pressure from Britain and France in favor of significant economic penalties against Germany. In an effort to appease popular expectations in Britain and France for a vast indemnity, negotiators drafted the notorious Article 231. This research paper asserted Germany’s responsibility for “causing all the damage” that the victorious powers had suffered “as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her Allies” (Sharp 1991, 87). Article 231 was soon interpreted inside Germany as an assertion of Germany’s sole responsibility or “guilt” for causing the war. It was alleged by German critics that this assertion of exclusive German war guilt underpinned all the economic clauses of the treaty. A huge indemnity was clearly in excess of the “compensation . . . for all damage done to the civilian population” (Schwabe 1985, 85), which Germany had accepted in diplomatic exchanges preceding the armistice (the Lansing Note of 5 November 1918). In the treaty Germany was obliged to accept an unspecified total of reparations. This total was likely to be massive because it had to cover a much-expanded list of legitimate damages drawn up by the Allies, including pensions to Allied servicemen. The treaty named no final total to be paid by Germany, but rather the Reparations Commission was established and charged with reporting a final total by May 1921.
The treaty’s consequences were of tremendous significance. In Germany the liberals and democratic socialists were smeared as “November Criminals” who had betrayed Germany by launching a revolution to achieve democracy and peace on 9 November 1918. The revolution, it was alleged, had disabled Germany and ensured her defeat. In the eyes of rigid nationalists, democracy in Germany symbolized national humiliation. The victorious powers also did much soul searching. Critics argued that the victorious powers had undermined their own moral authority. The most influential criticism was by the British economist John Maynard Keynes. He had left the Paris Peace Conference in protest in June 1919 and published his passionate denunciation of the treaty, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, in December. In the United States, Wilson’s failure to carry his own vision of a peace of reconciliation marked the treaty as a defeat for all those people promoting liberal internationalism. Disappointed liberals disavowed Wilson and the treaty. This disavowal contributed to Wilson’s eventual failure to persuade the U.S. Senate to support either the treaty or U.S. entry into the League of Nations, despite a longer-running political campaign in 1919–1920. The U.S. decision not to enter the new league did much to debilitate the league during the 1920s and 1930s.
Bibliography:
- Boemeke, M. F., Feldman, G. D., & Glaser, E. (Eds.). (1998). The Treaty of Versailles: A reassessment after 75 years. Cambridge, U.K.: German Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press.
- Floto, I. (1973). Colonel House in Paris: A study of American policy at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Kent, B. (1989). The spoils of war: The politics, economics, and diplomacy of reparations, 1918–1932. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
- Lentin, A. (1984). Guilt at Versailles: Lloyd George and the prehistory of appeasement. Leicester, U.K.: Leicester University Press.
- Mayer, A. J. (1968). Politics and diplomacy of peacemaking: Containment and counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918–1919. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
- Newton, D. (1997). British policy and the Weimar Republic, 1918–1919. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
- Schwabe, K. (1985). Woodrow Wilson, revolutionary Germany and peacemaking, 1918–1919: Missionary diplomacy and the realities of power. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
- Sharp, A. (1991). The Versailles settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919. Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan.
- Thompson, J. M. (1966). Russia, Bolshevism and the Versailles peace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Vincent, C. P. (1985). The politics of hunger: The Allied blockade of Germany, 1915–1919. Athens: Ohio University Press.
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