The Treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty signed after WWI; it was signed in Hall of Mirrors in the Versailles Palace in France on June 28th 1919. When Lloyd George, of England; Orlando, of Italy; Clemenceau, of France; and Woodrow Wilson from the US got together to talk about the treaty the main point was making Germany pay for what the war had caused. There was some major differences in how this should be approached, some thought it should be harsh others didn't think that far. Woodrow Wilson wanted to include his 14 points into the treaty because he really believed that it would bring back peace into Europe. Then on the total opposite end Georges Clemenceau just wanted to crush Germany and make sure this kind of thing would never happen again. On the fence was Lloyd George of England, he actually agreed with Wilson, but knew that his country wouldn't be happy with that so he tried to comprimise. These three men; Wilson, Clemenceau, and George; were known as the "Big Three" because of their constant bickering over the treaty.
This Treaty, in general, did these four things towards Germany 1.) War Guilt Clause 2.) financial 3.) military 4.) and they lost land. Now let's go into deeper detail so these actually make sense. The War Guilt Clause made Germany say that WWI was their fault and they take total blame for it. The financial part of the treaty was that Germany had to pay for the damages. You have to wonder, how much did all that damage cost? Well the price tag was $6,600 million dollars! The third part that I am going to talk about is Germany's military. They obviously had a very strong military so it's something that the other countries wanted to limt so that the risk of Germany starting another war would go down. What the treaty did was say that Germany could only have a small army and six naval ships, and that was it. They weren't allowed to have an air force, tanks, or subs; this was a huge hit to Germany because they just cut their strong military. Lastly, the land that Germany had aquired was to be given up to France, Belguim, Denmark, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.
There's no doubt in my mind that the Treaty of Versailles contributed to WWII starting. First of all the German people were furious that they had a label on their country saying that they had the blame for WWI, because the people felt that it was the goverments fault not theirs. Then Germany was working to get around the military parts of the treaty. They would have 100,000 men in their army but they would also have many on reserves by training them then putting them on the reserve. This meant that they only have 100,000 men in their army like the treaty says, but they really had so many more. Then they were also teaching the men theory of flying and having piolts abroad fly for them. With the Navy they only had six ships but they were small and fast and were able to still carry weapons. Then in 1933 Hitler said they weren't going to pay for the war damages any more. I think that all of this sneeking around that Germany was doing got the pot boiling for when WWII would start.
Breann Lehr
Sources:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/treaty_of_versailles.htm
http://www.historyonthenet.com/WW2/causes.htm#Treaty_of_Versailles
Comments