Today is Wednesday. This week is taking for freaking ever! Oh well, I guess we don't want time speeding up. Today we had our Treaty of Versailles discussion. The Treaty of Versailles was the treaty that officially ended World War 1. The Treaty was held in Versailles Palace in France. The palace is a completely spectacular palace that makes you feel unworthy just looking at pictures of it. The Treaty aws signed in the Hall of Mirrors.
The signers of the Treaty were the Big Four. These four countries were U.S, Great Brittain, France, and Italy. Italy was the underdog of the Big Four and they didn't like that too much. Before WW1, Austria Hungary was a very large country. After the war, it was broken up into many smaller countries.
Germany was hit the hardest when the Treaty came to term. Woodrow Wilson wanted his fourteen points to restore Europe back to its previous war condition. The other three countries, especially France, wanted to hit Germany hard. They forced Germany to admit to being responsible for WW1. This was a major insult because Germany was just caught up in the war like everyone else. Austria and Serbia were the actual startes of the War.
Germany had to basically demilitarize and ad to pay $33 billion. This sent Germany into a total depression. It was terms like this that gave Hitler much sympathy with his rise to power. The Germans were brought low and were kicked while they were down. They wanted to get back on top and Hitler promised them that and more.
The Rhineland would be an area of land that would belong to Germany, but it would act as a buffer zone or smaller country zone between Germany and France that Germany could not occupy militarily. France wanted this for the precaution that if Germany was to invade France, they would have to enter through the Rhineland and and the French would be alerted before they got invaded.
I don't really agree with the Treaty of Versailles. If it would have had all or most of Wilson's fourteen points, and if more countries had been invited for discussion, the terms and conditions would most likely have been fair for everyone. I would have been very angry if I lived in Germany when the Treaty hurt Germany. I really think that it would have helped prevent WW2, or a least to a large extent.
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