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 * The Treaty of Versailles and Its Impact**

World War I ended quite differently from WWII. Germany was not over-run. In fact, Germans believed that their army was still in good fighting order (largely, it was – the economy was the main problem), and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed with the new regime in Russia under Lenin had given Germany a huge swath of Eastern Europe to take home as a victory trophy. These facts led the Germans to desire a swift end to war, but not one in which they surrendered. In fact, they saw no reason for a surrender. However, after reading Wilson’s 14 Points, Germans in positions of Power, including Erich Ludendorff, Commander in Chief of the General Staff, felt that negotiations to end the war on a positive footing might be possible. They did not expect to keep territory in the West, but did hope that President Wilson would prevail upon his allies to negotiate reasonably, and to settle with Germany still in order, and still in possession of the East. Communications with Wilson hinted that in fact he would try to do just some such thing, and the

Germans thus pulled back after agreeing to a cease-fire to take effect at 11:00 pm on the 11th day of November, 1918. Following the cease-fire, the German army pulled back and began to de-mobilize. Ludendorff told the Kaiser he was no longer needed, and the Kaiser left Germany to live in exile, as the Socialist and Catholic elements of the Reichstag, who had voted to end the war in 1917, began to organize what would become the Weimar Republic.

The United States’ allies, however, were not nearly as malleable as Wilson had thought, however, and when the Germans were finally called into their presence, it was not to negotiate, but to receive and sign a treaty that had been negotiated for them by the victors. Germany had no input into treaty provisions or structures. The "Big Four" – England, the United States, France, and Italy, had created a treaty, and the German delegation was told to sign. Since Germany had de-mobilized, and had an economy already in shambles, and was still under blockade by the allies, the representatives had no choice but to accept the provisions of one of the most vindictive treaties of the modern world. They signed in April, 1919.

The provisions of the Treaty of Versailles (it is actually a collection of treaties, all negotiated at various places, but called Versailles because that is where the Germans accepted the terms laid on them) included the "War Guilt Clause" in which the Germans accepted nearly full responsibility for the war. The German navy was reduced to 6 vessels, and no submarines. The German army was reduced to 100,000 men with hand-held weapons. No air force was allowed. The Rhineland was demilitarized, and made into a sort of buffer zone between France and Germany. France received Alsace and Lorraine – territories Germany had taken in the 1871 war of unification. The Germans were made to give up effectively all of the territory ceded to them by Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Poland was reconstituted, and in order to give it a connection to the rest of the world, East Prussia was separated from the rest of Germany by a Polish corridor that led from the landlocked country out to Danzig, an overwhelmingly German city on the Baltic that was placed under the jurisdiction of the League of Nations. A more humiliating peace might have been hard to find, but the allies did find a way to twist the knife. Since all had fought the war with mountains of debt, it had been assumed by most European belligerents that the loser would be made to pay, so that the winners might maintain the quality of their economies. The allies who negotiated the treaty put this into practice by making Germany responsible for the financial damage and debt of all participants in the war. Germany thus had to pay for all the damage done to French, Belgian, and English farms, forests, factories, and homes and towns, as well as pay off the war debt of all of its enemies, and its own debt as well.

It actually took the reparations committee 4 months longer than the negotiation of the treaty itself to finish and present a bill to the Germans. When it was done, it was unbelievably high – larger than any previous reparations requirement in history by at least 30 times.

The treaty also set up a "League of Nations" – the ultimate goal of Wilson, and one for which he sacrificed many of his other principles. The goal of the League was to create a new kind of security arrangement in Europe. Rather than a balance of power in which two or more opposed groups seek to balance each other off in order to avoid a general war, this was to be "collective" security. All members had to pledge to oppose any aggressor state, friend or foe, if the league found it to be acting against the principles of security by violating the sovereignty of any other state. This was most certainly the forerunner of the United Nations, though it was toothless, and relatively unstable. The League of Nations’ success rested on one major link – that the United States, with its huge industrial and military power, join to legitimize the system. Wilson was overjoyed when the league charter was included in the Treaty of Versailles provisions, but he returned to an America in 1919 that was already moving back toward isolationism and conservatism. The more conservative congress refused to ratify the League of Nations, and the United States never became a member. With the founding nation out of the League, it was crippled from the start, and was unable to achieve its goals.

Thus, with the public opinion in both Great Britain and France one of anger at Germany, France’s Clemenceau and England’s David Lloyd-George had no choice but to be tough on Germany – so tough as to be vindictive. The United States’ Wilson was willing to give way to some of the vindictiveness if he could have his League of Nations – he felt that the League could even address some of the injustices put forth in the treaty if need be – but his dream was shattered when his own country refused to ratify the League. Thus the Treaty of Versailles stood, and stands, as a monument to revenge, and to its ineffectiveness in providing for peace.

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