Drafted during the Paris Peace Conference, the Treaty of Versailles was the peace settlement signed after the armistice ending WORLD War I, on June 28, 1919. In the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, the Allied and associated powers meeting with representatives of 37 countries brought the four-year worldwide conflict to an end by negotiating a peace treaty to be presented to Germany. The four major Allied powers (Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States) attended, as well as delegates from many other nations who sought recognition for their contributions to the war. Large numbers of unofficial representatives thronged the corridors. Germany, the successor states to Austria-Hungary, and Turkey were not invited, as they had officially surrendered, and the recently established Soviet government in Russia was excluded as well from the negotiations.
President WoODROW WiLSON led the U. S. delegation, despite the warnings of many of his advisers. They feared that he might lose influence domestically if he did not prevail in Paris. Wilson was, however, welcomed as a hero to France. Having caught the imagination of many Europeans, he was at the height of his popularity worldwide. The “Big Four,” including David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, Woodrow Wilson of the United States, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy, controlled the decision making. Throughout the war, Wilson had advocated a fair and balanced settlement that did not impose harsh terms and conditions on those defeated. His Fourteen Points were the basis for a “peace without victory.” Despite Wilson’s popularity, he was not able to persuade the Allies to agree to his terms for peace. The others believed Germany had to be weakened and ultimately took control; they signed a treaty very different from what Wilson had envisioned. The Treaty of Versailles represented a victory for the French demands for security, modified by British concerns for continental stability. Wilson’s singleminded pursuit of the League of Nations and a policy of national self-determination also shaped the treaty.
The treaty began with the Covenant of the League Of Nations. The league was to be a form of world government with countries committing themselves to further peace by negotiating conflicts among themselves. The league was intended, according to Woodrow Wilson, to operate as a “partnership of the great and free self governing peoples of the world.” It was meant to make it a “matter of certainty that thereafter, nations like Germany would not have to conjecture whether nations would join against them but rather, would know that mankind would defend to the last the rights of human beings.” By creating a court of international justice, the league would substitute the process of mediation and arbitration for the brutal process of war. All members sought to advance the human condition. Members were bound to advance humane conditions of labor for men, women, and children. Wilson, therefore, called it a “magna charta” for labor.
The League of Nations, however, was only one part of the treaty. War reparations formed the majority of the treaty’s priorities. The treaty reduced the population and territory of Germany by approximately 10 percent by its terms. Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France, and the Saarland (formerly German) was placed under the supervision of the League of Nations until 1935. In the north, three regions of Germany were given to Belgium, and northern Schleswig was returned to Denmark. The nation of Poland was resurrected from most of western Prussia and Posen and part of Upper Silesia. All of Germany’s overseas colonies were made into “trusteeships,” or mandates, controlled by Britain, France, Japan, and other Allied nations. The land ideally belonged to the people who lived on it, according to Wilson’s Fourteen Points, but in 1919, the British and French Empires were at the apex of their power. They would not extend self-determination to the non-European world. The concept of mandates acknowledged the direction in which Wilson wanted to move to realize self-determination. A few countries like India, Egypt, and Turkey had produced nationalist movements and they sought freedom from European rule or interference. In Turkey, the Nationalists under Mustafa Kemal established their own republic in opposition to Allied plans. Other countries had to wait for self-determination. The national frontiers drawn at Paris lasted until 1938-39 and even then survived the periods of Nazi and Soviet domination with few changes.
The Versailles Treaty created four new nations. They were Finland, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, formed from what had been the Russian Empire. Yugoslavia was created from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including Serbia and Montenegro; and Czechoslovakia was created mostly from Austrian lands.
The “war guilt clause” declared Germany as the aggressor, and the Big Four sought to ensure that Germany would never again be a threat to Europe. To this end, the German army was restricted to 100,000 men. It had no reserves, conscripts, tanks, aircraft, or general staff. Its navy was reduced to a coastal defense force, as French leader Clem-enceau demanded. Germany was held responsible for making reparations to the Allied nations in payment for losses and damages sustained during the war. Although the Versailles Treaty did not stipulate the exact amount, the sum settled upon was so high as to be beyond Germany’s ability to pay. War debts and reparations eventually upset international economics.
On June 28, 1919, Germany’s new Weimar Republic representatives signed the treaty. It was according to Germans, a “dictated peace,” quite unlike the one that Wilson had envisioned. The treaty aroused resentment in Germany, which felt it had been betrayed. Wilson’s Fourteen Points had promised the Germans their territorial integrity. Too harsh a peace, Wilson thought, would impoverish and destabilize Germany. The other defeated states were dealt similar terms for peace. Resentments about the war colored international relations and domestic politics for the next two decades, culminating in World War II.
Many, including the British economist John Maynard Keynes, predicted that Germany would not be able to pay the stipulated reparations and that the terms of the treaty would destroy the world economy. The decision to delay stipulating the exact amount of reparations was a major error. Lloyd George had hoped that this would satisfy the demand for reparations, yet give sufficient time for tempers to subside. Instead, as the Americans withdrew from the treaty process, it became a continual, ongoing battleground with the German government.
There were three other major problems mentioned in relation to the treaty’s terms. First was the isolation of Russia from western Europe by buffer states along its western border. Second, the terms left the German people weak and bitter toward the Weimar Republic. Popular discontent allowed the gradual emergence of a dictator. Finally, the Versailles Treaty did not include Germany in the planning of the League of Nations, which led to the league’s undoing.
The Versailles Treaty met with much opposition in Congress when President Wilson returned from Paris in 1919. Wilson’s Democratic Party had lost control of Congress in the election of 1918. Although Wilson had urged the people to support his mission in Europe by returning a Democratic Congress, the people voted for Republican majorities. Ambivalence toward the war resurfaced. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge led the opposition in their attempts to defeat the ratification of the treaty. President Wilson again attempted to appeal directly to the people and initiated a speaking tour of the country to urge support for the treaty. He suffered a stroke halfway through his speaking tour. In Wilson’s absence, Congress voted against ratifying the Treaty of Versailles.
The Paris peace treaties were considered a disappointing end to the long, protracted struggle of World War I. It was commonly claimed that the Treaty of Versailles was too harsh to conciliate Germany and too soft to restrain it. It was not enforced, mainly because France sought strict compliance and Britain, appeasement and revision. The balance of power that had existed prior to the world war was destroyed. France was too weak to maintain the balance on her own. The treaty did, however, establish the League of Nations, a seminal beginning to institutions of international cooperation. It also set up national boundaries in Europe that, except for Poland, are substantially the same today.
Further reading: Herbert F. Margulies, The Mild Reserva-tionists and the League of Nations Controversy (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989).
—Annamarie Edelen
World History
