Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles was the peace signed at Versailles on 28 June 1919 by Germany and the Allied and Associated Powers. It formally ended the war with Germany, suspended since the Armistice of Compiègne, and came into force on 10 January 1920. It was the most important of the treaties of the Paris Peace Conference.

How it was made

The conference opened on 18 January 1919. Representatives of nearly thirty states took part, but decisions lay with the “Big Four”: US President Woodrow Wilson and Prime Ministers Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. Wilson wanted a peace in keeping with the Fourteen Points, Clemenceau sought above all security for France, and Lloyd George warned against too harsh a peace. The defeated were not admitted to the negotiations, and until the peace was signed the Allies kept extending the armistice.

The German delegation received the terms on 7 May, and its protests changed little. The head of government, Philipp Scheidemann, preferred to resign rather than sign. When the Allies threatened to resume the war, the National Assembly agreed to sign by 237 votes to 138, and President Friedrich Ebert backed the decision after consulting the Supreme Army Command. The ceremony took place in the Hall of Mirrors, where the German Empire had been proclaimed in 1871, on the fifth anniversary of the Sarajevo assassination.

Terms

Part I of the treaty was the Covenant of the League of Nations. Germany returned to France Alsace and part of Lorraine, taken from it in 1871. Danzig became a free city under the protection of the League, which also took over the administration of the Saar Basin for 15 years. Germany’s territorial loss in Europe is estimated at between about 10 per cent (the US Office of the Historian) and 13.5 per cent (Poland’s Integrated Educational Platform). Germany also lost all its colonies.

The army was limited to 100,000 men, with no universal conscription, no tanks and no air force, and the navy was not allowed submarines. The Rhineland was demilitarised, and Allied troops were to occupy it for 15 years.

In Article 231 Germany accepted the responsibility of itself and its allies for all the loss and damage of a war “imposed” on the Allies by their aggression. The article became the basis for reparations, which a commission set in 1921 at 132 billion gold marks. Germans read it as laying the guilt for the war on them and as an insult to the nation’s honour, and they called the whole treaty a “Diktat”.

What it gave Poland

The treaty was signed on Poland’s behalf by Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Roman Dmowski. In Article 87 Germany recognised “the complete independence of Poland”. Poland received almost all of the Province of Posen, where the Greater Poland insurgents had fought, and most of West Prussia, with a narrow access to the sea.

Plebiscites were to decide Upper Silesia, Warmia, Masuria and Powiśle. In Warmia and Masuria in 1920 an overwhelming majority voted for East Prussia, and Upper Silesia was divided after the plebiscite of 1921. The treaty did not fix the eastern borders. Poland could take over Pomerania only once the treaty came into force, which was celebrated in February 1920 with the wedding to the sea.

Ratification and disputes

The German National Assembly ratified the treaty on 9 July 1919, the Polish Legislative Sejm on 31 July. In the United States the Republicans, led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, objected above all to Article 10 of the League’s Covenant. The Senate rejected the treaty in November 1919 and finally on 19 March 1920, and the US made a separate peace with Germany in 1921. Separate treaties were signed with the other defeated powers: with Austria at Saint-Germain and with Bulgaria at Neuilly in 1919, with Hungary at Trianon and with Turkey at Sèvres in 1920.

The treaty was criticised from the start from opposite sides. John Maynard Keynes thought it too harsh, Marshal Ferdinand Foch too lenient. How far it contributed to the next war is still debated by historians.