World War One: Paris Peace Settlement, Treaty of Versailles, 1919

Paris Peace
Settlement
1919

Sunday, 2 February 14

Syllabus

• the roles and differing goals of

Clemenceau, Lloyd George and
Wilson in creating the Treaty of
Versailles


Toll of WWI
• “Total war”
• 65 million mobilised.
• Historians estimate that
up to 10 million men
died and around 21
million were wounded.


Toll of WWI


Toll of WWI
Casualties of the Allied countries:


Toll of WWI
Casualties of the Allied countries:
◦Britain: 750,000 killed, 1,500,000 wounded
◦France: 1,400,000 killed, 2,500,000
wounded
◦Belgium: 50,000 killed
◦Italy: 600,000 killed
◦Russia: 1,700,000 killed
◦USA: 116,000 killed


Toll of WWI
Casualties of the Central Powers

• Germany: 2,000,000 killed
• Austria-Hungary: 1,200,000
killed
• Turkey: 325,000 killed
• Bulgaria: 100,000 killed


Vast areas of north-eastern Europe were destroyed
• The homes of 750,000 French people were destroyed
along with infrastructure
• Roads, coal mines, telegraph poles had all been destroyed,
which hindered economic restoration
•


•The Treaty of Versailles

was signed on 28 June
1919 (exactly ﬁve years
after the assassination of
Archduke Franz
Ferdinand)

•Consisted of 440
Articles

•The treaty was greeted
with shock and disbelief
in Germany.

Versailles Conference
• Delegates from 32 countries

were invited to participate in
talks held at the Palace of
Versailles

• The conference was controlled
Allied delegates in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles witness
the German delegation's acceptance of the terms of the
Treaty Of Versailles


by the “Big Three” and took
months of, often bitter,
negotiations

The “Big Three”

George
Clemenceau,

France

-‐
France
had
been
devastated

and
2/3
soldiers
had
been

injured
or
Killed
-‐
Germany
should
be
harshly

punished
and
pay
for
the
war


Woodrow
Wilson,

USA

-‐

Believed
in
peaceful

coopera?on
among
na?ons

and
the
right
to
self-‐
determina?on

David
Lloyd
George,

Great
Britain

-‐
Was
usually
in
the
middle

ground
between
Clemenceau

and
Wilson
-‐
Germany
should
be
punished

but
not
harshly
to
prevent
a

new
war

The Tiger
•

Georges Clemenceau of France argued that
Germany should be split up and weakened to
the point that it could never start a war again.

•

Clemenceau insisted upon the complete humiliation
of Germany, requiring German disarmament and
severe reparations; France also won back AlsaceLorraine. He was unhappy with the ﬁnal treaty and
believed it was not harsh enough

•

He believed that Woodrow Wilson was too idealistic


The Peacemaker
US President Woodrow Wilson (14 Points) he wanted a “just peace” that would ensure
war could not ever occur on this scale again
1) no more secret treaties
2) countries must seek to reduce their weapons and their armed
forces
3) national self-determination should allow people of the same
nationality to govern themselves and one nationality should not have
the power to govern another
4) all countries should belong to the League of Nations.
However, Wilson’s desire for the US to take a leading role
internationally was unpopular at home as most politicians supported
an isolationist position - US never ratiﬁed the treaty

The middle man
British PM, David Lloyd George, had two views
on how Germany should be treated.
His government was facing elections and Lloyd
George's public image reﬂected the punitive public
mood. "Hang the Kaiser" and "Make Germany Pay"
were common slogans and Lloyd George publicly
backed these views.
However, privately he was concerned about what the
effects of a harsh treaty would be. In the context of the
1917 Russian revolution, he feared the spread of
Bolshevism in Germany.


Germany is going to pay. We will get
everything you can squeeze out of a lemon,
and a bit more. The Germans should hand
over everything they own.
From a speech in 1918 by Sir Eric
Geddes, a British politician standing
for election as an MP.


ToV
• June 1919
• Treaty with Germany
• Was signed in the Palace of Versailles
• Germany not allowed to take part in negotiations presented with terms - became known as the
diktat or dictated peace
• Germany had to agree to accept full responsibility
for the outbreak of the First World War (the hated
Clause 231 or the “War Guilt Clause”)

Territorial Losses
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

The Saar (highly industrialised, Saar coal ﬁelds) administered
by the League of Nations for 15 years
The creation of an independent Polish state
West Prussia and Posen (rich farmlands) were given to
Poland
Alsace-Lorraine was given back to France
Danzig was appointed as an international city
Plebiscites in Upper Silesia, West Prussia and Schleswig
Germany lost colonies and investments
Loss of 13% land mass, 12.5% of its population,100%
overseas colonies
Joining of German and Austria forbidden


Territorial Losses


New map of Europe


Military
• Regular army limited to 100,000 military
personnel
• No tanks or heavy artillery
• No airforce
• Navy restricted to six battleships, no
submarines (15,000 sailors)
• End of compulsory enlistment into the armed
forces
• Rhineland to be occupied for 15 years by the
allied military forces

Economic
•
•
•
•
•

Germany to pay £6,600 million (132 billion gold marks)
Reparations where to be paid in regular instalments,
some in gold and some in goods
The Allies struggled to get payments from Germany
from 1921 to 1923
Dawes Commission 1924
France occupied the Ruhr in 1923
Germany completed the reparations payments in 2010,
(£60 million)
60million


Political
• WWI ended the House of Hohenzollern with the
forced abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II

• Economic burden of the treaty affected the new
government, led by the Social Democrats (SPD)

• Gave rise to the Dolchstosslegende (stab in the
back theory)

• The politicians who signed the treaty became
known as the “November Criminals”


A 1924 right-wing German political cartoon showing Philipp Scheidemann, the German
Social Democratic politician who proclaimed the Weimar Republic and was its second
Chancellor, and Matthias Erzberger, an anti-war politician from the Centre Party, who
ended WWI by signing the armistice with the Allies, as stabbing the German Army in the back

•

Controversial German historian Fritz Fischer wrote of the stab in
the back:

But even after the defeat of 1918, many Germans, and especially those who had
played leading parts in political and economic life up to 1918, preserved...a political
and historical image of themselves which was coloured by illusions. Because the
German army on the western front had held to the last hour an unbroken defensive
front outside the frontiers of the Reich, and had marched home in order, these
people failed to understand that Germany had been defeated.Thus the idea took
root and spread that the cause of the collapse of Germany was not her own policy
or exhaustion in the face of an enemy army made stronger than her own by active
American intervention, but a 'stab in the back' behind the front.The accusation was
[eventually] levelled . . . against the Weimar democracy which had been forced to
accept the 'dictated Treaty of Versailles' owing to 'treachery at home'.This view . . .
had been propagated by the German Army Council and the press...since November,
1918.TheEvangelische Kirchenzeitung, for example, wrote on October 20 - before
the November revolution: 'Collapse behind the front not collapse of our heroic
front, that is the shattering phenomenon of these last days . . . .The home has not
held out.'

German Response
•

Germany had hoped for a treaty more in line with Wilson's
Fourteen Points
• Hated having to take responsibility for the start of the First
World War
• Resented that it was forced to sign the treaty without any
negotiations of the terms
• Disagreed with the reparations and especially the territorial
losses
• Angered by the exclusion from the principle of selfdetermination
• The German population was angered by the treaty and wanted
to see it revoked - Hitler used this to great effect

German magazine Simpliccimus on June 3, 1919.
The principal judges and executioners were (from left to right) the American
president Wilson, the French president Clemenceau and the British Prime Minister
Lloyd George


Historiography
Historian (British-Canadian) Martin Kitchen
argues that the impression the country was
crippled by the reparations was a myth. He
further states that, instead of a weak Germany,
the reverse was true; that Germany was strong
enough to win substantial concessions and a
reduced reparation amount.


A.J.P. Taylor, in The History of the First World
War, 1963:
Though the Germans accepted the treaty in the formal sense
of agreeing to sign it, none took the signature seriously. The
treaty seemed to them to be wicked, unfair, dictation, a slave
treaty. All Germans intended to repudiate it at some time in
the future, if it did not fall to pieces of its own absurdity.


Douglas Newton, in Germany 1914-1945, 1990:
Whether Germany was treated justly or unjustly by the
victors at the Peace Conference is not a question of fact
but of moral judgment. Some argue that, if the Versailles
Treaty was harsh, so too would have been any framed by a
victorious Germany, as in the case of Brest-Litovsk. Others
argue that any peace which fell short of the ideals of
reconciliation was unjust because of the high ideals for
which Allied statesmen had claimed to be ﬁghting . . . What
is beyond question is that the process of peacemaking or
rather the absence of any genuine peace negotiations . . .
made all of Germany believe that the [Weimar] Republic
had been treated shabbily.

German historian Detlev Peukert
Opinions range from the traditional verdict that the national
budget and economy were intolerably squeezed to the opposite
view that the burden was scarcely larger than present-day aid to
developing countries. For once, the truth really seems to lie
somewhere between these positions. It is certainly true that the
ﬂexibility of the German economy, already constrained by the low
post-war level of economic activity in any case, was further
restricted by the need to pay reparations. On the other hand, the
actual payments that had to made were perfectly manageable.
Reparations were not, therefore, an utterly intolerable burden,
especially since any clear-sighted politician could reckon that after
a few years of uninterrupted payment and reduced international
tension there was a reasonable chance that the overall size of the
debt would be cut down
Peukert argued that the reasons for German economic problems in the
early 1920s were not reparations, but rather the legacy of World War I

“The British economic historian Niall Ferguson in
his 1998 book The Pity of War argued that Germany
could have paid reparations had there been the
political will. Ferguson began his argument by noting
that all of the belligerent countries in World War I
had endured signiﬁcant economic losses, not just
Germany, and that in 1920–21, German net national
product grew at 17%.”


Sources
http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7//wwi/versailles.html
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/
treaty_of_versailles.htm
http://www.ﬁrstworldwar.com/bio/
clemenceau.htm
http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/
media_nm.php?MediaId=1620
http://ibguides.com/history/notes/terms-of-theparis-peace-treaties-1919-20-versailles-stgermain-trianon-neuilly-sevres-lausanne-1923

World War One: Paris Peace Settlement, Treaty of Versailles, 1919

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World War One: Paris Peace Settlement, Treaty of Versailles, 1919