explain the treaty of Versailles of world wars
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Explanation:
Treaty of Versailles, peace document signed at the end of World War I by the Allied and associated powers and by Germany in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France, on June 28, 1919; it took force on January 10, 1920.
After the Treaty was signed (reluctantly) by the German government, terrorists assassinated several government officials they held responsible for it.
The other treaties signed with the losing Central Powers were also harsh, ending their empires.
The extreme effects of the Treaty on Germany led to the Dolchstosslegende (stab-in-the-back legend) which worked in favor of the Nazi Party.
The Treaty's required reparations amplified the state of Europe's economy in Germany, causing hyperinflation.
The French insisted on the Treaty being harsh out of fear of Germany instigating another war.
Treaty of Versailles, peace document signed at the end of World War I by the Allied and associated powers and by Germany in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France, on June 28, 1919; it took force on January 10, 1920.
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A brief treatment of the Treaty of Versailles follows. For full treatment, see international relations: Peacemaking, 1919–22.
Mahan, Alfred Thayer
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20th-century international relations: The Versailles Diktat
The Paris Peace Conference opened on Jan. 18, 1919, in a politically charged atmosphere. The…
When the German government asked U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson to arrange a general armistice in October 1918, it declared that it accepted the Fourteen Points he had formulated as the basis for a just peace. However, the Allies demanded “compensation by Germany for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allies and their property by the aggression of Germany by land, by sea and from the air.” Further, the nine points covering new territorial consignments were complicated by the secret treaties that England, France, and Italy had made with Greece, Romania, and each other during the last years of the war.
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The treaty was drafted during the Paris Peace Conference in the spring of 1919, which was dominated by the national leaders known as the “Big Four”—David Lloyd George of Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, Woodrow Wilson of the United States, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy. The first three in particular made the important decisions. None of the defeated nations had any say in shaping the treaty, and even the associated Allied powers played only a minor role. The German delegates were presented with a fait accompli. They were shocked at the severity of the terms and protested the contradictions between the assurances made when the armistice was negotiated and the actual treaty. Accepting the “war guilt” clause and the reparation terms were especially odious to them.
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The population and territory of Germany was reduced by about 10 percent by the treaty. In the west, Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France, and the Saarland was placed under the supervision of the League of Nations until 1935. In the north, three small areas were given to Belgium, and, after a plebiscite in Schleswig, northern Schleswig was returned to Denmark. In the east, Poland was resurrected, given most of formerly German West Prussia and Poznań (Posen), given a “corridor” to the Baltic Sea (which separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany), and given part of Upper Silesia after a plebiscite. Gdańsk (Danzig) was declared a free city. All Germany’s overseas colonies in China, in the Pacific, and in Africa were taken over by Britain, France, Japan, and other Allied nations (see mandate).
The war guilt clause of the treaty deemed Germany the aggressor in the war and consequently made Germany responsible for making reparations to the Allied nations in payment for the losses and damage they had sustained in the war. It was impossible to compute the exact sum to be paid as reparations for the damage caused by the Germans, especially in France and Belgium, at the time the treaty was being drafted, but a commission that assessed the losses incurred by the civilian population set an amount of $33 billion in 1921. Although economists at the time declared that such a huge sum could never be collected .