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The treaty signing in the Hall of Mirrors – thousands of onlookers joined journalists and diplomats to oversee the brief ceremony<\/p><\/div>\n
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That any final terms of a peace treaty between Germany and the victorious Allies would be harsh could hardly have been a surprise.\u00a0 The process of even arriving at an Armistice<\/a> had seen Germany agree to give up most of their military and infrastructure, not to mention an occupation of the Ruhr by the French that increasingly looked tantamount to annexation.\u00a0 Similar treaties\/armistices with what remained of the Austro-Hungarian<\/a> and Ottoman Empires<\/a> had been debilitating as well, as both empires were stripped of their territories, their infrastructure plundered and their armies legislated into irrelevance.\u00a0 Only post treaty\/armistice violence would lessen some of the strongest terms, as the Hungarian revolution<\/a> and the following Turkish War of Independence forced the Allies’ hand to renegotiate.\u00a0 And in the winter and spring of 1919, Germany had no appetite or ability to militarily resist<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Germany’s internal position had already been calamitous – caloric intakes for civilians were down to 1,000 a day<\/a>; revolution had sporadically engulfed the country as left and right factions fought for control, and what remained of the former military and civil government was otherwise impotent to stop much.\u00a0 But signing the November Armistice hadn’t improved Germany’s position.\u00a0 The Allied blockade remained in place and the Allies refused to import foodstuffs until Germany relinquished the remains of her fleet, including her otherwise shelved merchant marine. The Germans had agreed, in principle, to surrender these ships, albeit with the understanding that the move would coincide with the end of the blockade, allowing Germany to once again engage in trade.\u00a0 Instead, the Allies promised to deliver food to Germany if the ships were received, and would keep the blockade in place.\u00a0 In the roughly five months between the Armistice and the eventual German surrender of their navy, an estimated 100,000 Germans died of starvation.\u00a0 Coupled with the loss of most of their railway infrastructure and crippling post-war inflation, Germany couldn’t even move or feed itself, let alone fight.\u00a0 And what was left of the German army was largely melting away as soldiers simply gave up their posts, ignoring orders to return back to civilian life.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was precisely the outcome that the Allies – or more specifically – France, wanted to see.\u00a0 We’ve discussed before the gaping scar the Great War left on the French psyche.\u00a0 Nearly 2 out of every 3 French soldiers who served were either killed, wounded or captured<\/a>.\u00a0 The defining slaughter of the war at Verdun had seen 78% of the entire French army<\/a> pass through those horrendous trenches.\u00a0 1.3 million French soldiers were dead; 25% of the entire male population of the country, aged 18-30.\u00a0 400,000 civilians had died as well and with them, the industrial north of the country had been gutted by the German occupation, not just by conflict but by the Germans destroying infrastructure in their retreat and forcibly moving French civilians behind German lines to act as borderline slave labor.\u00a0 France didn’t simply want to ensure their protection against another German invasion, but to permanently break Germany’s military and economic dominance.\u00a0 Or in the words of negotiator and British economist John Maynard Keynes, “set the clock back [to 1870].”\u00a0<\/p>\n While Britain certainly also pushed for a tough peace in certain areas, the French desire to permanently break the former Central Powers dominated the peace talks<\/p><\/div>\n Such French desires ran contrary to the wishes of her biggest allies in Britain and America.\u00a0 Neither David Lloyd George or Woodrow Wilson thought a punitive peace was in the long-term interest of Europe or the world, although George campaigned vigorously on such a punitive final peace in the immediate British election following the Armistice in 1918.\u00a0 George and his war-time coalition had been re-elected under the slogans of squeezing the Germans “’til the pips squeak” while privately declaring that any economic recovery would be impossible if Germany couldn’t revive her role as a major industrial and trading partner.\u00a0 And, despite the Anglo-French Entente, British interests in Europe remained constant – no singular continental power should dominate.\u00a0 Pre-1870, the British fear was that the dominant continental power was France, hence Britain’s alliances with various German states.\u00a0 Post 1870, with the rise of a united Germany, Britain now wished to use France as a counterweight.\u00a0 Returning to a pre-unification dynamic would inevitably make France a competitor again, potentially even an opponent.\u00a0 George had no interest in returning to a Napoleonic Era mindset nor surrendering Britain’s role as the power broker of Europe, keeping the continent from uniting against London.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The American position, or perhaps more specifically the position of Woodrow Wilson, went even further than Britain in terms of wanting to avoid a punitive peace treaty with Germany.\u00a0 Wilson had arrived in France in late 1918 to great acclaim, touting his Fourteen Points<\/a> and proposed “League of Nations” as the pathway to a lasting peace treaty.\u00a0 If George wanted to avoid an overly harsh peace with Germany out of practicality, Wilson viewed any final peace through both his critique of the pre-war system of competing alliances and the prism of his Presbyterian idealism.\u00a0 The “Fourteen Points” had arrived at a critical junction of the war, as the Allies sought to justify the immense sacrifice of their peoples and counter Bolshevik propaganda that peace could only be achieved by violently overthrowing the system<\/a>.\u00a0 But if taken literally, Wilson’s Fourteen Points represented a clear challenge to both British and French power.\u00a0 Self-determination of colonies, armaments reductions, and a League of Nations that could give tiny nation states the same authority and power as global empires could only hinder the post-war power and influence of the Entente.\u00a0 While Wilson blamed the war on Germany and was more than willing to carve up the finances and territories of the Central Powers, the American President’s post-war vision was that would be no return to a pre-World War status quo.\u00a0<\/p>\n The question awaiting the delegates in Paris was which agenda would prevail.<\/p>\n The “Big Four” – David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the United States<\/p><\/div>\n If the terms of the treaty were up to a popular vote, it would appear that Woodrow Wilson and the American position would win in a landslide.\u00a0 As Wilson arrived in December of 1918, throngs of Parisians<\/a> lined the Arc de Triomphe<\/em> to welcome him – no other visiting Allied leader could come close to Wilson’s reception among the French, even as most knew of Wilson’s relatively more lenient stance towards Berlin.\u00a0 Given the appeals from the Central Powers in the war’s closing weeks<\/a>, and Wilson’s own prominence, it could have been assumed by onlookers that Wilson might be in charge of conducting the negotiations.\u00a0 In truth, Wilson was more popular among Europe’s populace than at home (and definitely more popular than among his foreign political contemporaries).\u00a0 Wilson’s Democrats had just lost the 1918 elections, losing 4 governorships, 25 congressional seats and 6 Senate races, the latter resulting in Republican control of the Senate for the first time since 1910.\u00a0 Now faced with an adversarial Senate at home (albeit one that wouldn’t take office until the new year), Wilson vacillated between working with or against the thin GOP majority.\u00a0 Wilson had been advised to bring aboard Elihu Root, the former McKinley\/Roosevelt era Secretary of War as an olive branch to the Senate.\u00a0 Root had been a rumored 1916 presidential candidate and a leader of the “Preparedness” Movement<\/a> that had criticized Wilson for his foreign policy positions.\u00a0 Wilson had worked with Root previously during the war, sending him to Russia to engage with the Provisional Government and apparently took his advice on the matter.\u00a0 It didn’t hurt that Root had been a Senator as recently as 1915, and still had significant relationships within the Chamber.\u00a0 But Wilson rescinded the offer, now calling Root a “reactionary” who would somehow tank the negotiations, even as Root supported Wilson’s primary goal of the League of Nations.\u00a0 The Senate – and Root – took notice, and when it came time to vote on the League of Nations in the Senate much later, Root opposed Wilson’s version of the organization.<\/p>\n While the terms of any peace treaty weren’t going to be decided in a popular vote, the immediate question was whose votes were going to matter in negotiations?\u00a0 27 countries had sent delegates to Paris, with over 70 attendees to start.\u00a0 In all, over 30 countries would eventually take part in the Paris Peace Conference – but not one of them were from the defeated powers.\u00a0 The initial talks at the Salle de l’Horloge<\/em> in the French Foreign Ministry could barely contain the full delegations, nor could the process endure if every measure had to passed by a majority of the participants.\u00a0 Did economic terms between France and Germany need to be approved by nations like Panama and Liberia?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The “solution” was narrowing down the Conference to a so-called “Council of Ten”, consisting of two delegates each from the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Japan – the “Big Five” of the Allied powers (Russia had been excluded from talks having signed a separate peace with Germany, in addition to their communist pariah status).\u00a0 Eventually, the Council of Ten became the Council of Five, as each of the major nations assigned their own foreign ministers to continue negotiations.\u00a0 Even this arrangement slowly disintegrated into a “Big Four”, largely excluding Japan, while Italy remained technically on the inside of negotiations, but found their objectives increasingly ignored by the “Big Three” Allied powers.<\/p>\n Even pro-Wilson publications depicted the European powers as children in the negotiation process.\u00a0 Such images, although intended to make Wilson the adult in the room, likely contributed to American resistance to the final treaty and the League of Nations<\/p><\/div>\n Such a structure may have fit in with the realpolitik<\/em> of European affairs before the war, but by design left a number of Allied partners out of the process as the map of the world was being reshaped largely without their input.\u00a0 At it’s core, the Conference was laying bare the shifting promises the Allies had made over the years in order to entice nations to join the war effort, and the fundamental difference in values that held propelled them from the start of the war versus the end.\u00a0 The Entente of 1914-16 had been interested in largely dividing up the spoils of war, from Germany’s various colonies<\/a> to the Ottoman Empire<\/a>.\u00a0 The Allies of 1917-18 had ostensibly fought for self-determination and an equitable peace, however one truly wished to define such a lofty principle.\u00a0 Sometimes those values could overlap, as supporting the Arab Revolt<\/a> satisfied some of the territorial goals of Sharif Hussein bin Ali while also granting Arabs a measure of self-rule.\u00a0 More often they conflicted, as the promises made to Yugoslavia<\/a> ran contrary to promises made to Italy<\/a>; or territory promised to China<\/a> would go to Japan.\u00a0 In either event, the process was already frustrating the attendees, especially as numerous sub-committees would form in response to complaints, meeting repeatedly only to see their recommendations ignored while literally a handful of men decided the future of the world.<\/p>\n All Germany could do was watch from afar.\u00a0 The view from Berlin was knowing that a terrible price-tag likely awaited any final treaty, but with the assumption that there might be some level of negotiation.\u00a0 Instead, Germany was given an early draft of the final treaty in May of 1919 and were horrified by the contents.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Germany would lose 25,000 square miles of her pre-war territory, including concessions to France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Poland and even Denmark (who hadn’t participated in the war).\u00a0 Eastern Prussia would find itself divided from Germany proper, with the Danzig corridor separating them to allow Poland access to a port city.\u00a0 Regions like the Saar would be under French occupation, with the industrial output given to the French government for the next 15 years until a plebiscite would determine whether or not the region would permanently leave Germany.\u00a0 Seven million ethnic Germans would be placed into other nations. The army would be reduced to 100,000 men and could not own or produce armored cars, tanks or aircraft.\u00a0 The final bill for reparations had yet to be determined, but until the Allies came up with an estimate, Germany would owe $5 billion USD (at 1919 prices).\u00a0 By 1921, the Allies estimated the final total to be $132 billion gold marks ($269 billion USD now), of which Germany would find itself paying $500 million USD annually, plus 26% of all German exports.\u00a0 It was a debt Germany couldn’t possibly hope to repay without gutting their economy.<\/p>\n German children suffering from starvation.\u00a0 An estimated 763,000 Germans died of lack of nutrition\/food during the entire war<\/p><\/div>\n Within less than two years of being handed the final butcher’s bill for the First World War, reparations and the terms of the post-war settlement pushed Germany into hyperinflation.\u00a0 42 billion marks were the equivalent of one U.S. cent in late 1923.\u00a0 In short, Germany had nothing of it’s own left to produce.\u00a0 It’s infrastructure had been given to France and it’s industrial sector’s output filled French coffers.\u00a0 In response, workers in the Ruhr went on strike, refusing to produce goods that they couldn’t profit from (the German government was now directly paying the workers, not the factories nor the French).\u00a0 The Weimar Republic now looked completely hapless to the German public – they had saddled Germany with post-war responsibility for the conflict, a nearly unpayable debt, and crushing inflation.\u00a0 It was little wondered then in late 1923 that a public rally for the Bavarian government in a Munich beer hall, Erich Ludendorff reappeared from self-exile along with members of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and declared their seizure of power.\u00a0 Marching the next morning in downtown Munich in an attempt to build popular support for their quasi-coup, Ludendorff, the Nazis, and their leader, Adolf Hitler, were confronted by police.\u00a0 Within a minute, shots were fired and 16 Nazis lay dead.\u00a0 Ludendorff and Hitler were arrested, only to have Ludendorff acquitted of charges of treason and Hitler given a minor sentence.<\/p>\n The Weimar Republic would be given some reprieve as the Allies could see that the scale of the reparations being asked of Berlin were simply unachievable.\u00a0 The Allied Reparation Committee met again, chaired by American banker Charles G. Dawes.\u00a0 It was determined that Germany’s war debt would be significantly reduced and that the Ruhr would be returned to Germany to help them finance their debts and kickstart their economy.\u00a0 The U.S. would essentially lend Germany it’s interest payments for reparations while helping to recapitalize Germany’s central bank.\u00a0 The resulting “Dawes Plan” would help curb hyperinflation and launch a German economic recovery until the Great Depression.\u00a0 For his efforts, Dawes would win the Nobel Peace Prize and end up Vice President under Calvin Coolidge.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n No one left Versailles satisfied with the outcome – and few left with any rationalization that they had laid the bedrock for a lasting peace.\u00a0 John Maynard Keynes mockingly called Versailles a “Carthaginian peace” – referencing the harsh terms Rome had placed on Carthage which eventually prompted the Third Punic War which required burning Carthage to the ground in order to end the fighting.\u00a0 Marshal Ferdinand Foch came at the situation from the opposite angle – he felt the treaty was too kind to Germany – but ended up with the same analysis: \u201cThis is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years!\u201d<\/p>\n Germans protest Versailles<\/p><\/div>\n But was Versailles unduly harsh and did it directly lead to the Second World War?\u00a0 The interwar answer to both questions was largely “yes”, as it became clear to future Allied governments that the economic and territorial concessions of Versailles hindered Germany’s economic recovery and fostered irredentist claims from even moderate German politicians, to say nothing of the Nazis who followed them.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.argunners.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Treaty-of-Versailles.jpg\")
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