The Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles was intended to be a peace agreement between the Allies and the Germans regarding world war 1 in 1919.It was certainly not dominated by the United States but however, once the negotiation of the Treaty, the Allies found they had conflicting ideas and motives surrounding the reparations and wording of the Treaty therefore it was poorly thought out from the beginning. The Treaty formally placed the responsibility for the war on Germany and its allies and imposed on Germany the burden of paying the debts of war.

The Treaty humiliated Germany, The war-guilt clause forced Germany to accept full responsibility for the cause of World War I. Although the French Prime Minister George Clemenceau and the British Prime Minister Lloyd George wanted Germany to suffer harsh and severe consequences, President Woodrow Wilson of the United States didn’t seek revenge nor did he believe that Germany was completely responsible for WWI, but his plan was to make the world a safer place and restore peace and democracy in Europe. For that he created a 14- point plan that outlined principles of peace and fairness that he believed would bring stability back to Europe.  

The treaty had specific harsh conditions that were applied for Germany to follow. Some of these conditions included paying £6600 million for the allies to cover all the damage that Germany had caused over the war period. Germany had to reduce its land by 12 percent and also give back land that Germany had possessed in the past. The German military was reduced to 100,000 men from 11 million despite the 2 million soldiers that lost their lives during the war, also, they weren’t permitted any submarines, planes or tanks and any ship under construction was to be destroyed. Because Germany lost a huge mass of land, it was forced to reduce their coal mines by 16 percent and its iron production by 48 percent. Germany had to obey the conditions carefully without hesitations and by that; it was what triggered Hitler to give back revenge.  

The significance of the treaty was the sensation of bitterness and irritation that was planted amongst the German people. Not only as a whole nations pride went down due to the treaty, but it was severely difficult for Germany to rebuild itself as it had to also pay for all the damaged countries. The majority of Germens felt that they were getting penalized for something they didn’t want to occur in the first place.  

At the close of World War I, the League of Nations was established in 1920, but it did not have a large amount of power and it didn't function well enough to prevent international problems from occurring, or to resolve them when they occurred. However, many of Wilsons 14 points were carried in the Treaty. This way, Wilson was successful in establishing a League of Nations; however, he was not successful in convincing his own country to join fearing there would occur a loss of America’s independence.