The Treaty of Versailles ended World War I. It took six months of Allied negotiations before the treaty was signed on 28 June 1919. The defeated nations (Germany, Austria and Hungary) were excluded from the negotiations. Russia, which had negotiated a separate peace with Germany the year before, was also excluded.
The conditions of the Treaty of Versailles were determined at meetings between the leaders of Great Britain (Prime Minister David Lloyd George), France (Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau), the United States (President Woodrow Wilson) and Italy (Prime Mister Vittorio Orlando). During the negotiations, French delegates sought to annex both the Saar Valley and the colonial German empire and to dismember Germany to prevent her from starting future wars. Although British and American negotiators also advocated stiff reparations, they did not want to totally cripple the German economy and thereby forego the possibility of a viable future trading partner.
The Treaty of Versailles was strictly enforced for five years, then modified mostly in Germany’s favor. In 1932, the depression led to the indefinite postponement of reparation payments, and by 1938 only the territorial settlement articles remained.
The Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France, where the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919. www.walled-in-berlin.com
Conditions of the Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles consisted of 15 parts and 440 articles.
- Part 1 – Created a new League of Nations, which Germany was not allowed to join until 1926.
- Part 2 – Specified Germany’s new boundaries with Eupen-Malmady going to Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine to France, West Prussia, Posen and Upper Silesia to Poland, Memel to Lithuania, and large portions of Schleswig Holstein to Denmark.
- Part 3 – Stipulated a demilitarized zone and a separation of the Saarland from Germany for 15 years.
- Part 4 – Stripped Germany of all its colonies.
- Part 5 – Reduced Germany’s military forces to very low levels, prohibited Germany from possessing certain classes of weapons and committed the Allies to eventual disarmament.
- Part 6 – Determined terms for the return of prisoners of war and for the treatment of the graves of fallen soldiers.
- Part 7 – Created terms for the trials of those accused of war crimes against the Allied Powers.
- Part 8 – Established Germany’s responsibility for reparations without stating a specific figure and forced Germany to accept full responsibility for World War I.
- Part 9 – Imposed numerous other financial obligations on Germany.
- Part 10 – Addressed shipping and unfair competition.
- Part 11 – Gave Allied and Associated Powers full passage and landing rights over and in the territory and in the territorial waters of Germany.
- Part 12 – Established terms regarding German ports, waterways and railroads.
- Part 13 – Established terms regarding labor.
- Part 14 – Established guarantees for Western and Eastern Europe regarding the evacuation of Allied Powers.
- Part 15 – Miscellaneous provisions.
By far the most controversial section of the Treaty of Versailles was Article 231 in Part 8 of the agreement, known as the War Guilt Clause, which was partly responsible for the rise of the Nazis in Germany.
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Tags: British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, Treaty of Versailles, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, War Guilt Clause
