The treaty of Versailles
After Germany signed the Armistice, the Great four: United States' president Woodrow Wilson, France's prime minister Georges Clemenceau, England's prime minister Lloyd George and Italy's Orlando met in Paris in January 1919 and worked out the Treaty of Versailles.The armistice based on Woodrow Wilson's 14 points was agreed by Germany. But the Treaty of Versailles sharply differed from Wilson's points, and Germany who felt betrayed, denounced it as unjust and morally invalid. The reparations were especially regarded as too draconian. The question still remains: Was Versailles to draconian?The peace treaty's goal was to restore European stability and maintain everlasting peace. Later it became clear that what had been attained was not a lasting peace.The Great four had difficulties in arriving at an agreement. Great Britain and the United States were opposed to French aims. While British felt that the treaty was too harsh on Germany, France felt as though it was not harsh enough. France's Clemenceau implicitly wanted Germany to remain powerless. The victorious powers agreed that if the conditions were unbearably harsh, Germany might throw itself into the arms of Bolsheviks. Thus French aims were resisted.
Germany felt humiliated and to some extent this helped lay the basis for Hitler's politics. In addition to the material requirements, the treaty contained a strong moral condemnation of Germany. For Germany, the terms of reparations were unacceptable. Therefore, they couldn't accept the fact that they should have to pay for anything. Germany had to hand over most of its merchant marine, a quarter of its fishing fleet and a good part of its railroad stock to the Allies. ws and the mixture of principles of new diplomacy, considerations of power politics and nationalist passion lead to a treaty which was said to be a compromise and one that nobody really liked. Furthermore France received economic control over the Saar region. Keynes foresaw the coming of another world war if revisions are not made to the treaty. The Young Plan marked a limitation of claim on German resources and in 1931 the Lausanne conference cancelled reparations altogether. The reparations had rather symbolic importance for the Germans. But the war-guilt clause and the reparations demanded from Germany did little more than add fuel to the fire of growing German nationalism. Taylor made the assumption that the Versailles treaty "lacked moral validity from the start" and that Reparations cleared the way for the Second World War. The German delegates viewed the economic sanctions as being far too harsh. The treaty stated that in the next few years Germany was to pay 5 billion dollars.
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