The First World War (1914-1918)
Senior 6 · History (Languages)
The First World War (1914-1918)
Lesson 4 of 4
25 min
On 28 June 1919, five years to the day after the shots in Sarajevo, the peace with Germany was signed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, near Paris. The Irish-born painter William Orpen was there. Before you read his painting as evidence, find three things: where the German delegate is, where the Allied leaders sit, and how much of the canvas is taken up by the room rather than the people.
The seating tells the story of the treaty. Germany was not invited to negotiate. Its delegation received the draft in May 1919 and could only send written objections; it signed under threat that the war would resume. Germans called the treaty a Diktat, a dictated peace, and that word shaped how they remembered it.
Figure 1. The "Big Three" pulled in different directions. Italy's Vittorio Orlando, the fourth great leader at the conference, left early in protest when Italy did not receive all the land it wanted.
Definition
Reparations: payments a defeated state is made to pay for war damage.
War guilt clause: Article 231 of the treaty, in which Germany accepted responsibility for the loss and damage caused by the war. It was the legal basis for reparations.
Demilitarised zone: an area where troops and fortifications are forbidden, such as the German Rhineland after 1919.
Plebiscite: a vote by the people of an area to decide a single question, such as which state it should belong to.
| Group | Main terms |
|---|---|
| Territory in Europe | Alsace-Lorraine returned to France; Eupen and Malmedy to Belgium; North Schleswig to Denmark after a plebiscite; West Prussia and Posen to Poland, creating the "Polish Corridor"; Danzig a Free City under the League; the coal-rich Saar run by the League for 15 years, its mines given to France. Union with Austria forbidden. In all Germany lost about 65,000 km² and 7 million people. |
| Colonies | All German colonies taken and handed to Allied powers as League mandates, including Ruanda-Urundi (to Belgium) and Tanganyika (to Britain). |
| Armed forces | Army limited to 100,000 men with no conscription; no tanks or military aircraft; navy cut to six old battleships and no submarines; Rhineland demilitarised and occupied by Allied troops for 15 years. |
| Guilt and money | Article 231 (war guilt); reparations, whose total was fixed in 1921 at 132 billion gold marks. |
| A new order | Part I of the treaty was the Covenant of the League of Nations; another part set up the International Labour Organization. |
The other defeated powers signed separate treaties: Saint-Germain with Austria (1919), Neuilly with Bulgaria (1919), Trianon with Hungary (1920) and Sèvres with the Ottoman Empire (1920), later replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923).
| Achievements | Weaknesses |
|---|---|
| Formally ended the war with Germany. | Imposed, not negotiated: German resentment of the Diktat lasted. |
| Created the League of Nations, the first permanent world body for peace. | The US Senate refused to ratify it, so the United States never joined the League. |
| Self-determination for several European peoples (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and others). | New borders left minorities inside other states, for example Germans in Czechoslovakia and Poland. |
| Limited German armed forces and protected France's border. | Reparations were disputed and hard to collect; the economist John Maynard Keynes attacked them in 1919. |
| Founded the International Labour Organization for workers' rights. | Soviet Russia was excluded; Italy and Japan felt cheated; colonial peoples, including those of Ruanda-Urundi, were not consulted. |
Worked example: "The Treaty of Versailles was too harsh on Germany." Discuss
For: Germany lost territory, all its colonies and most of its armed forces; it had to accept war guilt and pay reparations; it had no say in the terms.
Against: Germany kept most of its land, people and industry and remained Europe's largest economy; the treaty was milder than the one Germany imposed on Russia at Brest-Litovsk; France had suffered invasion twice in fifty years.
Judgement: perhaps not too harsh to obey, but harsh enough to resent and too weak to enforce: the worst of both worlds. That combination, not harshness alone, made it a weak basis for peace.
History Matters, "How Harsh was the Treaty of Versailles Really?" (short animated documentary, about 4 minutes). Watch for the comparison with Brest-Litovsk and decide whether it changes your answer to the worked example.
Warning
Keep these apart. Article 231 assigned responsibility; it did not set a sum. The reparations total (132 billion gold marks) was fixed later, in 1921. And the United States never ratified the treaty, although its own president had shaped it.
Tip
Five headings for the terms. Land, colonies, forces, guilt and money, new order. Two facts under each heading give you ten precise terms, which is what a "describe the terms" question wants.
Important
Discuss. The treaty promised self-determination, yet handed Ruanda-Urundi to Belgium without asking its people. What does this tell you about whose peace Versailles was?
Practice
Further reading
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the diagram, the tables, the worked example and the exercises.
