"The Myth that the Treaty of Versailles was ..." Topic

…Unprecedentedly Harsh

"Whether the Treaty of Versailles was a fair, just, or reasonable treaty are all potential areas for debate, but Versailles was not unprecedented in its harshness at the time. Barely a few years earlier (in 1917), the Germans had imposed the Treaty of Brest Livotsk on Russia which involved the Russian cession of Finland, the Baltic States, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, and significant territory in the Caucasus – land with a quarter of the population and industry of the former Russian empire, and 9/10ths of her coal. This territory was to be granted to German client states : the argument that they were merely taking territory away from Russia which was not populated by Russians and hence wasn't truly Russian can be used easily enough concerning Versailles, which mostly took away territory from Germany which was ethnically non-German. In Romania, there were both important territorial losses to the Central Powers when Romania surrendered (although admittedly it also gained Moldavia), but even more importantly it was forced to lease its oil wells for Germany for 90 years, and it was effectively transformed into a puppet state of Germany by the implementation of German administrators with veto rights over the Romanian cabinet. At the same time, the Entente imposed peace treaties on Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, were all harsher than Versailles. Compared to these treaties imposed recently by the Germans, Versailles is not particularly harsh : Germany's population losses were nothing close to a quarter of the population, industrial losses were not on the same level, and while the Allies could be inflexible in their demands, the German government was free of Allied administrators appointed at its heart to direct it. Looking back in time, the Treaty of Frankfurt between France and Germany imposed harsh reparations on France (5 billion francs, an amount which is actually higher than the amount actually paid by Germany following Versailles), annexed Alsace-Lorraine, and occupied huge swathes of Eastern France, far larger comparatively than the Rhineland (and ones which were only evacuated quickly due to rapid French repayment). If it had no points about disarmament or the so-called "War guilt clause" the point remains the same : the treaties of the era which were harder on the defeated power or comparable are many…"

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Armand

+1 Aegon. These sort of arguments are always more a matter of perspective and based a preferred point in history on the tit for tat series of historical territorial exchange is taken to start. However, it was thought by many at the time that the nature of Versailles would not be the final tat.

The harshness of Versailles was not about loss of territory, it was about the attempt (mostly by Clemenceau) to reduce Germany to a second rate power militarily and economically. The fact that Germany rejected the terms as soon as it was able doesn't change that fact.

What made it more unacceptable was the stock market/recession which was hard on everyone.

Thanks

Armand

And, as George Orwell liked to ask, "what do you think would have happened if Germany had won?"

In the same vein, there is the exchange between the hand-wringing German diplomat and Clemenceau in the Hall of Mirrors:

"What will history say about this?"

"Well, it won't say that Belgium invaded Germany."

(smile)

Armand

Look.. what matters is when Hitler violated the treaty On 7 March 1936 German troops re-occupied the Rhineland, a de-militarised zone according to the Treaty of Versailles. This action was directly against the terms which Germany had accepted after the First World War. This move, in terms of foreign relations, threw the European allies, especially France and Britain, into confusion. What should they do about it? Not a damn thing. Had they ejected troops which were armed with bugles and drums that would have drawn the line in the concrete. Whimps