Treaty Of Versailles
THE REASONS IT FAILED
The war ended in mid-November 1918. The problem now was what sort of peace agreement was going they were going to have. Who was going to get what and what kind of penalties were going to be laid out. this would all be clear with the making of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Britain was thinking about how to increase British colonial power. France, wanted to permanently punish Germany partly in revenge for what they did to them during World War 1. I Germany the citizens were worried about what would happen to them. In the United States President Wilson was already concocting a system of permanently preserving European peace. Yet just twenty years later, war would once again break out in Europe. So why were the peace settlements of World War I unable to prevent the outbreak of war twenty years later in World War II?
The economic strain put on Germany was probably the single most important factor in increasing hostility of the Germans towards Britain and France. The Germans by 1921 had paid off almost half of the $5,000,000,000 charged by Versailles. Then the reparations committee finally met and determined that Germany should pay another $25,000,000,000, plus other costs, bringing the total up to $32,500,000,000 to be paid by 1963! This demand, however, was ridiculous. Germany had hardly enough money to pay the entire original fee. In 1918, the German Reichsbank had only $577,089,500 dollars. This demand would crush the German economy, and many experts predicted it could even cause the starvation of the German people.
Not only were Britain and France overly vindictive in assessing these reparations, but they were also short-sighted in thinking they would derive anything beneficial out of it. Basically, Britain and France demanded all of Germany's money, yet they also took away all territory from Germany that could produce this money. By taking away Germany's colonies, they, in effect, eliminated all of Germany's investments and assets in their Colonial power. Future income and industry generated from these colonies would not be here for Germany. More devastating was taking away Germany's coal-producing territories. Germany, according to 1913 figures, used 139,000,000 tons of coal to enable its railroads, utilities, house-fuel, agriculture, etc. The provinces of Alsace-Lorraine, the Saarland, and Upper Silesia accounted for 60,800,000 of those tons, all of which was taken away from Germany.
Germany's only other option was to resort to printing more money. This would cause massive inflation, further devastating the German economy. In 1918, there were seven German Marks to the United States Dollar. In 1923, 4,210,500,000,000 Marks equalled the dollar! Germany's last economic resort had been disastrous.
All these factors, ignored by those who created the treaty, easily allowed Adolph Hitler to come to power. Hitler was a very charismatic leader, and an excellent speaker, and was offering solutions to the economic and social hardships of Germany. The German people immediately were willing to join his cause, no matter how radical it was. Soon, Hitler began to remilitarize Germany, planning to regain the territories lost with the Versailles Treaty, with great nationalist support from the German people. As for the League of Nations, it was unable to do anything. Britain and France were often to busy worrying about their own economic and social problems of the time to worry about foreign affairs, yet alone wage another war. Hitler had carefully analysed the League's reactions toward other aggression at the time. When Japan invaded Manchuria, the League let it pass. Similarly, when Mussolini attacked Ethiopia in 1935, the Allies only imposed economic sanctions on Italy, which were actually ignored by most League members. If the League of Nations would have been stronger, perhaps with the assistance of the United States, aggression by Germany, Italy and Japan could have been prevented. But the U.S was still angry about being ignored at Versailles, and maintained a very isolationist policy. Finally, the League of Nations had to resort to the weak policy of Appeasement, championed by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Hitler and Germany were able to take over the Rhineland, the Saarland, the Sudetenland, and unify with Austria with the League left only to watch. Finally, on the 1st of September 1939, just 20 years after the end of World War I, Hitler invaded Poland. The Treaty of Versailles had failed; Europe was once again at war.
The Treaty of Versailles had one true plan in preserving the peace, to completely eliminate Germany's territorial, imperial, military, and economic power so much, that the country could never wage war again. The means of doing this in the treaty, however, were faulted and contradictory. Under the threat of military action, Germany was forced to pay huge reparations to Britain and France. But all of Germany's income producing territories and colonies had been taken away; it was impossible for them to pay. With the economy devastated, Germany turned to demagoguery and radical ideas with Adolph Hitler, and would eventually wage war on Britain, France, and many others. Many at the time of the Treaty of Versailles knew that there would be problems with it; myopic revenge and punishment would not preserve the peace. Some even tried to publicly offer solutions like Woodrow Wilson and John Maynard Keynes. Unfortunately, the leaders of Britain and France ignored these problems and signed the Treaty of Versailles into existence. David Lloyd George of Britain would live to see the horrific fighting and casualties in World War II..
A School Link Article. Courtesy of Chris Tyson, LCCHS, March 12, 1999 .
