Versailles Verdicts
- Adolf Hitler hated it. The British diplomat Harold Nicolson called it 'neither just nor wise'.
- The British economist John Maynard Keynes prophesied it would ruin the world economy.
- Lenin declared of it: 'This is no peace, but terms dictated to a defenceless victim by armed robbers.'
Where contemporaries led, historians have followed. 'The unwise thing about Versailles was that it annoyed the Germans yet did not render them too weak to retaliate,' declared the British historian Norman Lowe. Pupils in Michigan, USA, are taught that the Treaty was: 'flawed to the extent that instead of preventing future wars it made a future war inevitable'.
Yet is any of this FAIR?
The peacemakers faced a Europe which had fallen apart - there was no question of just calling it a day and going home. THREE empires, comprising most of central and eastern Europe, had collapsed in revolution and bankruptcy. The peacemakers formed nation-states and drew boundaries which, more-or-less, have survived until today. If their attempts to establish peace and disarmaments only lasted 20 years, they DID invent the principle of 'collective security' to which still, in the United Nations, we look to prevent war between the nations. And the diplomats of Versailles constructed this peace, without chance to rehearse, assailed by a maelstrom of lobbyists and pressures, amidst revolutions, famine and Spanish flu, whilst at home, war-weary publics were demanding revenge.
- Margaret Macmillan, great-granddaughter of the great David Lloyd George, says: 'It is my own view - and a number of historians who have been working in this area for some years - that the treaty was not all that bad.'
- British politician and historian Neil Stonehouse believes that 'in a devastated and newly complex continent no better attempt could have been made'.
- Historian and schoolteacher Richard Jones-Nerzic argues that the peacemakers 'did a remarkably good job'.
What is your opinion of the Treaty of Versailles? What do you think -- for example - about these questions
- Was it fair or unfair?
- Was it successful or a failure?
- Was it a crafted peace, or a botched compromise?
- Did it help to lay the foundations of the future, or leave behind a legacy of hate?
Use the following webpages
and have your say!
posted by Mr John D Clare | 9:03 PM
8 Comments:
The Treaty of Versailles was a very very harsh treaty. I agree with President Wilson though. Germany should have not been made to sign the war guilt clause. This wasn't fair and no wonder Germany started another world war!
haha!The Germans bombed our chip shops they had to be punished...
I suppose it depends on where you look at it from. Even today, most Germans will tell you it was unfair, but many Britons would think it was justified by the damage Germany did during the war. Considering the pressures on the leaders at the time, and all their different aims, they did remarkably well to keep peace, and it took someone as comitted as Hitler to break it. Or maybe I'm talking nonsense. What would I know? I'm a kid.
Thanks Mr Clare!
Well, in the end it failed, so it wasn't all that great, but to be honest, I think most people were agreed that the peacemakers were faced with a practically inmpossible task...
For me, the Fischer thesis settled any outstanding matter regarding war guilt, so for that reason alone I think the treaty was fair. Whether they like to admit it or not, the German's invaded the neutral country of Belgium which went against the Treaties of the day. However, even if they had not been guilty of beginning the war, the Allies deserved a winners peace.
Why? Because whereas France's industry had been devastated by war, Germany was largely unscathed. They needed the finance simply to achieve equilibrium and even with reparations Germany were a greater powerhouse than France by the 1930s. Likewise, Britain had a massive widow's pension to pay and never recouped anything like what was spent fighting the war because of the Belgian invasion. Germany could not be trusted or allowed to keep a strong industry without the rest of Europe being compensated in the interests of the balance of power in Europe.
Also, whilst it was disappointing that the victors only pursued self determination for the losers, it seems reasonable that Germany lost territory in order to reestablish nation states in Europe such as Poland and Czechoslovakia.
The reason the peace failed, as Ruth Henig has pointed out, is because the Treaty wasn't enforced. Had there been more vigilance in the 1930s, Hitler could never have grown Germany so much in strength. The Treaty was fair and I think Lowe is wrong to say it was strong enough to annoy but too weak to destroy; had it been enforced it would have been sensible, not harsh, and it would have worked.
I think that the ToV was harsh for Germany, but fair for other nations. In 1918, Germany headed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and put pressure on Russia, and that treaty was even harsher than the ToV.
But on the other hand, ToV squeezed Germany and led to another war.
thankyou for your help thanks to me using this to revise i passed and got an A
and another thing the treaty of Versailles was a cruel but fair punishment germany shouldnt have started something they couldnt finish i have no problems with germans i study it at college they shouldnt have been alloweed any soilders sdo there!!!
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