Dissatisfaction with the results of WWI caused WWII. Inasmuch as the treaty terms contributed to that dissatisfaction, you can lay some of the blame there. Another major contributor was the fact that Germany’s economy, industry, and even society collapsed under the pressures of war and the Allied blockade before the army did. There was a feeling – common to wars that end inconclusively – that things hadn’t gone to the bitter end, that the army hadn’t “really” been beaten. This manifested as the “stab in the back” myth, extensively promoted by Hitler.
Interestingly, Italy and Japan also were dissatisfied with the outcome of the war, even though they’d fought on the Allied side. Both countries got a smaller share of the spoils than they expected to get. I think that was a factor in their inter-war militarization, which in turn contributed to their war fever as WWII approached.
Actually, you’ll notice that the Fourteen Points were made known very early in 1918, with another ten months of arguably the severest fighting of the war yet to come. The Germans received Wilson’s Points, and then ignored them, because they hoped to win with the Spring Offensive and set their own terms. In essence, they were seen to have rejected them.
So it should come as no surprise that when the Germans, crippled and faltering in November 1918, ask for terms on the basis of Wilson’s Points, that most of the Allies don’t look kindly on such a request. They had their opportunity, and should pay the price for continuing the war.
IMHO, this is probably the most pointed statement about WW2. Hitler was an unemployed artist with limited talent and yet he nearly conquered the world. Total fluke of history. Yet it could happen again. :eek:
The German army still stood on foreign soil, it hadn’t been forced to concede any German territory, so, there was some grounds for at least believing that it hadn’t - yet.
In retrospect it would been better to have continued the war onto German soil and reduce Germany to a pile of rubble and starving civilians. No chance of convincing anyone at the time, of course, everyone had had enough.
They believed that with good reason - that was precisely Wilson’s stated goal of the US involvement in the war and of Versailles, a “peace of equals” which did not apportion blame and inflict punitive reparations. As we all know it didn’t turn out like that, but Wilson hated the other Allies’ ambitions to gain something out of Germany’s defeat as much as he hated the Germans’ aggression. He thought an excessively punitive judgement on Germany would just mean the US would have to intervene again. He was right in that as it turned out, although I think for the wrong reasons.
Not sure about that, but as little as another two weeks’ advance would have seen the question settled without doubt - the Boche had lost decisively. Wilson’s pressure to the soonest possible peace on his terms brought the war to a slightly premature end, IMO.
(My reference is Adam Tooze’s The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order, which I’m most of the way through at the moment)
The way the German government responded to the reparations was to try to print money to buy hard currency to use to pay the reparations. This led to hyperinflation which wrecked the German economy and led to Weimar Republic losing popular support. This led to the rise of extremist groups such as the Nazis.
If the German government had paid the reparations without trying to monetize it, that would have been hard for the German economy but better than what happened.
Yes they were. The French indemnity amounted to about 23% of French GDP before the Franco-Prussian War. The German WWI indemnity came to about 100% of prewar GDP.
In a moral sense, the larger indemnity could be justified because Germany had inflicted more damage on France in WWI than France had on Germany in the Franco-Prussian War.
But, such a huge indemnity was impractical. The Allies were trying to get a huge amount of blood from a rather sick turnip. They ensured that it would stay sick, offering grist to revolutionaries of both the left and the right.
I would say that the mess called eastern Europe (set up by the treaty) did give rise to Hitler and German nationalism. Take Czechoslovakia-a nation made up of three groups-ethnic Germans (Sudetenland), Slovaks, and Czechs-no way was this ever going to work. Plus, giving Poland places like Danzig, Silesia (full of Germans) was a recipe for disaster.
It would have been better to have kept the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, than to have created these multi-ethnic countries.
This is an aside, but Czechoslovakia, as created in 1919, was the best possible solution to a difficult situation. It was not precisely based on self-determination, but it had workable borders based (mostly) on centuries of tradition. And the ethnic difficulties were mostly created by German propaganda in 1937 and 38. Czechoslovakia functioned quite well for 20 years surrounded (mostly) by hostile powers without much internal terrorism or other unrest.
Yes,* you *have often said this, but it’s not true.
Germany was assessed 132 billion gold marks (about 158 billion francs at par)
France’s war indemnity was five billion francs.
Germany had to pay over 30 times more.
German lost 6,500,000 Hectares and and 7,000,000 people.
France lost 1,447,000 hectares in Alsace-Lorraine BUT that was only areas with mostly German speaking inhabitants. Had been disputed for centuries. 1,597,000 people.
Germany lost about 4 times more people and territory.
I would say that the mess called eastern Europe (set up by the treaty) did give rise to Hitler and German nationalism. Take Czechoslovakia-a nation made up of three groups-ethnic Germans (Sudetenland), Slovaks, and Czechs-no way was this ever going to work. /QUOTE]
Four. Also Carpathians aka Trans-Carthpatho Ukraine, aka Ruthenia.
The question is if they could have paid for it in hard currency. IIRC, they had already run out of gold reserves, they were also paying “in kind” with coal, timber and such. From Richard Overly’s The Road to War
While later agreements with the Allies reduced the burden to a more manageable schedule, the damage to the people had already been done by wiping out their savings and investments and making destitute anyone on fixed income.
Apparently, they were also livid enough that the German delegates were required to stand during the negotiations while the Allies sat.
This is really a bad apples to oranges argument. Alaska was an expansion, not an integral part of the Lower 48. It was sparsely populated, distant and unfamiliar to most. The purchase was ridiculed by some, and obviously had not been part of the US for centuries.
The west coast of Canada had never been part of the US, either. It was never taken away and did not have any cities populated by US citizens. None of these are true in the case of Germany in 1919. The problem of Danzig, the German port city taken away was especially upsetting to the Germans.
In all fairness to the planners of the treaty, there wasn’t a solution which would have made both countries happy.
The treaty was only one of a number of steps which upset the emerging industrial country, going back to the First Sino-Japanese war of 1894 and 1895 when the Triple Intervention forced Japan to give back Port Arthur and the Liaodong Peninsula.
Russia swooped in and took it over, which really annoyed the hell out of the Japanese, contributing to the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. The negotiated settlement there also annoyed them, feeling that they were being shortchanged. The Versailles Treaty was yet one more example of the Western powers not allowing Asians equality.
Alsace-Lorraine aside, almost all the “lost” hectares and people was land obtained by the the partitions of Poland, and inhabited by large Polish majorities. That included the so-called Polish Corridor. As of 1931 there were only 741,000 ethnic Germans in Poland and about 400,000 in the free city of Danzig. A minuscule 35,000 Germans became Danish subjects with the partition of Schelswig-Holstein. The Sudetenland had been part of the Austrian empire and so does not figure in this equation.
While it’s true most of the areas were disputed and had German speaking minorities, the same could be said of Alsace-Lorraine, which was disputed and had a French-speaking minority.
So, France lost control of French Minority disputed lands due to the FP war, Germany (mostly, a few exceptions) lost control of German Minority disputed lands (except of course Alsace-Lorraine, which was german majority).
You could say the losses were about the same, maybe. But saying the terms of the 1907 treaty were more harsh on the French is bogus. But the Germans *also *lost millions of hectares seized by the British Empire and France from Germanys overseas colonies.
In any case, the Germans were ordered to pay THIRTY times what the French were five decades earlier.
It’s hard to compare, agreed, but saying the terms of the Treaty of Frankfurt were harsher that the Treaty of Versailles is completely false.
A few (possibly tangential) desultory remarks:
Wilson was a student of history, and had actually seen some important history in his lifetime. Specifically, as a young man (already a student of history and politics, I believe), he witnessed the post-Civil-War Reconstruction era, and saw how counter-productive and hurtful the policies were. The North imposed onerous terms on the South. When came Versailles, Wilson remembered that, and it was a major influence on his thinking. Thus, some of the terms of his 14 points and the “Peace of Equals” philosophy.
According to some history books I’ve read, a factor in Germany’s militarization in the 1920’s and 1930’s was the complacency of other Europeans, in particular, Britain. We still see a lot of that today – note the European tendence to “live and let live” or maybe “live and let die”, that is, to avoid butting into the unrest in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all the hot spots of the Mideast. That attitude was well-established then too. Little by little, Germany began re-arming and making more militaristic noises, and little by little, Britain got more and more complacent about it instead of insisting on enforcing the terms of Versailles. By the time the Nazis took over (or soon into the Nazi regime), Germany was well enough militarized that Britain finally began to object, but by then there was nothing much Britain could do about it.
What did or didn’t happen at Versailles really had long-term effects around the world. A little-known French colony in south-east Asia, French Indo-China, was becoming restive. There was an anti-French independence revolution brewing. One of the leaders was a young socialist who called himself Ho Chi Minh. He came to Versailles to ask for independence from France. But the Western nations at Versailles had bigger issues on their mind, and nobody really gave a damn about some steaming jungle in south-east Asia. French Indo-China, which the locals preferred to call Viet Nam, stewed for years under French rule, and after that under a Communist insurgency that the United States eventually got sucked into.