The Treaty of Versailles

• When the Germans had agreed to an armistice in November 1918 they had anticipated that the peace settlement would be based on the proposals for peace presented by the US president, Woodrow Wilson.
• Wilson wanted to re-conceptualise the war as one dedicated to making 'the world safe for democracy'. His idealistic 'Fourteen Points' proposed a peace based on international justice, self-determination and negotiated settlements to conflict organised through a new organisation that later became the League of Nations.
• The German people perceived the treaty to be a harsh punitive peace.
• Underpinning the entire treaty was the concept of 'war guilt'. Article 231 of the Treaty stated that Germany and its allies accepted responsibility for starting the war and for the damage caused by it
• Impact of TOV:


  Military leaders advised the government to sign the Treaty of Versailles, telling them that the army was in no state to resist an Allied invasion.
• Impact of TOV:

  Anxious to avoid blame for the defeat, the military leadership moved to spread the belief that Versailles was a humiliation, not a negotiated settlement but a 'diktat' that had been enforced upon the German people by un-patriotic politicians.
• Impact of TOV:

  Refusing to sign the treaty was not an option for the German government and on 28 June 1919 Germany signed the treaty.
• Impact of TOV:

  Any government signing such a treaty would be unpopular - the signing by civilian SPD government helped to create an image of democracy as politically impotent, an image only exacerbated by r/w propaganda.
• Impact of TOV:

  It left democracy as a system vulnerable to the claim of being unpatriotic - an image that Hitler was later able to use to his advantage to gain support for his advantage to gain support for his militaristic foreign policy.
• A 'Carthaginian' peace?

  Observers believed that the treaty was, in the words of British economist John Maynard Keynes, a 'Carthaginian' peace, named after the terrible punishment inflicted by the Roman Empire on its opponents. He resigned in protest to the harshness of the treaty.
• A 'Carthaginian' peace?

  In comparison with the peace treaty that Germany imposed on the defeated Russians in 1917, it was not especially cruel or unfair.
• A 'Carthaginian' peace?

  The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had robbed Russia of 62 million people, 74% of its iron ore and coal reserves, 26% of its railways and 27% of its farmland, including some of its more fertile agricultural areas.
• A 'Carthaginian' peace?

  Punitive treaties and the ceding of territory during peace negotiations were not uncommon.
• A 'Carthaginian' peace?

  What impacted most upon Hitler's future foreign policy was the German public's perception that it was a 'shameful' peace.
• A 'Carthaginian' peace?

  Spurred on by nationalist propaganda, angry protests against the settlement broke out in cities across the country. The front page of the Deutsche Zeitung, called for 'Vengeance, German nation!'. Cartoons presented the Allies as ghoulish vampires sucking the blood from Germany.
• A 'Carthaginian' peace?

  Hitler resolved to end the peace settlement's challenge to German national pride.