Many historians have assigned the treaty some responsibility for the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. Germany managed to rebuild and recover after the war, but not at a pace that satisfied everyone. By the mid-1920s, the German economy recovered, and the United States helped Germany renegotiate reparations payments with the Dawes Plan. In response, the German government printed more currency to pay the French, sending German citizens into hyperinflation, which wiped out the savings of the middle class. When the government defaulted on payments in 1923, France and Belgium lost patience and occupied the Ruhr mining region. Slow economic growth and popular dissatisfaction were difficult to manage, especially for the new Weimar Republic, and political leaders struggled to manage the growing volume of complaints.
Equally important, the economic provisions of the treaty slowed the nation’s postwar recovery. After four years of war and sacrifice, German citizens felt humiliated to accept blame for the war and territorial loss. No one in Germany was happy with the settlement, and the Allies threatened Germans with military invasion to get them to sign the treaty. What was the treaty’s impact on everyday German citizens? New nations were created, but they were unstable and vulnerable, given that they had little support or funding from more established nations. These adjustments led to resettlement of populations, and in central and eastern Europe, new nations were carved out of old empires. Indeed, one could ask what was the economic value of 10 million soldiers’ lives lost on all sides of the conflict?Įqually controversial, perhaps, were the territorial adjustments dictated by the Versailles Treaty as well as other postwar treaties. While there were a few vocal critics of the Versailles Treaty’s economic provisions, many citizens of the nations that fought for four years felt the settlement did not go far enough. For example, when Russia surrendered to Germany in 1917, Germany issued extraordinarily harsh peace terms under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (these terms were invalidated by the Paris peace settlements). Reparations and harsh peace settlements were not unusual. We tend to think the reparations payments were controversial, but these provisions must be viewed in proper historical context. What were the treaty’s most controversial provisions? The treaty forced Germany to surrender colonies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific cede territory to other nations like France and Poland reduce the size of its military pay war reparations to the Allied countries and accept guilt for the war. The Allied nations ultimately rejected the idea of peace without victory in favor of making Germany pay for causing the war (in their minds) and for perpetuating and escalating the conflict for four long years. Given the contradictory aims of reparations and future stability, statesmen found themselves in a terrible bind.
Meanwhile, France and other Allied nations wanted just compensation for the physical, moral and economic devastation of the war. The United States hoped to achieve, in Woodrow Wilson’s words, “peace without victory,” and Britain hoped to put Germany back on its economic feet. The treaty, signed on June 28, 1919, was the product of conflict between the Allied victors. What were the treaty’s major accomplishments?
The Treaty of Versailles is famous for both solving and creating problems. Via an email exchange, Helstosky, who serves as chair of the University of Denver’s Department of History, offered the DU Newsroom a crash course in the treaty’s provisions and far-reaching ramifications. In Carol Helstosky’s class on the War to End All Wars, typically offered during spring quarter, the treaty provides students a lot to ponder and debate. 10, 1920, the controversial Treaty of Versailles - which established the terms for peace at the end of World War I - went into effect.
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