The Versailles Treaty was signed on June 28, 1919 and came into effect on January 10, 1920. Germany became smaller, had to pay reparations and acknowledge the "war debt".
by Wolfgang Mueller
After the First World War, the Germans were the losers and felt the effects. When it came to signing the Versialler Treaty, British Prime Minister Lloyd George, US President Woodrow Wilson and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau were already sitting in the hall in front of a large audience. He then shouted:"Bring in the Germans." They had to walk past five war invalids, i.e. people with shattered, disfigured faces. As if to say:You did this! And then, when they arrived at the big table, they signed the contract.
Who signed the Treaty of Versailles?
The Versailles Treaty was signed by Hermann Müller, who had just become foreign minister, and a cabinet colleague in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. In other words, exactly where something completely different had taken place a few decades earlier:namely the German Kaiser proclamation after the victory against France, i.e. the founding of the Reich in 1871.
The contract was almost universally rejected in Germany. Why did you sign anyway?
Because there was no other way. Otherwise Germany would have been occupied by the Allied troops. It wasn't like that after the First World War (unlike after the Second World War). When the war ended in 1918, the opposing armies had not yet invaded Germany. But they would be - and the German military leaders Hindenburg and Ludendorff well knew that.
The shameful thing was that they later portrayed it differently and started the so-called stab in the back legend, as if Germany had been "undefeated in the field," as it was then called. But it was defeated and therefore the Germans had to accept this treaty, although it was extremely tough.
It wasn't just the political right that saw it that way. Even a social democrat like Philipp Scheidemann, when he found out about the conditions a few weeks beforehand, said:anyone who signs that must wither their hands. And then, with the aforementioned Hermann Müller, a social democrat had to sign.
What was the content of the Versailles Treaty?
First of all, Germany lost about a seventh of its territory as a result of this treaty. Although part of it was quite okay:Among other things, because it allowed Poland to emerge again (the neighbors had divided it up among themselves for over a hundred years). And to the west, Alsace-Lorraine went back to France.
But then there was the big issue of Germany paying reparations (for the war damage), and for example almost the entire German merchant fleet had to be handed over.
What's up with the infamous "war guilt" article?
Thus, Germany was practically blamed for the World War. Entire shelves of books have been written about it. But in short:Unlike the Second World War (which clearly started in Germany), things were much more complex in 1914. And the fact that the Germans were now held up as the sole culprits was seen as a great injustice - and vice versa by some on the other side as a triumph.
In general, one has to realize that such a peace agreement in the 20th century was something completely different than it was 100 years earlier. At the Congress of Vienna, for example, after the victory over Napoleon in 1815, the loser, France at the time, was of course also at the table. That was different now. The Germans were practically presented with a finished treaty.
And, more importantly, it wasn't just a diplomatic affair as it used to be; now the different peoples were standing around the negotiating table, so to speak, with their expectations and heated moods. This public pressure did not make it any easier to come up with a reasonably rational solution.
What did the Versailles Treaty mean for the Weimar Republic?
It was a republic that did not just emerge from defeat, but from a sense of humiliation. Of course, the political right played on this keyboard without end and defamed the politicians who wanted to keep the contract halfway as "fulfillment politicians", some were even murdered.
And then the economic burden of the reparations remained, very tangible. Incidentally, a young economist, John Maynard Keynes (who later became very famous), had precisely foreseen this and left the British delegation in protest. His argument:Germany can never stabilize itself this way and will pull the others into the maelstrom.
Despite Versailles, the Weimar Republic would have had a chance. But only with strong, democratic forces that seize and hold on to this opportunity. Only this layer was just too small.