Cover of the Treaty of Versailles
"This is not peace, this is a twenty-year truce," French Marshal Foch said of the Treaty of Versailles.
On 18 January 1919, in order to solve the problems caused by the war, the victorious Entente group held the Paris Peace Conference in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in Paris. If the time is pulled back to 1870, also in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in Paris, after Germany won the Franco-Prussian War and unified Germany, the Kaiser held a coronation ceremony here. It is clear that the victorious France is going to humiliate its old rival Germany fiercely, man-made knife tricks, I am for fish, and the defeated Germany is indeed humiliated.
The French at the time would not have imagined that 22 years later, they would sign the surrender agreement again, and it was in the same train car where Germany signed the armistice agreement, and in order to transport the car to the same location, the Germans demolished the wall of the museum where the carriage was parked. Hitler repaid the humiliation of Germany at the Paris Peace Conference to the French, and 2:1, France was still a loser.
On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, World War I broke out, and the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, ending the war. The Treaty of Versailles was the most important treaty of the Paris Peace Conference and had a profound and tremendous impact on the future world pattern.
From left to right, George, England, Orlando, Italy, Clemenceau, France, wilson, USA.
1. Revenge and equilibrium
Led by U.S. President Wilson, British Prime Minister David Lloyd Georges, and French Prime Minister Clemenceau, 70 plenipotentiaries from 38 countries participated in the talks. The defeated countries of Germany, Austria and Hungary were excluded from the negotiations. Russia was excluded from the Bolsheviks' separate peace with Germany in 1917 and the Bolsheviks' accession to state power. Although it was a peace conference, the demands of France, Britain, and the United States, the three cores of the Entente Group, were not the same, and the gap was even huge.
France paid a heavy price for the war, with more than 5 million soldiers and civilians killed, and hoped to gain control of German industry to compensate for its losses. Clemenceau's proposition was that Germany should pay war reparations for France's losses (including personnel, property, etc.) in the war, reduce its military strength to no longer pose a threat to France, punish German militarism so that Germany could no longer return to the pre-1914 political pattern, publicly execute the German emperor, reclaim Alsace-Lorraine, establish the Rhineland Demilitarized Zone, and even establish a "Rhine Republic" between France and Germany as a buffer state between the two countries, and divide Germany's overseas colonies by the victorious powers. He also wanted to sign a secret treaty blocking Germany's coastline so that France could control Germany's import and export trade. Because of these harsh conditions, Clemenceau also earned the nickname "Tiger".
Although Britain was not at war on its own, many British soldiers were killed in the war, and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George supported punishing Germany, but in terms of specific measures, it was less than France. Because George recognized that once all the conditions proposed by France were met, it would become a superpower on the Continent and undermine the continental balance of power, contrary to Britain's traditional policy of intending to maintain a balanced Europe. George's claims can be summed up in the following points: to ensure British maritime hegemony, to divide up German overseas colonies to strengthen Britain; to weaken Germany's military power to a lower level; to make war reparations but not to overstate Germany's vengeful mentality; and to help Germany rebuild its economy.
The U.S. government tended to appease Germany and guarantee equal trade opportunities and successfully recover its war debts, believing that overly harsh terms would lead to German revenge and that war would be inevitable. Before the end of the war, President Wilson proposed the fourteen-point principle of peace, which was more relaxed than the conditions in Britain and France, and was more easily accepted by the German people. Wilson's fourteen-point proposal is as follows:
Public peace treaties should be concluded in a public manner.
• There is absolute freedom of navigation in the oceans and waters beyond the territorial waters of states, both in peacetime and wartime.
Remove economic barriers to the greatest extent possible and establish equal terms of trade among all countries that have agreed to accept peace and to maintain coordinated peacekeeping.
Mutually adequate assurance that the armaments of each Country are reduced to a minimum level consistent with the defence of the internal security of the State.
• The claims of each country to the rights of the colonies should be adjusted freely, enlightenedly, and selflessly by the Grand Duke.
Withdrawal of all troops now on Russian territory.
• The occupying forces in Belgium should withdraw, their territory should be restored, and no attempt should be made to restrict her sovereignty in the same way as other free nations.
• All territories of France should be free. The occupied French areas should be returned.
The boundaries between Italy and the former Austro-Hungarian Empire must be clearly defined in accordance with national identity.
The peoples of Eastern Europe establish independent States in accordance with the principle of self-determination of peoples.
Romania, Serbia and montenegro independence. At the same time, the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the Balkan states should be guaranteed through international treaties.
The future of self-determination of the peoples of the Ottoman Turkish Empire.
Poland became independent and gained access to the Baltic Sea.
Establish an international alliance to guarantee the international order.
Wilson's 14 recommendations were undoubtedly the most humane and effective way to maintain world peace at the Paris Peace Conference, but they were not fully adopted by France and Britain. The aims of the three main Entente powers were different and even contradictory, and although all three made concessions and eventually reached an agreement, the result was that all sides compromised but none of them fully achieved their goals. Germany, on the other hand, was neither completely weakened nor appeased, a consequence that foreshadowed instability for both the victorious and defeated countries, and even for Europe as a whole and the whole world.
Humiliation and hatred
After being recognized by the League of Nations, the Treaty of Versailles entered into force on 10 January 1920, and the defeated Germany became the lamb to be slaughtered, and the seeds of hatred were sown.
A German delegation led by The German Foreign Minister, Count Ulrich von Bruckdorf-Lanzou, arrived at versailles on 29 April 1919. However, because Germany was excluded from the negotiations, the German government considered the terms unfair and protested, and immediately withdrew from the peace conference. What Germany objected most to was the encumbrance of the Entente on the German side of the imposition of full responsibility for war crimes, retorting: "Although we have admitted defeat, we cannot accept our sole demand for the responsibility for causing the war crimes, and it is obviously a lie for me to admit this crime, and the imperialist acts of all European countries over the past fifty years have already intensified the tension in the international situation." ”
The victorious powers, of course, will not heed the protests of the defeated countries. In June 1919, the Allies declared that if Germany did not sign the treaty, the war would continue. The German government of Philip Scheidemann was unable to reach an internal agreement and was unwilling to accept the treaty himself, so he announced his resignation. On 20 June, a new German government, with Gustav Bauer as chancellor, expressed its willingness to sign it, but wanted to remove articles 227, 230 and 231. The Allies responded that Germany must accept all treaties or its armies would invade the Rhine within 24 hours. On 23 June, Bauer finally backed down, saying that Germany would soon send a delegation to sign the treaty. On June 28, the fifth anniversary of the events in Sarajevo, the new German foreign minister, Hermann Müller, signed the peace treaty, which was formally signed.
Under the terms of the treaty, Germany lost 65,000 square kilometers of territory and nearly 7 million people. In Western Europe, Germany recognized Belgian sovereignty over Mauricenette and ceded control of the Oypen-Malmedy region. The output of the Saar coal mines was handed over to France, control of the Saar was given to the League of Nations, and Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France. In Eastern Europe, Germany recognized the independence of Czechoslovakia and Poland, and Poland acquired a total of 51,800 square kilometers of territory from Germany. The treaty required Germany to relinquish its former colonial sovereignty, and Article 156 transferred Germany's rights and interests in Shandong, China, to Japan rather than China. The treaty imposed detailed and complex restrictions on the development of the German army (National Defense Forces) after the war. These provisions are intended to prevent the National Defence Forces from launching offensives. Germany must fully dismobilize by 31 March 1920, with a total number of no more than 100,000 troops, and at most 7 infantry divisions and 3 cavalry divisions. The establishment of the General Staff was abolished. The police force was also reduced to a pre-war scale and paramilitary forces were banned. The Rhineland region will be de-militarized, and all fortifications in the whole region and within 50 km (31 miles) of the east side of the Rhine will be dismantled and no new ones will be built. Germany is not allowed to participate in the military trade, all types and quantities of weapons are restricted, and chemical weapons, armoured vehicles, tanks and military aircraft are not allowed to be produced or stored. The German Navy was only allowed to have six ex-dreadnoughts, six light cruisers, twelve destroyers, and twelve torpedo boats, and not submarines. The total number of navy must not exceed 15,000, and the German organization of the air force (including the naval air force) is prohibited.
Of the many provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, the most controversial is article 231, the war crimes liability clause.
The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies。 Translation of the Article: Based on the acts of aggression committed by Germany and its Allies, the Governments of the Allies and their nationals suffered as a result of the war. The Government of the Entente affirmed that Germany must be responsible for all losses and destruction caused by it and its allies.
The clause forced Germany to admit full responsibility for waging the war and pay huge reparations. In 1921, Germany was responsible for reparations of up to 132 billion marks (and subsequently reduced to 31.4 billion marks).
Because the legend of the knife stabbing in the back was widely spread in Germany at that time, many Germans hated the treaty, especially the war crimes clause. The reason is that the world war was not caused solely by Germany, and the responsibility for the war should not be borne by Germany alone. The German republican government was heavily criticized for its responsibility for signing the treaty. Many German ultra-nationalists harbor a grudge and have always wanted revenge. In 1933, the Nazi Party rose in Germany. Its leader, Adolf Hitler, in order to win popular support, promised to tear up the Treaty of Versailles. The war crimes clause is an important factor that indirectly contributes to the rise of ultra-nationalism in Germany.
Third, break the situation and rise
After the war, the German economy was very fragile, only paying a small part of the amount of compensation stipulated in the treaty, but even this small part caused a great burden on the German economy and led to nearly 1/3 of the inflation, and the treaty stipulated that Germany could not pay in cash for mineral resources and industrial equipment, which further aroused the dissatisfaction of the German people. But the resilient Germans were not bound by the treaty, which itself seemed to have created a better strategic posture for Germany than it had been before World War I. As the historian Gerhard Weinberg mentioned in his book The War at Hand, the German political system established by Bismarck was not destroyed but preserved, and Germany avoided the large-scale military control of the victorious powers after the war.
The strategic benefit of the treaty to Germany was that in 1919 the German General Staff was formally disbanded, but its core still existed and operated in the form of a "Force Bureau", and continued to improve German military doctrine and organize training based on the experience of World War I. In germany's East, the economically and militarily expanding and pro-French Russian Empire disappeared and was replaced by a diplomatically isolated, internally splinter and civil war-ridden Soviet Russia. In the south, Germany's former ally, austria-Hungary, was divided into several weak republics, no longer a threat to Germany's resurgence. The Disarmament Commission provided for in the Treaty of Versailles was in fact extinct, the amount of war reparations in Germany was constantly decreasing to the point of almost being abolished, and the financial burden and the cost of the post-war reconstruction of the injured countries were effectively transferred from Germany to the injured countries. Seven new independent states emerged: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Yugoslavia, and after the war Germany maintained greater influence over the Balkan states than its south-eastern neighbors, while others made no effort to change that. The creation of Poland shielded Germany from its greatest potential enemy, Russia, and the Battle of Warsaw in 1920 blocked the march of Bolshevism towards a weak post-war Europe, especially as Germany faced a communist trend. In short, despite Germany's defeat in World War I, it still has the ability to dominate The European situation again 20 years later.
In 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. He announced the abolition of democracy, and at the same time, through the tide of nationalism, proposed to re-revise the world order, and soon began a large-scale rearmament. Under Hitler's leadership, Germany again merged the Saar Basin, which had been German territory, in 1935, and with popular support, Germany subsequently overthrew the Treaty of Versailles and accelerated its plans to rearmament, and even expanded its troops in the form of large-scale conscription, and these actions of emphasizing national sovereignty also deepened the prestige of German society for Hitler. The following are some of the obvious violations of the treaty:
In March 1935, Hitler announced the reinstatement of conscription and the expansion of the German army, including the establishment of naval weapons, armored units, and air forces prohibited by Germany from the Treaty of Versailles.
In March 1936 Hitler announced that Germany had reoccupied the Rhineland Demilitarized Zone.
In March 1938 Hitler announced the unification of Germany with Austria.
In September 1938 Hitler announced the occupation of parts of czechoslovakia in the Sudetenland region.
In March 1939 Hitler declared the occupation of czechoslovakia except for the rest of the Sudetenland.
In September 1939, the Germans blitzed Poland and World War II broke out.
The big three of World War II, France has disappeared.
The British military historian Cogery Barnett argued that Britain and France should achieve permanent peace on the European continent by completely destroying the unified Germany created by Bismarck and re-dividing it into weaker political entities, and only in this way could Germany's troubles be completely resolved in Europe, but the Treaty of Versailles did not achieve this goal. The Treaty of Versailles sowed the seeds of hatred in the hearts of Germans, and then took root under the nurturing of the Nazi Party, leading to World War II. The Treaty of Versailles ostensibly shackled the lion, but at the same time gave it the key. Filling up the powder kegs and blowing them up – that's what the Treaty of Versailles does.