Versailles, Treaty of

Versailles, Treaty of (28 June 1919) The peace treaty between the Allies and Germany after World War I. It formed the centrepiece of the Paris Peace Conferences. It consisted of 440 Articles in fifteen parts. The second and third parts determined its territorial cessions. Moresnet and Eupen-Malmédy were transferred to Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine to France, much of upper Silesia to Czechoslovakia and (mainly) Poland, western Prussia and parts of Pomerania to Poland, Memel (Klaipéda) to Allied control (ultimately to Lithuania), and northern Schleswig to Denmark. These territorial losses were, very loosely, based on the nationality ideal of the Fourteen Points, whereby regions with national majorities should be united with their mother countries. For strategic reasons, despite their overwhelmingly German population, Danzig (Gdansk) became a Free City, and the Saarland was placed under League of Nations control for fifteen years.

Germany lost its colonies in part four of the treaty, while part five contained restrictions of its army to 100,000 professional soldiers, and outlawed heavy artillery and possession of an air force. Perhaps most gallingly for the Germans, in Article 231 they had to accept full responsibility for the outbreak of the war. On this basis, Germany was to make reparations payments, the full extent of which was to be decided later. To ensure that payments would be forthcoming, all territories west of the Rhine (most notably the Ruhr Valley) were occupied by Allied (mainly French) forces. Altogether, Germany lost 13 per cent of its territory, from which had come 75 per cent of Germany's output in iron ore, 30 per cent of steel, and 28 per cent of coal.

The terms were deeply controversial at the negotiating table and later in public debate, e.g. in J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). Significantly, the US Senate failed to ratify it, so that a separate peace was concluded between the USA and Germany in 1921.

The terms of Versailles were much milder than those demanded by France. Paradoxically, they were both too weak and too strong. They gave Germany an overwhelming sense of resentment, making demands for a revision of the Versailles Treaty the dominant and destabilizing theme of German domestic politics until the rise of Hitler. At the same time, in marked contrast to Hungary and Austria, the peace treaty left Germany with sufficient potential in time to re-emerge as a significant great power. Germany thus retained the wherewithal to make its revision a distinct possibility, if necessary by force.

Trianon, Treaty of; St Germain, Treaty of