Versailles Peace Settlement

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Versailles settlement. The armistice of 11 November 1918 that ended the First World War led to a peace congress in Paris at which the French, British, and American delegations, assisted by a myriad of diplomats from other allied powers, worked out a new map of Europe and, under pressure from the American President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), the structure of a new international organization, the League of Nations, designed to prevent future world wars. Revolutionary Russia was not invited; nor did its leaders wish to be present. German delegates were summoned in May 1919 to receive the final text of a treaty that was signed at Versailles on 28 June 1919. Germany meanwhile remained under strict blockade, and its people suffered from hunger.

The treaty's opening clauses constituted the covenant of the League. Germany's boundaries were revised, to the benefit of most of its neighbours: France retook Alsace and Lorraine, Belgium and Denmark took some frontier districts, and newly independent Poland secured the free and secure access to the sea guaranteed to her by one of Wilson's Fourteen Points (of January 1918), to which Germany had agreed at the armistice (see Danzig). This access, through the Polish corridor, separated east Prussia from the rest of Germany and was particularly resented. So were the clauses which severely restricted German armaments, and the one which affirmed German guilt for the outbreak of war in 1914.

Under the treaty, Germany accepted the principle of paying reparation for war damage inflicted on Belgium and France; the details, left to be worked out later, were never satisfactorily settled, and remained a focus for international resentment.

Separate treaties handled the affairs of Austria (Saint-Germain, 10 December 1919) and Hungary (Trianon, 4 June 1920) as well as Bulgaria (Neuilly, 24 November 1919). Austria and Hungary were separated, and the new states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were created from the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire; Romania also secured large gains of territory at Hungary's and some at Bulgaria's expense. A treaty signed with Turkey at Spa in August 1920 was repudiated by the regime of Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938); a fresh settlement was eventually reached at Lausanne in 1923, after a Greco-Turkish war.

Hitler repudiated the settlement in March 1935. However, that June he did come to an arrangement with the UK under the Anglo-German Naval Treaty which allowed Germany to construct up to 35% of the Royal Navy's tonnage and which, under certain circumstances, allowed the German Navy a submarine fleet of equal size. In April 1939 Hitler repudiated this treaty, too. See also diplomacy and origins of the war.

M. R. D. Foot

Versailles Peace Settlement (1919–23) Sometimes referred to as the Paris Peace Settlement, a collection of peace treaties between the Central Powers and the Allied powers ending World War I. The main treaty was that of Versailles (June 1919) between the Allied powers (except for the USA, which refused to ratify the treaty) and Germany, whose representatives were required to sign it without negotiation.

Another treaty, that of St Germain-en-Laye (September 1919), was between the Allied powers and the new republic of AUSTRIA. A third treaty, that of Trianon (June 1920), was with the new republic of HUNGARY, in which some three-quarters of its old territories (i.e., all non-Magyar lands) were lost to Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia, and the principle of reparations again accepted. The treaty of Neuilly (November 1919) was with BULGARIA, in which some territory was lost to Yugoslavia and Greece, but some also gained from Turkey; a figure of £100 million reparations was agreed, but never paid. These four treaties were ratified in Paris during 1920. A fifth treaty, that of Sèvres (August 1920), between the Allies and the old OTTOMAN EMPIRE, was never implemented as it was followed by the final disintegration of the empire and the creation by Mustafa Kemal ATATÜRK of the new republic of Turkey. The treaty was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923), in which Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq were to be mandated to Britain, and Syria to France. Italy was accepted as possessing the Dodecanese Islands, while Turkey regained Smyrna from Greece.