The Treaty of Versailles was the peace agreement made at the end of World War I between the Allied powers and Germany. Signed at Versailles, France, in 1919, the treaty forced Germany to disarm, and to surrender its colonies and about 10 percent of its territory. Germany was also required to accept full responsibility for World War I and to pay huge reparations for damage done to Allied countries during the conflict. Most Germans considered the steep terms of the treaty to be extremely unfair. The German public’s resentment of the treaty was one of the factors that contributed to the success of Adolf Hitler's extremist ideas in the 1930s, which blamed the Jews for the poverty brought by the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression.
