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- History
- How the Treaty of Versailles Effected Germany
-
- Wen World War I ended on November 11, 1918, peace talks went on for
- months due to the Allied leaders wanting to punish the enemy and
- ôdividing the spoils of war.ö
- A formal agreement to end the war was made and called the Treaty of
- Versailles. The issue that took the most time were the territorial
- issues because the empires of Russia, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman, and
- Germany had collapsed. These fallen empires had to be divided up and
- AmericaÆs President Woodrow Wilson, Georges Clemenceau of France,
- Vittorio Orlando of Italy, and David Lloyd George of Great Britain, were
- the main deciders of this deal.
- During 1918, Russia was knocked out of the war due to military
- defeats and the Bolshevik Revolution. Even though Russia had not been
- part of the Central Powers, Germany seized much of western Russia.
- After many months of arguing, the four men had made western Russia into
- the nations of Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland.
- The Treaty of Versailles was either a treaty of peace or a
- vengeance for the Germans. In April of 1919, Germany was previously
- captured and made to wait in a small house that was surrounded with
- barbed wire.
- The Allied, who captured Germany, wanted to make a peace treaty to
- end the fighting. The Germans agreed, but they wanted a treaty that was
- based on the Fourteen Points but obviously they were not going to get it
- because of the way they were treated; the barbed wire was unnecessary
- and ôshould have tipped them off to what lay ahead.ö
- When the treaty was first introduced to the Germans, they declined
- to sign it. It forced the Germans to accept full responsibility for the
- war and strip themselves of its colonies, coal fields, and the provinces
- of Alsace and Lorraine. It also made them pay outrageous reparations to
- the Allies. Nevertheless, on June 28, 1919, the Germans reluctantly
- signed the treaty because the Allies refused to change one word. Out of
- the $33 billion dollars the Germans had to pay for damages, the country
- was only able to pay $4.5 billion of it.
- The terms of the Treaty of Versailles helped set the stage for
- another world war less than 20 years later because the Allied wanted to
- stop Germany from ever becoming imperialistic again and still have them
- pay the war reparations.
- Germany opposed these actions and was the most effected by the
- terms of the Versailles Treaty. Germany got the blunt end of the war
- and was desperate to find a new leader to get out of their depression.
- That leader was Adolf Hitler.
- World War I was won by the Allied in which a formal agreement was
- made called the Versailles Treaty. It both brought peace and war in the
- coming years. Due to the harsh life styles it forced Germany to live,
- World War II broke out within twenty years time from the treaty.