Treaty of Versailles

MarchDub wrote: »

One of the most striking pieces was film footage of the massive protests in Berlin during the Conference and the public agitation - and German public pressure at these rallies - for Germany not to sign the Treaty.

It is one thing to know that the Germans were unhappy with the Treaty - and that is well known - but it is illuminating to see on film the huge to enormous public turn out in Berlin with fists raised etc. At first glance it looks like a Hitler rally - yet this was 1919. So if anyone knows of where further film footage of this kind can be found I would appreciate it.

There was also dismay at the disrespect shown to the german delegation (not just the content of the treaty).

I have seen documentaries on this but can't recall if one of them was called '1919' or not. It does get covered from time to time but for such a key moment in 20th century history it is overall a neglected area in my view. I think the french and Foch in particular have a lot to answer for, the french defeat of the Franco Prussian war of 45 yrs previous would be at the very least a factor in the french approach in my view.

I think this document is worth reading or re-reading to get a grasp on the German public and official reaction

http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/parispeaceconf_germanprotest1.htm

Leader of the German Peace Delegation Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau's Letter to Paris Peace Conference President Georges Clemenceau on the Subject of Peace Terms, May 1919

Mr. President:

I have the honour to transmit to you herewith the observations of the German delegation on the draft treaty of peace.

We came to Versailles in the expectation of receiving a peace proposal based on the agreed principles. We were firmly resolved to do everything in our power with a view of fulfilling the grave obligations which we had undertaken. We hoped for the peace of justice which had been promised to us.

We were aghast when we read in documents the demands made upon us, the victorious violence of our enemies. The more deeply we penetrate into the spirit of this treaty, the more convinced we become of the impossibility of carrying it out. The exactions of this treaty are more than the German people can bear.

With a view to the re-establishment of the Polish State we must renounce indisputably German territory - nearly the whole of the Province of West Prussia, which is preponderantly German; of Pomerania; Danzig, which is German to the core; we must let that ancient Hanse town be transformed into a free State under Polish suzerainty.

We must agree that East Prussia shall be amputated from the body of the State, condemned to a lingering death, and robbed of its northern portion, including Memel, which is purely German.

We must renounce Upper Silesia for the benefit of Poland and Czecho-Slovakia, although it has been in close political connection with Germany for more than 750 years, is instinct with German life, and forms the very foundation of industrial life throughout East Germany.

Preponderantly German circles (Kreise) must be ceded to Belgium, without sufficient guarantees that the plebiscite, which is only to take place afterward, will be independent. The purely German district of the Saar must be detached from our empire, and the way must be paved for its subsequent annexation to France, although we owe her debts in coal only, not in men.

For fifteen years Rhenish territory must be occupied, and after those fifteen years the Allies have power to refuse the restoration of the country; in the interval the Allies can take every measure to sever the economic and moral links with the mother country, and finally to misrepresent the wishes of the indigenous population.

Although the exaction of the cost of the war has been expressly renounced, yet Germany, thus cut in pieces and weakened, must declare herself ready in principle to bear all the war expenses of her enemies, which would exceed many times over the total amount of German State and private assets.

Meanwhile her enemies demand, in excess of the agreed conditions, reparation for damage suffered by their civil population, and in this connection Germany must also go bail for her allies. The sum to be paid is to be fixed by our enemies unilaterally, and to admit of subsequent modification and increase. No limit is fixed, save the capacity of the German people for payment, determined not by their standard of life, but solely by their capacity to meet the demands of their enemies by their labour. The German people would thus be condemned to perpetual slave labour.

In spite of the exorbitant demands, the reconstruction of our economic life is at the same time rendered impossible. We must surrender our merchant fleet. We are to renounce all foreign securities. We are to hand over to our enemies our property in all German enterprises abroad, even in the countries of our allies.

Even after the conclusion of peace the enemy States are to have the right of confiscating all German property. No German trader in their countries will be protected from these war measures. We must completely renounce our colonies, and not even German missionaries shall have the right to follow their calling therein.

We most thus renounce the realization of all our aims in the spheres of politics, economics, and ideas.

Even in internal affairs we are to give up the right to self-determination. The international Reparation Commission receives dictatorial powers over the whole life of our people in economic and cultural matters. Its authority extends far beyond that which the empire, the German Federal Council, and the Reichstag combined ever possessed within the territory of the empire.

This commission has unlimited control over the economic life of the State, of communities, and of individuals. Further, the entire educational and sanitary system depends on it. It can keep the whole German people in mental thraldom. In order to increase the payments due, by the thrall, the commission can hamper measures for the social protection of the German worker.

In other spheres also Germany's sovereignty is abolished. Her chief waterways are subjected to international administration; she must construct in her territory such canals and such railways as her enemies wish; she must agree to treaties the contents of which are unknown to her, to be concluded by her enemies with the new States on the east, even when they concern her own functions. The German people are excluded from the League of Nations, to which is entrusted all work of common interest to the world.

Thus must a whole people sign the decree for its proscription, nay, its own death sentence.

Germany knows that she must make sacrifices in order to attain peace. Germany knows that she has, by agreement, undertaken to make these sacrifices, and will go in this matter to the utmost limits of her capacity.

Counter-proposals

1. Germany offers to proceed with her own disarmament in advance of all other peoples, in order to show that she will help to usher in the new era of the peace of justice. She gives up universal compulsory service and reduces her army to 100,000 men, except as regards temporary measures. She even renounces the warships which her enemies are still willing to leave in her hands. She stipulates, however, that she shall be admitted forthwith as a State with equal rights into the League of Nations. She stipulates that a genuine League of Nations shall come into being, embracing all peoples of goodwill, even her enemies of today. The League must be inspired by a feeling of responsibility toward mankind and have at its disposal a power to enforce its will sufficiently strong and trusty to protect the frontiers of its members.

2. In territorial questions Germany takes up her position unreservedly on the ground of the Wilson program. She renounces her sovereign right in Alsace-Lorraine, but wishes a free plebiscite to take place there. She gives up the greater part of the province of Posen, the district incontestably Polish in population, together with the capital. She is prepared to grant to Poland, under international guarantees, free and secure access to the sea by ceding free ports at Danzig, Konigsberg, and Memel, by an agreement regulating the navigation of the Vistula and by special railway conventions. Germany is prepared to insure the supply of coal for the economic needs of France, especially from the Saar region, until such time as the French mines are once more in working order. The preponderantly Danish districts of Schleswig will be given up to Denmark on the basis of a plebiscite. Germany demands that the right of self-determination shall also be respected where the interests of the Germans in Austria and Bohemia are concerned. She is ready to subject all her colonies to administration by the community of the League of Nations, if she is recognized as its mandatory.

3. Germany is prepared to make payments incumbent on her in accordance with the agreed program of peace up to a maximum sum of 100,000,000,000 gold marks, 20,000,000,000 by May 1, 1926, and the balance (80,000,000,000) in annual payments, without interest. These payments shall in principle be equal to a fixed percentage of the German Imperial and State revenues. The annual payment shall approximate to the former peace budget. For the first ten years the annual payments shall not exceed 1,000,000,000 gold marks a year. The German taxpayer shall not be less heavily burdened than the taxpayer of the most heavily burdened State among those represented on the Reparation Commission. Germany presumes in this connection that she will not have to make any territorial sacrifices beyond those mentioned above and that she will recover her freedom of economic movement at home and abroad.

4. Germany is prepared to devote her entire economic strength to the service of the reconstruction. She wishes to cooperate effectively in the reconstruction of the devastated regions of Belgium and Northern France. To make good the loss in production of the destroyed mines of Northern France, up to 20,000,000 tons of coal will be delivered annually for the first five years, and up to 80,000,000 tons for the next five years. Germany will facilitate further deliveries of coal to France, Belgium, Italy, and Luxemburg. Germany is, moreover, prepared to make considerable deliveries of benzol, coal tar, and sulphate of ammonia, as well as dyestuffs and medicines.

5. Finally, Germany offers to put her entire merchant tonnage into a pool of the world's shipping, to place at the disposal of her enemies a part of her freight space as part payment of reparation and to build for them for a series of years in German yards an amount of tonnage exceeding their demands.

6. In order to replace the river boats destroyed in Belgium and Northern France, Germany offers river craft from her own resources.

7. Germany thinks that she sees an appropriate method for the prompt fulfilment of her obligation to make reparations conceding participation in coal mines to insure deliveries of coal.

8. Germany, in accordance with the desires of the workers of the whole world, wishes to insure to them free and equal rights. She wishes to insure to them in the Treaty of Peace the right to take their own decisive part in the settlement of social policy and social protection.

9. The German delegation again makes its demand for a neutral inquiry into the responsibility for the war and culpable acts in conduct. An impartial commission should have the right to investigate on its own responsibility the archives of all the belligerent countries and all the persons who took an important part in the war. Nothing short of confidence that the question of guilt will be examined dispassionately can leave the peoples lately at war with each other in the proper frame of mind for the formation of the League of Nations.

These are only the most important among the proposals which we have to make. As regards other great sacrifices, and also as regards the details, the delegation refers to the accompanying memorandum and the annex thereto.

The time allowed us for the preparation of this memorandum was so short that it was impossible to treat all the questions exhaustively. A fruitful and illuminating negotiation could only take place by means of oral discussion.

This treaty of peace is to be the greatest achievement of its kind in all history. There is no precedent for the conduct of such comprehensive negotiations by an exchange of written notes only.

The feeling of the peoples who have made such immense sacrifices makes them demand that their fate should be decided by an open, unreserved exchange of ideas on the principle: "Quite open covenants of peace openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly in the public view."

Germany is to put her signature to the treaty laid before her and to carry it out. Even in her need, justice for her is too sacred a thing to allow her to stoop to achieve conditions which she cannot undertake to carry out.

Treaties of peace signed by the great powers have, it is true, in the history of the last decades, again and again proclaimed the right of the stronger. But each of these treaties of peace has been a factor in originating and prolonging the world war. Whenever in this war the victor has spoken to the vanquished, at Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest, his words were but the seeds of future discord.

The lofty aims which our adversaries first set before themselves in their conduct of the war, the new era of an assured peace of justice, demand a treaty instinct with a different spirit.

Only the cooperation of all nations, a cooperation of hands and spirits, can build up a durable peace. We are under no delusions regarding the strength of the hatred and bitterness which this war has engendered, and yet the forces which are at work for a union of mankind are stronger now than ever they were before.

The historic task of the Peace Conference of Versailles is to bring about this union.

Accept, Mr. President, the expression of my distinguished consideration.

BROCKDORFF-RANTZAU

Source: Source Records of the Great War, Vol. VII, ed. Charles F. Horne, National Alumni 1923

I always think it's interesting to note that the Irish delegation were refused entry despite our overwhelming involvement and the political situation of that time but at the same time a substantial zionist delegation (despite zero involvement) headed by Weizmann (Cheim?) 1st president of israel were admitted (to discuss plans for a jewish homeland).

ejmaztec wrote: »

Strange how things turned out. The Sudeten Germans tried to negotiate their position, as they didn't want to be part of Czechoslovakia, and they were ignored. The Treaty was a mess, concocted with no regard for the consequences, by vengeful governments for short-term gain.

I was reading through some ww2 era german publications recently and one fairly innocous one :
Magazine - 'W.S.-Kameradschaft' Nachtrichtenblat fur die kameratschaftliche vereinigung der waffenmeisterschulen der wehrmacht. Newspaper of the weapon master schools of the Wehrmacht

http://www.militaria-archive.com/propaganda/periodical/index.html

Had a lengthy article on the treaty of versailles. This was an approx 10 page quarterly wartime publication for a specialist weapons/metalworker audience and it had a 5-6 full page article on the treaty of Versailles. This was from 1942 if I recall correctly.

I know versailles is almost always listed off as one of the reasons for ww2 however I still feel that the impact and depth of genuine feeling on this subject gets lost in the mix. It really did seep through and pervade the conciousness of that time & it seems to me that the behind the scenes movers on this and govt representatives involved thought 'it's a done deal- **** em, there's nothing they can do about it now'. Were it not for versailles it's debatable if the nsdap would have gotten off the ground nevermind came to power, if they had come to power without versailles it's debatable they would have been either interested in or capable of motivating the nation behind a path that led to war. It was such a lost opportunity and if you re-read the german declaration above from 1919 it really brings that point home in my view.

I'm surprised at some of the comments. The treaty of Versaille, the formation of the league of nations (and its following failures), mass hyper inflation in Germany and the rise of Nationalist Socialism is (or was) a big big part of GCE History in England.

It was never taught the treaty was a major factor in Hitler coming to power, it was taught as pretty much the sole reason Germany was open to his radical views.

MarchDub wrote: »

Yeah, I know what you are saying. It is of course taught from the point of view of the formation of the League of Nations etc. The rest tends to get skimmed over. The point I am making is that I never before examined it closely. It was always said to be a "contributing factor" but it's only when you examine the actual transcripts closely - the letters, diaries etc that you get a feel for the emotions, the dynamics of the allies and the bitterness against Germany - and the palpable anger in Germany itself with the sense that they were betrayed and rubbished.

What I have highlighted in your post is exactly what I am talking about - that it was a major factor in Hitler coming to power and all that followed.

I think we are in violent agreement.

Teaching about how the imperial nations were to blame for WWI and WWII fitted not only the national curriculum, but also the left wing teachers I had. It was very much a case of WWI - Lions led my Donkey's, WWII, direct result of imperial British and French greed.

Interesting to note the affect it had on Iitaly as well. Although they were on the winning side, they didn't get what they wanted, which again caused a lot of civil unrest.

brianthebard wrote: »

The simple reason for Nazism's rapid growth in the polls was not because Germans were under Hitler's spell, it was because so much of what he had to say related to commonly held beliefs in the country at the time.

This imo would have been the case regardless of the severity of the Treaty,

I don't agree with that part above and here's why;.

Without Versailles Hitler may have still have been motivated to enter politics - then again & I think more likely perhaps not.

Versailles undermined not just the sacrifice of the army and the people by laying total blame on Germany but add to that the extremely harsh economic reparations and loss of territory, industry, equipment, coal and so on - all of this had the effect of heightening sensibilities to a point where other issues - such as the subject of 'The november criminals' became even more important and divisive.

Add to this potent mix the anti-nationalists or internationalists (and as it happens largely jewish) bolsheviks who actively sought to take over Germany at that time, put all those elements together and the treaty makes them all that much worse because the view was that Germany was intentionally fatally weakened and therefore intentionally made vulnerable to bolshevism and this reinforces the november criminals notion. The treaty of Versailles was the glue that held together all of the dangerous elements that the nsdap were a reaction to.

Without Versailles if Hitler had entered politics then in order for him to have gained the ear of the mainstream people his message would have had to be radically different. His own end of wartime experiences would have been a lot less bitter and has less of a cancerous affect on him and the other frontline veterans who flooded the ranks of the stahlhelm and later SA. Without the treaty the German people's attitudes would also have been radically different & barren ground for an extremist nationalist viewpoint to take hold. The war would not have been a poisonous episode and those sacrifices would not have been seen by the veterans or their families and neighbours to have been totally in vain.

The treaty greatly afffected the attitudes of the people and this was magnified by the nsdap who used it at every possible opportunity. It was their ammunition in much of the national discussion at that time. Without that they would not have been as able to brush their more reasoned opponents aside. It changed Germans and polarised them towards opposite extremes of national socialism and communism. It absolutely undermined faith in the weimar democratic govt.

brianthebard wrote: »

since the outcome of the war could only have been interpreted as the failure of Germany, and the economy would have been weakened to some extent.

That is not the only possible outcome of the armistice Germany agreed to.

An honourable armistice is not seen as failure. Or, at the very least it is not seen as a total 'end of times' failure that Versailles created.

Nor would Germany have been undermined to the same extent as it would have been if the treaty had been fair and the result of civil negotiations based on realistic expectations.

pablomakaveli wrote: »

Germany began breaking conditions of the treaty fairly shortly after it was signed which could be argued made the Germans bolder than they would have been if the Allies had been stricter.

You think the problem with Versailles was that it was too lenient ?

Mind me asking who the author of that book is ?

I never said that a single person was responsible for creating the conditions of WW2 - in fact what I am saying is that Versailles was a major building block of it. Secondly I am not contending that national socialism was an utterly new form of political thought (in the same way as for example Marxism).

Having said that I don't agree that the nsdap would have flourished without hitler. Nor would their ideology have evolved to the point where it was chosen by the electorate in the 3 elections of 1932-1933 (1st high vote, 2nd decrease in vote or the 3rd success).

I would broadly agree with much of that post but to pick up on a few points - the point about 'Totalen Krieg' or total war was a Goebbels' (post-stalingrad) late war propaganda invention. It essentially meant every man woman and child were now front line soldiers and that this was from then on a total war to the death. That phrase to the best of my knowledge originated from a famous and interesting speech 'Wollt Ihr den totallen Krieg' - 'who wants to see total war' and the carefully chosen party loyalists in the audience uniformly resoundingly responded 'Yes' for the newsreels which were then echoed throughout the country. This is on youtube and widely published.

WWI German civilian population were not on the front line. The 'Total war' concept is something you seem to be retrospectively applying to their ww1 wartime economy or to production levels or priorities but as it is generally percieved it would be incorrect to apply it to WWI Era Germany.

I never disregarded your other contention or said that the nsdap were not 'born out of several strands of political thought which exsisted from years previous' - these 2 things (born out of pre-exsisting disparate elements and given common magnified purpose through Versailles) are not mutually exclusive.

I have not compared the nsdap to a form of political theory like marxism.

Having said that when you combine those pre-exsisting elements you are left with something which was new and seen as revolutionary by those involved. There was a nsdap believed perception that Versailles was Germany's collective 'Passion' and that the resurrection and rebirth was the founding and rise of the party.

'National Socialism' has come to mean one thing now but at that time it meant literally that - Nationalism and Socialism = the party that embodied the unification of those 2 elements to harness moderate leaning towards communist and socialist opposition which was essentially anti-nationalist.

They (nsdap) genuinely felt that it was a truly new Socialist movement. A taking back of the left wing of German political life from jewish & bolshevik/foreign influence. Keeping finance, military and industry enthusiastically onside however was one of the new developments in this movement.

The negative aspects of racial superiority, anti -semitism, euthanasia & eugenics were neither new or unique. All of those elements pre-exsisted the nsdap and obviously still exsist today.

Re the socialist aspect they did spend much their entire time elevating the status of the worker which was a new departure from either imperial pre ww1 or weimar post ww1 Germany policy.

They disinherited the aristocracy of their officer rank and introduced promotion on ability and officers leading from the front (the SS particularly).

Hitler famously spoke (in his mind) for those in the fields and those in the factories. Union membership became compulsory (party union that is) and they did improve general conditions for most (goes without - saying non jewish/communist/homosexual) workers.

All of their slogans were built on this principle, Arbeit Adelt (work enobles), Arbeit Macht Frei (work sets you free) and so on.

Their Reichsparteitag were essentially national workers days simultaneously for party promotion and consolidation, also their creation of the KDF (Kraft Durch freude) created vacation days for workers and subsidised worker vacations in prebuilt butlins-style resorts and on specially designed cruise liners later used as hospital ships and troop transports.

The socialist element does get dismissed nowadays as lip service in some way but it's this combination which is where the NEW part you referred to comes from.

The transition from pre ww1 imperial to weimar to n. socialist is a dynamic that I find pretty interesting and is another element but I would disagree that that was nothing new whatsoever in any of this.

I think the new part was how those elements were cannibalised and blended into something which when you addd to that it's distinctive artistic style and branding and so on captured the zeitgeist perfectly. But yes all built on basically pre-exsisting elements in one form or another.

Without taking the thread further from Versailles I'd say that the merging of all those elements and control of the various factions was where the interesting part lies & this 'borg' esque ( I know I am going to regret saying that) part goes back to the pre-putsch theory (according to mein kampf anyway). There is much discussion in there of working on building sites and exposure to communist agitators and the affects on national morale and thus on the war also on the seductiveness of communism, it's undeniable appeal and strengths and also it's fatal tragic flaws. Discussions about how genuinely improving the lot of the working classes was a new requirement for any recovery movement and how this was not met with anything already exsisting.

The more you look at for example the Reichsarbeitsdienst (German labour movement which grew out of the NS Arbeitsdienst) which rebuilt the country and fixed their economy, reducing (post hyper inflation / depression days here) unemployment while improving infrastructure and modernising the country the clearer this aspect becomes. This was intially voluntary for 6 months then mandatory later on. Their handling of the unions also confirms this. The earliest NS union the nsbo was even known to strike with communists though this was not encouraged and later would be unthinkable. Their ideal and to return to your original point the part that was new was to take elements from the communists pro-worker ideology but then once in power criminalise & remove them while simultaneously maintaining their socialist requirements through the RAD and the DAF(deutsche arbeitsfront - or german labour front - consolidation of all workers and trades unions).

The overall point I am making in this ramble is that there was nothing new in all of the various elements of this party - but the new part is in how they were blended and how they were cohesively maintained throughout this period and then in the militarisation and aggresive national expansion.

Without versailles there would have been no foundation stone for any of this to be built on and in my view it was only made possible to unite these strands of society into an essentially contradictory ideology through the unifying injustice of that treaty.