This was especially the case for Germany as she was to reap the blame for the First World War. The peace treaties took place soon after the final bloodbath of WW1, emotions would have been raging which would have tainted some of the decisions made, and soldiers would have retired back to their homes and would have been reluctant to want to be involved in border shifting and disputes. The Allied countries wanted Germany to concur to a harsh settlement but the United States brought diplomacy into the situation. The treaties were not just and reasonable but without the United States, Germany would have been handed a much harsher punishment. The injustice of the settlement unintentionally gave birth to long term problems, including key events for the lead up to the Second World War.
They put restrictions on the German military, to make Germany weak and a second-rate power. Germany had huge financial losses, which brought the rise of the ultra-nationalist Nazis. They had to take acceptance of responsibility for the damage in the war even though they weren’t the only ones in the war. Germany had absolutely no say in the requirements and matters of the treaty. The Treaty of Versailles would prove to be one of the most disastrous mistakes in history.
The Weimar Republic looked to be collapsing from the beginning. All the events that finally led to the ending of democracy in Germany were seemed to be caused by the Treaty of Versailles. The loss of the war for the Germans was a huge turning point as it was seem that the Allies wanted to crush Germany. They were unable to pay the reparations, as extremists from both the right and left wing found the war guilt clause unacceptable. When the Germans had lost World War I, had a huge impact back in Germany.
Also with the France, Britain and USA not agreeing on the terms of the treaty made it even harder for it to end. Germany’s anger from the treaty came from a few of conditions which one wasn’t entirely true. The first of these conditions were that they were to blame for the war, this condition so bad that no man in Germany would sign it not even a soldier under direct orders. Also the amount of money that Germany had to pay back was very unrealistic ($6600 million) and would cripple their country for years to come. There were other factors that Germany thought that were very unfair such as their tiny army and the amount of land that was taken from them.
The treaty was quite unpopular, not only with the Germans, but also with the Big Three. Even at the time, the peace-makers left the conference feeling that they had failed to make a treaty that would keep the peace and satisfy everybody. The historians have ever since blamed the Treaty of Versailles for helping the Second World War. One of the Big Three, David Lloyd George of Great Britain had two views on how Germany should be treated. He was quite satisfied with the treaty.
The treaty would have been far more reasonable had the reparations been made smaller. To sum up, this term was very immoral and angered the people of Germany. The next term was Germany’s acceptance of war guilt. Germany was forced to admit full responsibility for World War One,
Moreover, as Britain was one of the major power of the WWI, the effects on both of their men and arms were not recovered from the WWI. This also led Chamberlain hesitant to take part for a large war at this time. Thus, making an appeasement with the Germans was the best solution for them to be recovered and prepared later in the future because rather than fighting a big war against advanced army with unprepared-no men army, they would fight a war with recovered army even if the opponents might grow more. ! Back again to 1919, the Treaty of Versailles made conclusions to the German’s territorial, armed forces, colonies, preparations and indemnity, and the war guilt issues.
It is commonly accepted that Germany were eager for a war, however in 1914 they were only responding to events in Sarajevo by agreeing to back Austria, as opposed to starting a war with no origin. The Germans also felt cheated by this treaty, because virtually none of Wilson’s ‘Fourteen Points’ had been included in it. On the 5th November 1918, Germany had accepted the Fourteen Points as the basis for peace and an armistice, however when the Treaty of Versailles was signed, the Fourteen Points had been largely forgotten. This shows Clemenceau’s’ and Frances’ determination to crush Germany as they were largely forced to accept charges that they knew would greatly weaken and inhibit them in the future as they tried to rebuild. Germany understood that they would have to ‘reduce weapon numbers’, however they did not expect to
To what extent did the failings of Nazi economic policy contribute to the defeat of Germany in the Second World War? There were several different factors that all had an impact on the defeat of Germany during the Second World War and the extent of which the failings of the Nazi economic policy contributed can be argued. The meagre state of the economy, through insufficient planning, did put strains on the government and this limited the full potential of the army, the production of weapons and high demand for labour. No doubt, the economy did hinder the progression of the war however I believe that there were more significant factors that contributed to the defeat of Germany. Hitler’s strategy incompetence, the Allied bombings and losing the Battle of The Atlantic were all also important factors in the defeat of Germany.
“German defeat in the Great War is predominantly attributable to the mistakes of the Prussian-German military elite.” Explain why you agree or disagree with this statement. The Great War was supposed to be a short, victorious war for Germany, one that would be over by Christmas but despite Germany’s early successes in the First World War she eventually suffered defeat in 1918. It is a popular argument that this defeat was due to the weaknesses and incompetence of the German military elite and there is much to support this. However there are other factors such as weaknesses shown by Germany’s allies, the strength of the Entente and the growing discontent of the Germans at home, that can also be attributable to Germany’s failure. German defeat in the Great War was largely down to the incompetence and mistakes of the German Military Elite.