Treaty of Versailles - Modern Reappraisal

[Prince Cobra]

I'm not sure the government would have signed that.

Now everybody is supposed to buy into this revisionist, anti-german re-writing of the thing that crippled our country and turned us into slaves of the french though, sickening.

Long live the Central Powers! Long live the Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria!

Joking aside, the treaty was harsh indeed compared with say, the Vienna treaty of 1815.

The military clauses, the reparations, the way the treaty was concluded...

The military clauses: the destruction of all the military force of Germany was an extremely severe clause. On the top of this, it hits a traditional value of the Prussian society: the army. There could have been slight restrictions in the first years but what the victorors did was insane.

The reparations. Indeed, if we sum up, Germany paid little (bu the original sum was huuuge). The treatment was really harsh in the beginning (the occupation of parts of Germany by the French in the 20s, for example) which led to a full collapse of the German economy. WHen Germany started to recover, the crisis of 1929 hit the state. Then the country sank and something had to be done. The reparations were (finally!) gradually obliterated and Germany received aid (that amounts more than the paid reparations; in fact, this is a good example why the reparations are ineffective). However, the fruits of this aid to one of the pillars of the European economy were exploited by the wrong person (Hitler) because the other Europeans started to care about Germany when it was too late.

Perhaps slicing Eastern Prussia was also unnecessary cruel, they could have granted an economic access of Poland to the Baltic seas.

The Peace Conference. If we compare the Veinna treaty of 1815 and the Versailles: France was active on the conference whilst the delegations of Germany was denied any role in the treaties. They simply have to sign the treaty that put Germany on their knees.


I won't comment the cases of the treaties with Hungary and the Ottoman Empire that were also extremely harsh (Hungary lost about 2/3 of its territory, the Ottomans about 80 per cent; the reason why Turkey is nowadays big is in the denial of Mustafa Kemal Pasha to recognise the treaty).