Treaty of Versailles
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The Treaty of Versailles was originally document that was written to create peace in Europe after the end of WWI. But when one reads it, they realize that it is mainly the listing of all of the things that Germany has do to in order to surrender. This includes taking full responsibility for starting the war (War Guilt). It also made Germany pay reparations to all of the Allied countries. These factors put together, completely destroyed Germany. The Treaty of Versailles ended up causing more problems than it solved because it left Germany very poor, angry and ready for revenge.
Mainly three countries wrote the Treaty of Versailles. They were France, Great Britain and the USA, which can also be known as the “Big Three”. Now of those three, France was the hardest on Germany. Since most of the fighting had been it France, many of France’s cities and factories had been destroyed. While Germany was retreating, they would blow up all of the factories and coal mines so that their enemy couldn’t use it. This caused quite a lot of damage to the French economy. George Clemenceau was set on crippling Germany both economically and militarily. It was his idea to reduce Germany’s military to 100,000 soldiers and to have Germany pay very, very, high reparations. He also wanted to divide up Germany into many different countries so that they would have no power and it would make it harder for them to unite. Fortunately, Clemenceau wasn’t able to make that a part of the treaty.
Great Britain’s goals were to mainly get rid of Germany’s navy. For hundreds of years, Britain’s navy had ruled the seas and then Germany began to build a navy that was comparable to Britain’s. Lloyd-George felt that Germany should not be allowed a navy all together, that way; Britain will continue to rule the seas. Another one of Lloyd-George’s goals was to gain control of most of Germany’s colonies. He ended up not getting as many as he liked but Great Britain gained control of quite a few.
The USA was the softest on Germany when it came to the Treaty of Versailles. Woodrow Wilson though of the fourteen points on which he wanted the treaty to be based off of. Some of the important ones are; “Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war”(free navigation of all seas) (“President Woodrow Wilson”). Another very important point was; “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 and in the public view” (no secret treaties)(“President Woodrow Wilson”). All of the first thirteen points led up the fourteenth point, which “proposed a �general association of nations’ that would protect �great and small states alike.’” (McDougal, Littell). In other words, the League of Nations. The Treaty incorporated a few of Wilson’s point but not as many as he would have liked. Because of this and a few other reasons, the US did not sign the Treaty of Versailles.
It is fully understandable why Germany would have been seeking revenge on the allied countries after the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Germany was not even represented at the conference, so they had no say in anything that was put into the Treaty of Versailles.
Since Germany was not present for the writing of the treaty, the Allied countries felt that they could be as harsh as they liked on Germany. The worst item that was listed in the treaty was that Germany had to pay the equivalent of 20,000,000,000 gold marks to the Allied countries in two and a third years (“Primary Documents: Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919”). The total amount of money that they had to pay to the Allies was about $33 billion over the course of 30 years, which is quite a