1919
Treaty
of Versailles
^top^ At Versailles Palace outside of Paris, France, Germany signs with the Allies the treaty that officially ends World War I. The German delegation, which has been forced to sign the punitive agreement, indicates its attitude by breaking the ceremonial pen.
On 19181111, the fair terms of US President Wilson’s peace proposal had encouraged the leaders of the Central Powers to agree to an armistice. Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” called for unselfish peace terms from the victorious Allies, including the restoration of territories conquered during the war, the right to national self-determination, and the establishment of a postwar world body to resolve future conflict.
On 18 January 1919, the international peace conference convened at Versailles, and Wilson, who represented the US, soon found himself at odds with other Allied leaders who were intent on punishing Germany. The final treaty, signed on 28 June 1919, calls for Germany’s relinquishment of substantial territory, the abolishment of its navy and overseas empire, and the payment of stiff war reparations to the Allied powers.
At the signing the one leader who showed remarkable foresight was General Smuts of South Africa, who signed under protest and filed a document declaring that the peace was unsatisfactory because. the indemnities stipulated could not be accepted without grave injury to the industrial revival of Europe there were territorial settlements which would need revision. The Chinese were not present, as they had a disagreement on Shantung.
These demanding terms would be regarded with increasing bitterness in Germany, and would directly contributed to the rise of Nazism and subsequent outbreak of World War II. Nevertheless, the creation of states based on Wilson’s principle of national self-determination and the formation of the League of Nations were both embodied in the Treaty of Versailles. In 1920, President Woodrow Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Price for his efforts.
full reports in The New York Times 19200628
KEYNES PREDICTS ECONOMIC CHAOS:
At the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles with the Allies, officially ending World War I. The English economist John Maynard Keynes, who had attended the peace conference but then left in protest of the treaty, was one of the most outspoken critics of the punitive agreement. In his The Economic Consequences of the Peace, published in December 1919, Keynes predicted that the stiff war reparations and other harsh terms imposed on Germany by the treaty would lead to the financial collapse of the country, which in turn would have serious economic and political repercussions on Europe and the world. By the fall of 1918, it was apparent to the leaders of Germany that defeat was inevitable in World War I. After four years of terrible attrition, Germany no longer had the men or resources to resist the Allies, who had been given a tremendous boost by the infusion of American manpower and supplies.
In order to avert an Allied invasion of Germany, the German government contacted US President Woodrow Wilson in October 1918 and asked him to arrange a general armistice. Earlier that year, Wilson had proclaimed his "Fourteen Points," which proposed terms for a "just and stable peace" between Germany and its enemies. The Germans asked that the armistice be established along these terms, and the Allies more or less complied, assuring Germany of a fair and unselfish final peace treaty. On 11 November 1918, the armistice was signed and went into effect, and fighting in World War I came to an end. In January 1919, John Maynard Keynes traveled to the Paris Peace Conference as the chief representative of the British Treasury. The brilliant 35-year-old economist had previously won acclaim for his work with the Indian currency and his management of British finances during the war. In Paris, he sat on an economic council and advised British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, but the important peacemaking decisions were out of his hands, and President Wilson, Prime Minister Lloyd George, and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau wielded the real authority.
Germany had no role in the negotiations deciding its fate, and lesser Allied powers had little responsibility in the drafting of the final treaty. It soon became apparent that the treaty would bear only a faint resemblance to the Fourteen Points that had been proposed by Wilson and embraced by the Germans. Wilson, a great idealist, had few negotiating skills, and he soon buckled under the pressure of Clemenceau, who hoped to punish Germany as severely as it had punished France in the Treaty of Frankfurt that ended the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. Lloyd George took the middle ground between the two men, but he backed the French plan to force Germany to pay reparations for damages inflicted on Allied civilians and their property. Since the treaty officially held Germany responsible for the outbreak of World War I (in reality it was only partially responsible), the Allies would not have to pay reparations for damages they inflicted on German civilians. The treaty that began to emerge was a thinly veiled Carthaginian Peace, an agreement that accomplished Clemenceau's hope to crush France's old rival. According to its terms, Germany was to relinquish 10% of its territory. It was to be disarmed, and its overseas empire taken over by the Allies. Most detrimental to Germany's immediate future, however, was the confiscation of its foreign financial holdings and its merchant carrier fleet.
The German economy, already devastated by the war, was thus further crippled, and the stiff war reparations demanded ensured that it would not soon return to its feet. A final reparations figure was not agreed upon in the treaty, but estimates placed the amount in excess of $30 billion, far beyond Germany's capacity to pay. Germany would be subject to invasion if it fell behind on payments. Keynes, horrified by the terms of the emerging treaty, presented a plan to the Allied leaders in which the German government be given a substantial loan, thus allowing it to buy food and materials while beginning reparations payments immediately. Lloyd George approved the "Keynes Plan," but President Wilson turned it down because he feared it would not receive congressional approval. In a private letter to a friend, Keynes called the idealistic American president "the greatest fraud on earth." On 05 June 1919 Keynes wrote a note to Lloyd George informing the prime minister that he was resigning his post in protest of the impending "devastation of Europe." The Germans initially refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles, and it took an ultimatum from the Allies to bring the German delegation to Paris on June 28. It was five years to the day since the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, which began the chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I. Clemenceau chose the location for the signing of the treaty: the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles Palace, site of the signing of the Treaty of Frankfurt that ended the Franco-Prussian War. At the ceremony, General Jan Christiaan Smuts, soon to be president of South Africa, was the only Allied leader to protest formally the Treaty of Versailles, saying it would do grave injury to the industrial revival of Europe. At Smuts' urging, Keynes began work on The Economic Consequences of the Peace. It was published in December 1919 and was widely read. In the book, Keynes made a grim prophecy that would have particular relevance to the next generation of Europeans: "If we aim at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare say, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the later German war will fade into nothing, and which will destroy, whoever is victor, the civilisation and the progress of our generation." Germany soon fell hopelessly behind in its reparations payments, and in 1923 France and Belgium occupied the industrial Ruhr region as a means of forcing payment. In protest, workers and employers closed down the factories in the region. Catastrophic inflation ensued, and Germany's fragile economy began quickly to collapse. By the time the crash came in November 1923, a lifetime of savings could not buy a loaf of bread. That month, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler launched an abortive coup against Germany's government. The Nazis were crushed and Hitler was imprisoned, but many resentful Germans sympathized with the Nazis and their hatred of the Treaty of Versailles.
A decade later, Hitler would exploit this continuing bitterness among Germans to seize control of the German state. In the 1930s, the Treaty of Versailles was significantly revised and altered in Germany's favor, but this belated amendment could not stop the rise of German militarism and the subsequent outbreak of World War II. In the late 1930s, John Maynard Keynes gained a reputation as the world's foremost economist by advocating large-scale government economic planning to keep unemployment low and markets healthy. Today, all major capitalist nations adhere to the key principles of Keynesian economics. He died in 1946.
Le traité de Versailles met fin (formellement) à la Guerre de 1914 – 1918, suspendue depuis l’Armistice du 11 Novembre 1918. La République a voulu que ce soit dans la Galerie des glaces du château de Versailles, à l'endroit même où cinquante ans plus tôt a été proclamé l'Empire allemand, que la signature de ce traité qui a imposé des mois de négociations ait lieu. Les contractants sont la France et ses alliés, Belgique, Angleterre (au nom du Commonwealth), et en face, l’Allemagne. Autour de Clemenceau pour la France, Lloyd George pour l'Angleterre et le président Woodrow Wilson pour les Etats-Unis, Orlando pour l'Italie signent avec l'Allemagne défaite sur la base des quatorze points de Wilson qui, entre autres, affirment le principe des nationalités.
Précédé du pacte de la Société des Nations, le traité comporte des clauses territoriales, militaires et financières. Les principaux décrets sont : Restitution de l’Alsace et de la Lorraine à la France. Administration de la Sarre (démilitarisée) par la S.D.N (Société des Nations = O.N.U.). Règlement du couloir de Dantzig (Oder-neisse), couloir Polonais vers la Mer Baltique. 20 milliards de Marks-Or à titre de réparations des dommages de guerre. C’est ce Traité que dénoncera Hitler dès son arrivée au pouvoir et qui lui inspirera son esprit "revanchard" et intransigeant lors des hostilités de 1940.
The acquiescence of the German people facilitated the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.
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