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Versailles: Big bloody deal

I wonder how accurate it is to blame Versailles for the sentiments that precipitated World War Two.

It wasn't too harsh in my view. The issue of reparations was and is overplayed. By the late 1920s, Germany was being subsidized so much in the payment of her reparations that she was virtually in profit. The reparations were hardly even commensurate with the damage done financially especially to France.

The famous accusation that it "fell between two chairs" viz. it humiliated Germany but never crippled it, fails to give enough weight to the fact that the objective of the treaty was to prevent Germany ever being a credible aggressive military threat to France, rather than destroy her.

Also, the fact that the treaty was fundamentally unenforceable renders it of somewhat dubious significance as a necessary link in the causation chain of World War Two.

Question: Directly or indirectly, how much blame should the VersaillesTreaty really carry, for causing World War Two?

Reply 1

ForeverIsMyName

15

It wasn't too harsh in my view. The issue of reparations was and is overplayed. By the late 1920s, Germany was being subsidized so much in the payment of her reparations that she was virtually in profit. The reparations were hardly even commensurate with the damage done financially especially to France.

The problem wasn't the reparations per se, but the economic distortions and everything that comes with having your territory at the whim of a powerful neighbour, having to rely on massively inflated export figures which just didn't reflect German industrial capacity.

Reply 2

Catsmeat

13

You must consider the weak state in which the German economy stood in 1918. By the end of the war Germany was both materially exhausted and financially dependent on the allies. Since Jutland in 1915 the German people had been starved and, with the heavy focus on war industries was much to the detriment of peace time industries. By 1919 Germany would find it very difficult, at a jump, to not only provide a strong, well fed and enthusiastic work force but to switch the factories back to the production of non military hardwares etc.

Reply 3

Molsaka G

1

Mantoux showed long ago that Germany had the economic capability to pay the reparations. However the link between the perceptions they fostered and WW2 are rather harder to disregard.

Reply 4

yawn

17

Are the History AS/A2's this week?

Reply 5

Ferrus

19

Gilliwoo

I wonder how accurate it is to blame Versailles for the sentiments that precipitated World War Two.

Erm, it didn't cause everything but the settlement did set the structure in which events of the antebellum period took place. And most historians would agree.

It wasn't too harsh in my view.

I was not nearly as harsh as Brest-Litvosk, and the French wanted far more but it did seem to humiliate a nascent democratic government in a manner preventing its true acceptance by the German people.

The famous accusation that it "fell between two chairs" viz. it humiliated Germany but never crippled it

The humiliation of 1919 was more in the mind of right-wing fanaticists in Germany - don't forget the country had lost millions of men for what seemed a lost of national dignity and instable governance. The true humiliation was the hyperinflation crisis and the invasion of the Ruhr which allowed the 'November Criminals' myth to burgeon, especially among the middle class who lost a great deal and now saw themselves as being Moscow's cheif target for Communist subversion.

Also, the fact that the treaty was fundamentally unenforceable renders it of somewhat dubious significance as a necessary link in the causation chain of World War Two.

Er... what? The treaty may have been unenforceable in the long term but it is not the treaty that most historians argue acted as a catalyst to WW2 but rather the peace which was enforceable - millions of British, American, French and Italian troops ready to march in and divide up Germany unless acquiescence was forthcoming. Indeed it was at least partially enforceable up till 1931 with the weak Ruhr border and the Allied military prescence in the Ruhr land.

Question: Directly or indirectly, how much blame should the VersaillesTreaty really carry, for causing World War Two?

As I have said it is not the treaty as such that was the motor behind the politics of the 1920's and 30's but the peace, the conclusion to WW1. Britain with its disengagement policy, American isolation, German resentment, Italian and Japanese aggression and France's 'Maginot Line mentality' were all the direct result of WW1 and its conclusion, thus framing the actions of the interwar politicians and constructing the meaning of geopolitics in the epoch.

Reply 6

Agent Smith

11

I agree with much of what Ferrus says, but if it wasn't for the Wall Street Crash, none of it would have mattered. Why? Because there wouldn't have been that spark for Germany to move from simmering with resentment to actually doing something about it out of sheer desperation.

Reply 7

Ferrus

19

Agent Smith

I agree with much of what Ferrus says, but if it wasn't for the Wall Street Crash, none of it would have mattered. Why? Because there wouldn't have been that spark for Germany to move from simmering with resentment to actually doing something about it out of sheer desperation.

Yes, and the military arrogation of Japan's political system would not have occurred. However one has to wonder if the Depression would have redounded in the same geopolitical fashion had it not been for the constitution of Europe post-WW1.

Reply 8

Catsmeat

13

yawn

Are the History AS/A2's this week?

Gosh, I hope not. I don't want to go through all of that again.

Actually the entire Versailles debate is quite reminiscent of GCSE History. They were simpler times :rolleyes:

- less stress about British Industrial economics. No more bloody dairy farming statistics. Eric Hobsbawn hates me.

Reply 9

Ferrus

19

'Death of a Joyce scholar'

Gosh, I hope not. I don't want to go through all of that again.

Actually the entire Versailles debate is quite reminiscent of GCSE History. They were simpler times :rolleyes:

- less stress about British Industrial economics. No more bloody dairy farming statistics. Eric Hobsbawn hates me.

I would love to be studying that again, instead I'm stuck with ****ing medieval history.

Reply 10

Sweyn Forkbeard

19

yawn

Are the History AS/A2's this week?

I believe Gilliwoo is an undergrad or postgrad.
---

Versailles is a very contentious issue, and I do believe that it gave the Nazi Party a platform from which to appeal to the strong feelings of nationalism that many Germans still felt during the 1920s. I think that a lot of people, in the spirit of sweeping unpleasant facts under the carpet for the sake of European unity, tend to gloss over just how strongly nationalist Germany still was, and how much popular support the Nazis had. Versailles simply served to aggravate these sentiments, and Britain and France made the mistake of failing to intervene when Germany broke sections of the treaty, in the name of appeasement or perhaps the creation of a cordon sanitaire between Western Europe and the Soviet Union.

The unfortunate legacy of Versailles was seen as recently as the early 90s in the Balkans.

Reply 11

Ferrus

19

Will

in the name of appeasement or perhaps the creation of a cordon sanitaire between Western Europe and the Soviet Union.

Neither - it was more in the name of having neither the desire nor the effective power to enforce it.

Reply 12

Arminius

14

i don't think any nation the size of germany could really be cooped up in a box for too long. None of the allies had the will to commit to any new war against germany, i suppose in hindsight it would have been better to step in early but at the time there was a huge adversion to the thought of another european war, of any sort.

Reply 13

Ferrus

19

Germany could have been discerped though - difficult but not impossible given its relative youth. The French were quite partial to the idea of an independent Rhineland, Bavaria could be trusted to split off if allowed.

Reply 14

Agent Smith

11

i don't think any nation the size of germany could really be cooped up in a box for too long. None of the allies had the will to commit to any new war against germany, i suppose in hindsight it would have been better to step in early but at the time there was a huge adversion to the thought of another european war, of any sort.

Would it? The whole of Europe was reeling; I expect there were grave doubts, especially in the frankly ravaged France, as to whether the waging of another war was even feasible in the immediate future.

Reply 15

Agent Smith

11

Ferrus

Germany could have been discerped though - difficult but not impossible given its relative youth. The French were quite partial to the idea of an independent Rhineland, Bavaria could be trusted to split off if allowed.

Leaving France as the overwhelmingly dominant power on the Continent, which would inevitably have had grave consequences for the Entente Cordiale... but at the time I suppose looking that far into the future would have been a secondary consideration to dissipating the potential threat of the Boche.

Reply 16

Ferrus

19

Possibly, but the French government never had the industrial base to challenge Britain's hegemony in the way Germany did.

But yes, Rhinish separatism was considered a bit much by the British and Americans.

Reply 17

Gilliwoo

OP

Molsaka G

Mantoux showed long ago that Germany had the economic capability to pay the reparations. However the link between the perceptions they fostered and WW2 are rather harder to disregard.

I would say this is exactly true.

Reply 18

Gilliwoo

OP

yawn

Are the History AS/A2's this week?

I don't do A Level history

Reply 19

Gilliwoo

OP

Ferrus

Erm, it didn't cause everything but the settlement did set the structure in which events of the antebellum period took place. And most historians would agree.

I don't remember challenging this.

The humiliation of 1919 was more in the mind of right-wing fanaticists in Germany - don't forget the country had lost millions of men for what seemed a lost of national dignity and instable governance. [The true humiliation was the hyperinflation crisis?] and the invasion of the Ruhr which allowed the 'November Criminals' myth to burgeon, especially among the middle class who lost a great deal and now saw themselves as being Moscow's cheif target for Communist subversion.

Indeed. And this is a point Michael Burleigh, Graham Darby, Sally Marks et al all make in their separate works ont he matter. But how do you equate hyperinflation with national humiliation?

Er... what? The treaty may have been unenforceable in the long term but it is not the treaty that most historians argue acted as a catalyst to WW2 but rather the peace which was enforceable - millions of British, American, French and Italian troops ready to march in and divide up Germany unless acquiescence was forthcoming. Indeed it was at least partially enforceable up till 1931 with the weak Ruhr border and the Allied military prescence in the Ruhr land.

The treaty was unenforceable pretty much from the start, if only because there wasn't, and realisticially couldn't, be any real occupation of Germany - nothing like that of France 100 years before, or what Germany and Japan would experience a few decades later. These "millions" of Allied troops wanted to go home. Large armies are unpopular in peacetime democracies. It was a tricky question whether it was justified or even politically possible to "march in and divide up Germany", considering that the war to end all wars, had already been won - and at great expense - in the mind of most of the allied nations. As Zebedee said, there simply wasn't the will to commit to a new war, and politically speaking, most of the allied leaders couldn't even seriously threaten one. This was precisely why I say the treaty was unenforceable. The armies could simply not be kept hanging around long enough or in sufficient force to make it a credible peace. Indeed, it wasn't the intention to occupy Germany in the sense you describe. It was in everybody's interests to keep Germany working - if only because a fallen Germany would be useless in terms of reparations. A J P Taylor famously speaks of how "The allies threatened to choke Germany, and Germany threatened to die".

As I have said it is not the treaty as such that was the motor behind the politics of the 1920's and 30's but the peace, the conclusion to WW1. Britain with its disengagement policy, American isolation, German resentment, Italian and Japanese aggression and France's 'Maginot Line mentality' were all the direct result of WW1 and its conclusion, thus framing the actions of the interwar politicians and constructing the meaning of geopolitics in the epoch.

Yes I never argued against this.

Versailles: Big bloody deal

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