Treaty_of_Versailles questions.

[Adler17]

Catspoke, you miss several factors. The Germans DID try to revoke several clauses, but to nearly no avail. Secondly, the Germans signed only under protest. Doing so made it possible to revoke it later. Third, Eupen and Malmedy had no fair plebiscite, as the Belgians forced the population litterally at gunpoint to vote for Belgium. Third, the right of self determination is either valid for all- or does not exist at all. There should have been plebiscites in the Corridore, A-L, Sudetenland, Memelland, Austria and other places as well. This did not happen. Fourth, the Reichswehr was in no way able to defend Germany. When Poland invaded parts of Danzig in 1933 only the League of Nations could enforce the retreat of the Polish soldiers. If that happened in Germany, the Reichswehr was not able to counter this. It is ridiculous to assume Germany shall not have the right of self defense. Ironically all means to have much greater forces than Germany meant that Germany needed so strong forces to be able to defend against France and Poland at the same time. And when they got, they were so strong to beat both. If France and Poland had accepted to disarm, ww2 would have been delayed significantly, perhaps avoided. But none of them agreed to follow THEIR duty to disarm.

In Versailles the other powers were entitled to disarm. They did not do so. In contrast, they started to rearm again. In 1932-34 the Germans tried to make several attempts to make such an agreement. To no avail. The French were way too stubborn. And we have to see here: Germany was disarmed. The few planes and tanks can't really count. The Entente was not willing to comply to THEIR duties. So they broke the treaty first! And why should Germany then still be entitiled to follow a treaty, which the other side broke even more?

Adler

[zoomar]

While I accept that Versailles was a harsh treaty in many respects, the fact remains that Germany lost WW1, totally and completely. Unfortunately, many Germans did not understand this. Also, after the first several years, the Allies were unwilling to enforce its terms. While perhaps in part a recognition that the original terms were too harsh, this sent a message to German nationalists that the Allies were weak and would not stand up to more direct challenges.

Had Germany not accepted the Armistice terms, the war would have continued with Yanks, Poilus and Tommies marching into a battered Berlin to dictate terms in a shattered Reichstag in 1919-20. In this situation the final treaty ending WW1 might not be much harsher than what Versailles dictated, but even the most nationalist Germans would have known they lost, fair and square. The "backstab" theory would have no traction and the military caste that lost the war, not the socialists in parliment, would get the blame.

In fact, I wonder if a treaty in this instance might actually be less harsh. Because WW1 ended with Germany unoccupied and largely free to establish and maintain its own government with only limited direct Allied oversight, it was only natural that the Allies (France and Belgium in particular) would seek harsh terms to demilitarize the Rhineland, and loot the Saar, etc. With the Allied powers occupying all of Germany and essentially reorganizing a new German government, the Allies might actually be more likely to allow the reconstituted Germany to return to its original borders and rearm to help defend Europe against the Red Menace.

[MSZ]

Originally Posted by Adler17

Catspoke, you miss several factors. The Germans DID try to revoke several clauses, but to nearly no avail. Secondly, the Germans signed only under protest. Doing so made it possible to revoke it later. Third, Eupen and Malmedy had no fair plebiscite, as the Belgians forced the population litterally at gunpoint to vote for Belgium. Third, the right of self determination is either valid for all- or does not exist at all. There should have been plebiscites in the Corridore, A-L, Sudetenland, Memelland, Austria and other places as well. This did not happen. Fourth, the Reichswehr was in no way able to defend Germany. When Poland invaded parts of Danzig in 1933 only the League of Nations could enforce the retreat of the Polish soldiers. If that happened in Germany, the Reichswehr was not able to counter this. It is ridiculous to assume Germany shall not have the right of self defense. Ironically all means to have much greater forces than Germany meant that Germany needed so strong forces to be able to defend against France and Poland at the same time. And when they got, they were so strong to beat both. If France and Poland had accepted to disarm, ww2 would have been delayed significantly, perhaps avoided. But none of them agreed to follow THEIR duty to disarm.

In Versailles the other powers were entitled to disarm. They did not do so. In contrast, they started to rearm again. In 1932-34 the Germans tried to make several attempts to make such an agreement. To no avail. The French were way too stubborn. And we have to see here: Germany was disarmed. The few planes and tanks can't really count. The Entente was not willing to comply to THEIR duties. So they broke the treaty first! And why should Germany then still be entitiled to follow a treaty, which the other side broke even more?

Adler

I'm sorry, but:

1) Which provisions of the treaty exactly did France break?
2) Why should there be a plebiscite in Austria and the Sudetenland, if these territories were not part of Germany? Why shouldn't there be also a referendum in say Bavaria or Brandenburg, if we are to demand self-determination to be applied so universally?
3) Why are you assuming the Reichswehr was incapable of protecting Germany?
4) How could Poland have "invaded parts of Danzig"? What is that?
5) Why are you assuming that it is Germany that needs protection from France and Poland, and not the other way around seeing that just 5 years earlier it was Germany invading both of them?
6) Why would you demand Poland, which was fighting a war with Russia to disarm during it?
7) How was it their "duty" to disarm?
8) How did they break the treaty first and "more"?

Sorry for those points and budging in like that, but that post looked like such a blatant German-apologism that it kind of struck me in a bad way. You are presenting a situation where millions perished fighting off an enemy who had shown no regard to any laws or human decency, and brand those who defeated that enemy as the "villians" for having allegedly "broken their own rules" - completely forgetting that Germany itself broke all rules beforehand and had no restraints whatsoever. It could have gotten a much worse treatment after all it did. Finally, let's not forget that French suspiciousness was well founded, seeing that Germany was unwilling to stick to any terms of peace, not even those it suggested to the allies itself.

[Zmflavius]

Originally Posted by Michele

Not that I see.



So was it a bad thing? This "mild" offer would have meant leaving the Russian autocratic czar in control of all those non-Russians, right? No rights of self-determination, right?




Just asking you if you can explain what looks like an extremely funny outright contradiction on your part. if you can't, no problem for me.

I think Adler explained his point quite adequately in his clarification: Up until 1917, the Germans were willing to forego most of their gains if they could concentrate on France to achieve what they thought were the more important war aims there; In 1917, they decided that they could achieve war aims in both theatres and so demanded their full war aims. It helped that in the East, they now had the upper hand. To use a comparison, France had the initial war aim of conquering the Rhineland, in 1919 (though even then, they were forced) they gave up that war aim for the more important aim of creating a buffer against the USSR. What it means is that one aim was more important than the other.

Originally Posted by MSZ

I'm sorry, but:

1) Which provisions of the treaty exactly did France break?
2) Why should there be a plebiscite in Austria and the Sudetenland, if these territories were not part of Germany? Why shouldn't there be also a referendum in say Bavaria or Brandenburg, if we are to demand self-determination to be applied so universally?
3) Why are you assuming the Reichswehr was incapable of protecting Germany?
4) How could Poland have "invaded parts of Danzig"? What is that?
5) Why are you assuming that it is Germany that needs protection from France and Poland, and not the other way around seeing that just 5 years earlier it was Germany invading both of them?
6) Why would you demand Poland, which was fighting a war with Russia to disarm during it?
7) How was it their "duty" to disarm?
8) How did they break the treaty first and "more"?

Sorry for those points and budging in like that, but that post looked like such a blatant German-apologism that it kind of struck me in a bad way. You are presenting a situation where millions perished fighting off an enemy who had shown no regard to any laws or human decency, and brand those who defeated that enemy as the "villians" for having allegedly "broken their own rules" - completely forgetting that Germany itself broke all rules beforehand and had no restraints whatsoever. It could have gotten a much worse treatment after all it did. Finally, let's not forget that French suspiciousness was well founded, seeing that Germany was unwilling to stick to any terms of peace, not even those it suggested to the allies itself.

1) Adler's argument is the disarmament one, I'm disinclined to say that France broke them.
2) Point
3) Because it wasn't? The idea that a country with no navy, tanks, or airplanes and whose primary mobile arm in the 1920s is restricted to cavalry and which is forbidden from planning for war with openly hostile neighbors is a joke. The Allies did not intend the Reichswehr to be capable of protecting Germany, they just didn't think that abolishment of the military would have been accepted even in the treaty. Well, that, and the presence of the USSR to the west. It wouldn't do the Allies any good if Germany ended up having to surrender to the USSR if they decided to invade the west (which was a prevailing viewpoint, if not a totally accurate one), and they had to use France as a battlefield instead of Germany.
4) Point.
5) France entered WWI for purely offensive gains. It's initial war goals were the annexation of the Rhineland and the fifteen million Germans within it, which far exceeds any German war goal against France, or even, one might argue, given how the Ruhr was also a goal, Russia. France also almost immediately as soon as war broke out launched a (badly failed) invasion of Germany which never made it further than Alsace-Lorraine. Likewise, German invasion of Russian Poland was not the only planned attack, Russia opened the war by attacking East Prussia and Galicia. To say that Germany fought defensively is probably too much, but it hardly was the only aggressor.
6) Point.
7) It wasn't, really, but given how the allies insisted on occupying the moral high ground, by claiming that they had fought to help prevent war, among other things, it comes off as extremely hypocritical to insist only Germany disarm, and furthermore, accept total blame for the war. The actual refusal to mutually disarm is from much later.
8)

I'm also going to take issue with the idea that Germany was completely in the moral low ground. Germany did receive some bad press, and rightly, for some early atrocities, but the idea that the Allies were an army of angels out to liberate oppressed peoples or that the Allies never committed a single atrocity is completely false. Even the idea that German atrocities were markedly worse is sketchy in the extreme.

[jmc247]

Originally Posted by Devolved

Versailles was a perfectly reasonable treaty when you consider that approximately 17 million people had died in the war.

The apologists will always complain about double standards but the treaty of Brest Litovsk imposed by Germany on Russia showed that the Germans accepted the principle that the winner dictates terms.

No treaty is perfectly reasonable if it fosters extreme hatred of you, economic collapse, and reactionary extremists to take over in the country in question and most importantly if you can't enforce the treaty open endly.

It sent Europe on a collision course for a second much more destructive World War, just as the peace terms the Roman's forced on Carthage after the first Punic war allowed anger, hatred and militarism to go wild in Carthage at the same time Rome wasn't in the position to 'keep them down' because they hadn't actually conquered them. So, by the time Carthage had grown up a new generation of young men they were ready for a second much more deadly war. Sound familiar?

Just from a realpolitik angle the Versailles Treaty was stupid and it cost the British and the French their Empire's much earlier then if they had created a treaty they could enforce long term. Pissing off the Germans as well as the Russians without being able to contain them was just stupid and the French and the British paid for it massively.

[Remicas]

Well, if the US Congress didn't reject the treaty and the League of Nation, and actually helped enforcing the treaty (ending their isolationist policies), while the UK didn't try an appeasement policy with Germany right after the war...

[RousseauX]

Originally Posted by jmc247

No treaty is perfectly reasonable if it fosters extreme hatred of you, economic collapse, and reactionary extremists to take over in the country in question and most importantly if you can't enforce the treaty open endly.

Short of leaving Germany larger than it was at the beginning of the war I have no idea how it's not going to foster those things you've named.

[RousseauX]

Originally Posted by jmc247

Just from a realpolitik angle the Versailles Treaty was stupid and it cost the British and the French their Empire's much earlier then if they had created a treaty they could enforce long term. Pissing off the Germans as well as the Russians without being able to contain them was just stupid and the French and the British paid for it massively.

Absolutely nobody can actually put forward "a treaty they could enforce long term" and would not involve some sort of German hegemony in central Europe.

[RousseauX]

5) France entered WWI for purely offensive gains. It's initial war goals were the annexation of the Rhineland and the fifteen million Germans within it

^.^ what is the source for this one

[b12ox]

The only coutry that could secure Versaille was Germany, the country against which the treaty was aimed. France could never secure it. The areas where plebiscites were held was mostly eastern europe and southern europe, on the corpse of defunct AH and shattered Germany. Then, there were localities in need of additional provisons in which plebiscites were not organised and where armed confilcts would follow. Official language was almost alwayz german there. The need to revise German role in post Versaille Europe was mandatory for the sake of giving it a chance.

[Shaby]

Originally Posted by RousseauX

^.^ what is the source for this one

I am wondering the same thing. The first time I hear about this. I was under impression no one had any definite war goal at that point, beyond 'Home for before leaves fall'?

[jmc247]

Originally Posted by RousseauX

Absolutely nobody can actually put forward "a treaty they could enforce long term" and would not involve some sort of German hegemony in central Europe.

Honestly, even OTL the German economy almost recovered in time for Germany not to fall into Nazism, even a slight improvement in the conditions in Germany and the anger of the German people might have preserved democracy in Germany or at very least kept it from falling until France and the UK were over their post WW1 war weariness.

[RousseauX]

Originally Posted by jmc247

Honestly, even OTL the German economy almost recovered in time for Germany not to fall into Nazism, even a slight improvement in the conditions in Germany and the anger of the German people might have preserved democracy in Germany or at very least kept it from falling until France and the UK were over their post WW1 war weariness.

What are we talking about here, "Nazism" or "some kind of right-wing revanchist autocracy"?

[jmc247]

Originally Posted by RousseauX

What are we talking about here, "Nazism" or "some kind of right-wing revanchist autocracy"?

Probably a right-wing autocracy that makes its way into power if the economy comes back just enough to keep the retards out of power, but not enough to keep Germany a democracy. Regardless I don't see them gambling the way Hitler did to take Austria, Czechoslovakia, etc so quickly and then to go for war so quickly. Hitler took advantage OTL of France and the UK's war weariness to dominate central Europe and invade France before Franco-British rearmament had reached critical mass.

Another World War might still come, but I see it starting a fair bit later and going much differently then OTL.

[Adler17]

Originally Posted by MSZ

I'm sorry, but:

1) Which provisions of the treaty exactly did France break?
2) Why should there be a plebiscite in Austria and the Sudetenland, if these territories were not part of Germany? Why shouldn't there be also a referendum in say Bavaria or Brandenburg, if we are to demand self-determination to be applied so universally?
3) Why are you assuming the Reichswehr was incapable of protecting Germany?
4) How could Poland have "invaded parts of Danzig"? What is that?
5) Why are you assuming that it is Germany that needs protection from France and Poland, and not the other way around seeing that just 5 years earlier it was Germany invading both of them?
6) Why would you demand Poland, which was fighting a war with Russia to disarm during it?
7) How was it their "duty" to disarm?
8) How did they break the treaty first and "more"?

Sorry for those points and budging in like that, but that post looked like such a blatant German-apologism that it kind of struck me in a bad way. You are presenting a situation where millions perished fighting off an enemy who had shown no regard to any laws or human decency, and brand those who defeated that enemy as the "villians" for having allegedly "broken their own rules" - completely forgetting that Germany itself broke all rules beforehand and had no restraints whatsoever. It could have gotten a much worse treatment after all it did. Finally, let's not forget that French suspiciousness was well founded, seeing that Germany was unwilling to stick to any terms of peace, not even those it suggested to the allies itself.

ZMFlavius already answered some. I do the rest.

1. Art. 8 of Versailles Treaty, which is actually part of the league of nations basic law, demanded the disarmament of all parties. Indeed Clemenceau said in 1919, that the German disarmament would only be the first step and the others would follow. Guess, what happened...

2. These areas were part of Germany for over 1.000 years. Also they were inhabited by Germans.

4. In 1933 the Westerplatte, in which only a few men were officially allowed, was occupied by Polish Marines. Only the pressure from the League let the Poles finally retreat.

6. Poland was not at war with the Soviets in 1932.

7. The duty to disarm is from later. But if they do not fulfill it, they break the treaty at first. Here I mean especially the Geneva Disarmament Talks of 1932.

8. See above.

Adler

[RousseauX]

Originally Posted by Adler17

2. These areas were part of Germany for over 1.000 years. Also they were inhabited by Germans.

I'm pretty sure they weren't dude, unless you really want to make the case for pan-Germanism and some idea that 20th century Germany should be geographically congruent to the ethnic settlement of Germans in Europe.

[RousseauX]

Originally Posted by Adler17

7. The duty to disarm is from later. But if they do not fulfill it, they break the treaty at first. Here I mean especially the Geneva Disarmament Talks of 1932.

What sort of agreement was made there and which did the French break?

[Zmflavius]

Originally Posted by Adler17

2. These areas were part of Germany for over 1.000 years. Also they were inhabited by Germans.

I personally would say that this is an extremely sketchy justification, self-determination under the fourteen points would probably be a better one.

I've yet to find the exact source from which I got France's plans to claim the Rhineland. I think it's quite possible that France was planning to wait until they had forced Germany to the negotiating table to decide what to claim. However, it's worth mentioning that it was a demand of France's at the peace conference, and that it was for all purposes an official policy goal of France's for the past eighty years.

[b12ox]

Originally Posted by jmc247

Probably a right-wing autocracy that makes its way into power if the economy comes back just enough to keep the retards out of power, but not enough to keep Germany a democracy. Regardless I don't see them gambling the way Hitler did to take Austria, Czechoslovakia, etc so quickly and then to go for war so quickly. Hitler took advantage OTL of France and the UK's war weariness to dominate central Europe and invade France before Franco-British rearmament had reached critical mass.

Another World War might still come, but I see it starting a fair bit later and going much differently then OTL.

Central Europe was Hitler's playgroud. The French and English could not save France so how could they save Eastern Europe or would they want to, or how could they want to die there. They would have never even if Poland had played straight game.

[stevep]

Originally Posted by Zmflavius

3) Because it wasn't? The idea that a country with no navy, tanks, or airplanes and whose primary mobile arm in the 1920s is restricted to cavalry and which is forbidden from planning for war with openly hostile neighbors is a joke. The Allies did not intend the Reichswehr to be capable of protecting Germany, they just didn't think that abolishment of the military would have been accepted even in the treaty. Well, that, and the presence of the USSR to the west. It wouldn't do the Allies any good if Germany ended up having to surrender to the USSR if they decided to invade the west (which was a prevailing viewpoint, if not a totally accurate one), and they had to use France as a battlefield instead of Germany.

That explains why Germany was repeatedly invaded and had chunks of territory hacked off during the 20's. Oh, it wasn't.

The purpose of the Versailles treaty was primary so that Germany couldn't attack its neighbours again. That worked perfectly as long as the treaty was kept in operation. Despite the weakness of Germany it wasn't attacked by any neighbour during the period of the treaty. [I don't include the occupation of the Rhur during the period when the German government stopped paying reparations after generating hyper-inflation].

5) France entered WWI for purely offensive gains. It's initial war goals were the annexation of the Rhineland and the fifteen million Germans within it, which far exceeds any German war goal against France, or even, one might argue, given how the Ruhr was also a goal, Russia. France also almost immediately as soon as war broke out launched a (badly failed) invasion of Germany which never made it further than Alsace-Lorraine. Likewise, German invasion of Russian Poland was not the only planned attack, Russia opened the war by attacking East Prussia and Galicia. To say that Germany fought defensively is probably too much, but it hardly was the only aggressor.

France wanted to regain A-L but like other's I've never seen any reported intent to annex the Rhineland, until after the war. Furthermore you overlook the fact that France only declared war on Germany after the Germans had 1st declared war on Russia then, as part of their war-plans attacked France through neutral Luxumborg and Belgium. France would probably have supported Russia against a German attack but it wasn't actually given any choice.

To say that Germany fought defensively would be totally inaccurate.

7) It wasn't, really, but given how the allies insisted on occupying the moral high ground, by claiming that they had fought to help prevent war, among other things, it comes off as extremely hypocritical to insist only Germany disarm, and furthermore, accept total blame for the war. The actual refusal to mutually disarm is from much later.

I don't know where you get that from. The allies felt threatened by Germany and were attacked by it, with the exception of Britain which reluctantly joined the conflict after the attack on Belgium. Even then it took a fairly prolonged debate and several cabinet resignations before the government stood by its treaty commitment to Belgium.

As noted above German disarmament caused no problems for the stability and peace of Europe in the 20's. It was only when Germany started a new arms race in the 30's that the road to war began. Even then the main allied sin was in not acting earlier because too many had accepted the claims that Germany had been hard done by and its demands should be acceded to.

I'm also going to take issue with the idea that Germany was completely in the moral low ground. Germany did receive some bad press, and rightly, for some early atrocities, but the idea that the Allies were an army of angels out to liberate oppressed peoples or that the Allies never committed a single atrocity is completely false. Even the idea that German atrocities were markedly worse is sketchy in the extreme.

It wasn't completely in the moral high ground, but it was definitely lower than its opponents. Not as bad as the Ottomans perhaps, or the Soviets after the Russian revolution but there were repeated breaches of international law.

Steve