AHDB Treaty of Versailles

perfectgeneral

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AH Versailles Treaty Map 1919

I can see Wurttenberg gaining independence from France at some point. Maybe Wurttenberg, Bavaria and Austria would form a Southern German Confederate under Adolf in the 1930s??

VersaillesTreatyAH.JPG
 
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Be interested to know how you get that as every source I have seen show the Germans using chemical weapons 1st?

I am now going to describe a legal defense created by some Imperial jurist nearly a century ago. I read it about 20 years ago; any mistakes are likely mine:

1)A very literal interpretation of Hague 1899 Declaration II:

´The Contracting Powers agree to abstain from the use of projectiles the object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.´

Germany deployed Chlorine gas first, but only from gas tanks; the first side to use gas shells was the Entente. Yes, this happily ignores the spirit of the treaty ... but jurists were much more literal a century ago.

2)The Allies seem to have used ´deleterious gases´ before Germany readied Chlorine. Dates and locations for the following actions were given:

French troops used the tear gas stocks of the Paris PD against German troops without diluting it. This was much more dangerous stuff than modern tear gas; it could be easily lethal at high doses.

British troops used stink bombs to dislocate German troops from their improvised position and then shoot them.

Britain introduced a blockage of enemy nations as it was perfectly entitled to do during war. As the war continued this was tightened considerably and went further than many would have conceived before the war.

Naval Law before the Great War knew two different types of blockades: Loose ones and close ones.

A close one had no legal problems, it allowed stopping ships near their destination (like in the Napoleonic Wars), but was quite risky (mines etc.).

Britain went for a loose blockade (The loss of HMS Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue may have been a factor.), stopping ships at high sea.

But a nation was only allowed to install a loose blockade, if it was able to block all major ports of a nation with a close blockade. The RN was never able to enter the Baltic, and Germany happily traded with Scandinavia.

So a British loose Blockade would have been illegal under the pre-war rules, but British jurists started to discover new aspects of International law, while their German colleagues were much more conservative ... :D

Caveat: Naval Law is not my area of expertise.

Stopping and searching neutral ships creates major legal problems, to be polite.

I could also mention the shooting of civilian hostages in Belgium and the use of bombardment of civilian targets by land and sea.

I could also mention the illegal use of francs tireurs and the taking of civilian German hostages by French troops - admittedly not in WWI, but after WWII. It is difficult to shoot German hostages with a front line running through France.

I suppose Your bombardments by sea refer to the battlecruiser raids. These were primarily directed at defended harbours IIRC and quite legal. One hit an undefended harbour, but British pre-war planning defended it with artillery batteries in case of war. Knowing this, the Germans assumed it defended ... sorry about the mistake.

Please specify Your incidents of bombardment by land.

Also the suggested accord about not fighting outside Europe as never heard of that either.

I suppose it was Art 10 f. of the Congo Act 1885, which neutralized parts of Africa. Britain´s legal minds limited it to the Congo itself and certain areas close by, while Germany expanded it to encompass nearly all of Africa. I just read it, and IMHO the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Deutsch-Ostafrika was affected by said neutralization,even under the strict British definition, see Art. 1 § 3 of said act. The shelling of Daressalam by HMS Pegasus on August 8th, 1914 to destroy the radio station (a British warship shelling an undefended town - oops!) violated that treaty: The British re-defined said action as a purely naval matter ... a weak excuse.

Would be interested to know your sources for the comment about dumdum bullets.

My sources are the above-mentioned propaganda booklets I accidentally found as a young student. Comparing the British with the German ones was fun - but I digress.

I can locate them, but this would take some time. They are certainly not yet available on the net.

Do You really want to send this humble poster into the dusty cellars of Library II FB 09 FU Berlin? :eek:

The dumdum story listed lots of impartial German witnesses, of course.;)

It concentrated on the French 8 mm bullet design, esp. its latest version, that in their opinion only made sense as it was extremely easy to turn into a dumdum version. Germany allegedly captured lots of special devices looking like oversized pencil-sharpeners in Eastern France: Said devices had only one use according to the Germans, namely to turn 8mm bullets into dumdums en masse.

I tend to believe in a pre-dominant use of dumdums by the Entente, as Germany could not re-deploy its colonial troops to Europe, while the Entente used quite a few colonial units. A lot of Allies accustomed to using dumdums faced by Germans without such a tradition ... and now add the vicious Entente propaganda, de-humanizing the Hun.

By limits on soverignty I presume you mean the limits on the German forces the allies attempted to impose after 1919. Germany as the largest economic block and with a recent history of military aggression, needed to be limited for the allies to feel secure.

Yes, a unique new idea, but especially the little, mean-spirited stuff like forcing the police to retire its pistols and buy new ones with shorter barrels or forcing arms control laws onto German civilians ... because Prussian cops and Bavarian hunters were going to start a war.

This trend continued in later treaties, Germany had to forbid THC-spiced cigarettes to get US credits to pay reparations. It got nearly no radio frequencies in later international conferences etc etc. etc. . Pity revenge, that did nothing but enrage Germans.

I suppose we have to agree to disagree about a history of agression.:D

Both sides acted brutally during the conflict yes. It was mainly the central powers that acted brutally and illegally from the start.

My impression about the legalities of WWI is different, but my user name betrays my Teutonic heritage:

The Germans tried to keep the letter of a law while happily violating its spirit (Legal justifications e.g. for invading Belgium were clearly written by very competent jurists, and are in some ways quite clever, but they only give a fig-leaf.)

The Brits gave priority to winning the war and simply ignored legalities, esp. on sea.

Sorry about the lenght of my post.
 
I can see Wurttenberg gaining independence from France at some point. Maybe Wurttenberg, Bavaria and Austria would form a Southern German Confederate under Adolf in the 1930s??

Interesting, but what's to stop Prussia from strong-arming Bavaria and Hanover around? If the consensus is to partition Germany as a part of our Treaty, I think Prussia would have to be cut down to a point where the Allies, namely the French, would no longer see it as a threat. Separating it from Hanover, Bavaria, and Wurttenburg is a good start, but I do wonder how long that that would last.

As far as the map itself goes, I can see the British taking Hanover under its wing and keeping it as a protectorate, at least in the naval sense. I could also imagine Bavaria allying itself with Austria more if it feels too cut off from or threatened by Prussia. The French would probably allow Wurttenburg independence eventually, especially once the flames of WWI have died down, but perhaps they keep it so that it remains dependent economically?

An idea could be combining the Baltic states into some sort of confederation. I don't know if there was any support for that at the time, but such a bulwark may be exactly that--a bulwark against the perceived dangers of the Bolsheviks, at least for the Poles.

Along those lines, do we still think it's necessary for the OE to be split up? I'm sure some of the Allies would have loved to see its power cut off at the knees, but there could be interesting ramifications if the OE was allowed to stay in control of more territory than it was OTL.

Noting an earlier discussion about the Austrians keeping Trieste, do people think that that is viable? Done right, I think that an Austria that finds itself able to be a local or regional power in Europe would be less-inclined to support an Anschluss, especially if the German Empire was split up into its constituent parts.
 
I am now going to describe a legal defense created by some Imperial jurist nearly a century ago. I read it about 20 years ago; any mistakes are likely mine:

1)A very literal interpretation of Hague 1899 Declaration II:

´The Contracting Powers agree to abstain from the use of projectiles the object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.´

Germany deployed Chlorine gas first, but only from gas tanks; the first side to use gas shells was the Entente. Yes, this happily ignores the spirit of the treaty ... but jurists were much more literal a century ago.

2)The Allies seem to have used ´deleterious gases´ before Germany readied Chlorine. Dates and locations for the following actions were given:

French troops used the tear gas stocks of the Paris PD against German troops without diluting it. This was much more dangerous stuff than modern tear gas; it could be easily lethal at high doses.

British troops used stink bombs to dislocate German troops from their improvised position and then shoot them.



Naval Law before the Great War knew two different types of blockades: Loose ones and close ones.

A close one had no legal problems, it allowed stopping ships near their destination (like in the Napoleonic Wars), but was quite risky (mines etc.).

Britain went for a loose blockade (The loss of HMS Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue may have been a factor.), stopping ships at high sea.

But a nation was only allowed to install a loose blockade, if it was able to block all major ports of a nation with a close blockade. The RN was never able to enter the Baltic, and Germany happily traded with Scandinavia.

So a British loose Blockade would have been illegal under the pre-war rules, but British jurists started to discover new aspects of International law, while their German colleagues were much more conservative ... :D

Caveat: Naval Law is not my area of expertise.

Stopping and searching neutral ships creates major legal problems, to be polite.



I could also mention the illegal use of francs tireurs and the taking of civilian German hostages by French troops - admittedly not in WWI, but after WWII. It is difficult to shoot German hostages with a front line running through France.

I suppose Your bombardments by sea refer to the battlecruiser raids. These were primarily directed at defended harbours IIRC and quite legal. One hit an undefended harbour, but British pre-war planning defended it with artillery batteries in case of war. Knowing this, the Germans assumed it defended ... sorry about the mistake.

Please specify Your incidents of bombardment by land.



I suppose it was Art 10 f. of the Congo Act 1885, which neutralized parts of Africa. Britain´s legal minds limited it to the Congo itself and certain areas close by, while Germany expanded it to encompass nearly all of Africa. I just read it, and IMHO the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Deutsch-Ostafrika was affected by said neutralization,even under the strict British definition, see Art. 1 § 3 of said act. The shelling of Daressalam by HMS Pegasus on August 8th, 1914 to destroy the radio station (a British warship shelling an undefended town - oops!) violated that treaty: The British re-defined said action as a purely naval matter ... a weak excuse.



My sources are the above-mentioned propaganda booklets I accidentally found as a young student. Comparing the British with the German ones was fun - but I digress.

I can locate them, but this would take some time. They are certainly not yet available on the net.

Do You really want to send this humble poster into the dusty cellars of Library II FB 09 FU Berlin? :eek:

The dumdum story listed lots of impartial German witnesses, of course.;)

It concentrated on the French 8 mm bullet design, esp. its latest version, that in their opinion only made sense as it was extremely easy to turn into a dumdum version. Germany allegedly captured lots of special devices looking like oversized pencil-sharpeners in Eastern France: Said devices had only one use according to the Germans, namely to turn 8mm bullets into dumdums en masse.

I tend to believe in a pre-dominant use of dumdums by the Entente, as Germany could not re-deploy its colonial troops to Europe, while the Entente used quite a few colonial units. A lot of Allies accustomed to using dumdums faced by Germans without such a tradition ... and now add the vicious Entente propaganda, de-humanizing the Hun.



Yes, a unique new idea, but especially the little, mean-spirited stuff like forcing the police to retire its pistols and buy new ones with shorter barrels or forcing arms control laws onto German civilians ... because Prussian cops and Bavarian hunters were going to start a war.

This trend continued in later treaties, Germany had to forbid THC-spiced cigarettes to get US credits to pay reparations. It got nearly no radio frequencies in later international conferences etc etc. etc. . Pity revenge, that did nothing but enrage Germans.

I suppose we have to agree to disagree about a history of agression.:D



My impression about the legalities of WWI is different, but my user name betrays my Teutonic heritage:

The Germans tried to keep the letter of a law while happily violating its spirit (Legal justifications e.g. for invading Belgium were clearly written by very competent jurists, and are in some ways quite clever, but they only give a fig-leaf.)

The Brits gave priority to winning the war and simply ignored legalities, esp. on sea.

Sorry about the lenght of my post.

dummnutzer

No problem with the length. [You should see some of mine!;)] Sorry about the late reply but I was tired yesterday and only checked my subscribed threads.

Interesting the point you make about the extreme legalistic stance of Germany on some of those issues. Reminds me of reading that Hitler insisted on continuing paying royalties on mechanism used under licence from Britain during WWII.

A number of the things you mentioned I've never heard of. Would be useful to find out more. Will point out you do say that you saw a lot about them on propaganda leaflets. Know both sides did a lot of that in WWI.

Not a great historian of naval law but 1st time I've heard of that limitation on a distant blockage. The decision to go for a distant rather than a close blockage was taken a few years before WWI started as the RN began to realise the dangers of trying a close blockage under such circumstances. [Primarily using Robert Massie's excellent 'Castles of Steel' as my source here]. The foul-up in using the elderly armoured cruisers for the patrol in the south was largely inertia - 'we've always patrolled that area' and the fact of modern DDs that could keep with them in rough weather. Ironically Beatty and Churchill of all people got the decision reversed but unfortunately not in time.

On the bombardments I have read that the Germans thought the coastal towns had protected batteries but they didn't. On land bombardment my mental aberration, in that I meant air bombardment, i.e. the zeppelin and later bomber attacks on civilian targets in Britain. [Not sure if any took place in France or whether the primary target was Britain because otherwise it was seen as beyond German reach].

On the francs tireurs from what I have read the Germans were very concerned about this possibly occurring during the invasion of Belgium and shot a lot of civilian, including hostages I believe although a few years since I read up on this. Most such cases are thought to have been cases where German troops heard firing in the distance, probably from other German units and thought they were under fire themselves and blamed locals.

What's THC? [Presuming some local tobacco equivalent?] Not heard that about the Americans but they did tend to impose a hell of a lot of restrictions on their loans. [The reason why Britain was the main source of funds for the allies until its ability to do was largely exhausted from about late 1917 onwards].

Steve
 

JJohnson

Banned
- France should get the Rhine border
- Poland should get all of Silesia, East Prussia,Posen and Danzig
- An independent state of Croats and Slovenes, comprising all the Slovene lands except the littoral which have sea access and Croatia-Slavonia
- Serbia would annex Bosnia and Herzegovina.
-Italy would get all the Austria Littoral and Trentino but not South Tyrol.
- A referendum would be held in Montenegro, on the union with Serbia.
- Bulgaria would lose territory as in OTL
- Hungary as OTL but with Hungarian Ruthenia.

I would say a just peace after WWI would be for Germany to sue for peace before 1918, and acknowledge its role in the war, but still maintain Serbs were the main cuplrit. Poland would not get German land, but would get port rights in Danzig. Germany would retain its borders except Alsace-Lorraine, and the Polish population in the east could either leave for a reconstituted Poland or remain in Germany and Germanize. The Germans would pay some reparations to the aggrieved parties, but nothing so excessive that it would spiral into an other world war like OTL.

James
 

JJohnson

Banned
Nice, but that wont work, I fear. The Czechs dearly want independance, and as a poster child for how A-H was a "prison of the nations" in the public perception theyll have to get it... also, that Polish-Lithuanian/Soviet border would depend on any war outcome between P-L and the USSR. And the Lithuanians didnt really want any union with Poland...

And even if it did work, that world would still have some problems:
The Corridor problem will still be there, just now the other way round. after all, there are some Poles living there. Same for Upper Silesia - while it was quite nasty that IOTL France and Poland simply disregarded a plebiscite won by Germany and even used force of arms to try to conquer it, the split then imposed by France was actually more or less according to ethnic lines. And if Romania gains only Transylvania and not whats beyond it, then therell still be quite many Romanians inside Hungary - and still the Transylvania Hungarians and Germans inside Romania...

Just move the Poles out of Germany and into the new Poland. No need to sacrifice Posen. I'd say leave Germany like this:

Germany_extra-laender.png
 
Reminds me of reading that Hitler insisted on continuing paying royalties on mechanism used under licence from Britain during WWII.

Krupp was saved from bankruptcy after WW I by British patent payments for the Krupp Patent Detonator (TM) used in British shells.

Will point out you do say that you saw a lot about them on propaganda leaflets.

Yes, but we often accept old Allied propaganda as the truth without thinking about it: A few years ago, a new Canadian school book used stills from a propaganda movie (Huns bayoneting a nun, who is nailed to a barn door) as a historical photo. An honest mistake, but it perpetuates a somewhat unrealistic image ... Audiatur et altera pars, as we say in Germany.

On land bombardment my mental aberration, in that I meant air bombardment, i.e. the zeppelin and later bomber attacks on civilian targets in Britain.

One might argue that the Paris Gun was an illegal terror weapon, see e.g.

http://www.firstworldwar.com/atoz/parisgun.htm

Air bombardments seem to have started early in the war in Western Germany/ Eastern France, but both sides claim that the other side started attacks on civilian targets while they only retaliated ... usual propaganda.

Italy was the first nation to attack a marked hospital by air (in 1913 IIRC), and they joined the Entente. This clearly proves the criminal character of said group ... or maybe not.

On the francs tireurs from what I have read the Germans were very concerned about this possibly occurring during the invasion of Belgium and shot a lot of civilian, including hostages

Modern literature of the last decade is much more critical of the German behavior in Belgium. It likely comes as no surprise that I have massive problems with the approach used; but this would be enough stuff for another thread.
 
Just move the Poles out of Germany and into the new Poland. No need to sacrifice Posen.
Yes, there's nothing better than ethnic cleansing. Especially of people who were living in the mentioned territory for the last millenium.
 

Susano

Banned
Just move the Poles out of Germany and into the new Poland. No need to sacrifice Posen. I'd say leave Germany like this:

Germany_extra-laender.png

Ethnic cleansing... works (see Greece-Turkey), but it shouldnt be done. Neither with Germans, nor Poles. Ethnic cleansing is a crime.
Nice map, btw, though without the IOTL occupation zones after WW2 the states would look different.
One day Hesse will gain back Mainz and the lost Nassovian territories from Rhineland-Palatinate!
 
Ethnic cleansing... works (see Greece-Turkey), but it shouldnt be done. Neither with Germans, nor Poles. Ethnic cleansing is a crime.
Nice map, btw, though without the IOTL occupation zones after WW2 the states would look different.
One day Hesse will gain back Mainz and the lost Nassovian territories from Rhineland-Palatinate!
Altough Nordschleswig should probably go to Denmark... I mean, even Hitler seemed to think that Denmark having it was okay, so...
 

Susano

Banned
Altough Nordschleswig should probably go to Denmark... I mean, even Hitler seemed to think that Denmark having it was okay, so...

Hitler simply didnt bother. Even Alsace-Lorraine wasnt formally re-annexed, it just came under German administrtaion. Hitler was just far too fixated on the East to have any opinion on it at all, Id say.

But largely, I agree. Some really minor border correctrues are in order - after all, they let North Schleswig vote in bloc so that teh German minority there could be overturned. But largely, the area did vote to join Denmark, so, yeah, it should be Danish.
 

perfectgeneral

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Monthly Donor
Re: Ethnic Cleansing

I was under the impression that EC involved as much killing as moving of a racial group from an area? Anyway I shall post the racial maps I have for around this time.

races1911to1914AustroHungary.GIF
 

perfectgeneral

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Monthly Donor
Looking back on my Treaty map I can see that Poland and Slovakia owe Ukraine some land and population up to about the Rumania/Hungary border along that river that runs into the Vistula. I'll check through the base maps for it and see if I can find the path of the river marked anywhere to scale. The Oder would make a good natural border too, I think.
 
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