How would you have handled Versailles?

That's the obvious problem with designing any peace treaty. I'm working under the assumption that a less severe peace treaty in some aspects would both lighten Germany's grudge, and get France and Britain more interested in preserving peace at the barrel of a gun if necessary. It's why I've revised things like the Anschluss, to at least lower the chance of a revanchist Germany, even if it's a marginal change. You're right, in that if the will existed, there wouldn't be a need for it in the first place, but that's what this whole scenario is about, writing a better peace and hoping to god that all sides are willing to work it out.


Will any of the proposed changes be likely to prevent the Great Depression? It was that, not the ToV, whcih gave the Nazis their chance.
 

Hkelukka

Banned
The reason it has to be status before war is simple.

All 3 losing parties are facing civil war.

You dont want to stand in the middle.

You want your guys to not kill you either when the war is over.

Walk your occupation army to the enemy capital. Tell your boys to have a week off. Walk off with the treasury, culture ministery and all museum and precious artifacts you can find.

Take the disarmed enemys weapons and ships when you leave.

Tell them that since everyone is exhausted you consider the matter settled.

No one can really say what happens next, but considering that the all 3 losing parties that started the war, AH-Ger-Rus are in turmoil and collapsing, and France just walked away with the entire german army-navy-state treasury and anything else they cared to take with them. I dont see the french complaining as news of more german collapses pour in.

Italians will watch the a-h collapse titillated to no end watching their worst enemy just implode. They move in new state by new state as they gain new puppets from the rubbles of the old A-H

Uk will bail the war based on honor and how they carried the good fight and so on.

Politically, the winning move in Versailles is not to write Versailles. Just to sit back. Sometime in 1930 you'll have a unified germany with no allies and no stab in the back myth and a much more stable E-Europe. Sounds good to me.
 
The reason it has to be status before war is simple.

All 3 losing parties are facing civil war.

You dont want to stand in the middle.

You want your guys to not kill you either when the war is over.

Walk your occupation army to the enemy capital. Tell your boys to have a week off. Walk off with the treasury, culture ministery and all museum and precious artifacts you can find.

Take the disarmed enemys weapons and ships when you leave.

Tell them that since everyone is exhausted you consider the matter settled.

No one can really say what happens next, but considering that the all 3 losing parties that started the war, AH-Ger-Rus are in turmoil and collapsing, and France just walked away with the entire german army-navy-state treasury and anything else they cared to take with them. I dont see the french complaining as news of more german collapses pour in.

Italians will watch the a-h collapse titillated to no end watching their worst enemy just implode. They move in new state by new state as they gain new puppets from the rubbles of the old A-H

Uk will bail the war based on honor and how they carried the good fight and so on.

Politically, the winning move in Versailles is not to write Versailles. Just to sit back. Sometime in 1930 you'll have a unified germany with no allies and no stab in the back myth and a much more stable E-Europe. Sounds good to me.

The problem is that require a lot of hindsight
 
All right, this is my approach:

1. Germany abandons Alsace and the portion of Lorraine ceded by the Treaty of Frankfort in 1871.

2. Germany repays France the 5 million gold francs plus interest to 1914 paid to Germany after 1871. This goes to pay for physical damage done to the French and Belgian infrastructure.

3. Germany and Denmark do what they did in 1921: divide Schleswig-Holstein into three zones and hold plebiscites in the two northern zones to see to which country they belong.

4. Germany is allowed an army of 200,000 (100,000 active duty, 100,000 reserve) and is allowed defensive arms up to and including machine guns and cannon up to 75 mm caliber. Aircraft are to be unarmed and incapable of dropping bombs.

5. As Germany adheres to its Treaty obligations, Britain starts releasing ships of the High Seas Fleet back to Germany on a regular schedule. Germany is allowed ten light submarines, to be built as Germany adheres to Treaty obligations.

6. War guilt clauses are not included.

7. Poland is to have free access to the sea, but Germany keeps Danzig. Economic treaties bind the Polish and German economies together.

8. Austria is allowed a customs and economic, but not political union with Germany.

9. France and Germany to establish joint coal and steel economic communities to benefit both countries equally.
 
Will any of the proposed changes be likely to prevent the Great Depression? It was that, not the ToV, whcih gave the Nazis their chance.
Well, unless the Allies can repay the U.S, which isn't likely regardless of the terms imposed, the Great Depression is still likely. Though just minimizing the chances of the Nazis in other areas can prevent as huge a rise in popularity for them, enough that Hitler might not be able to seize power by whining alone.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Well, unless the Allies can repay the U.S, which isn't likely regardless of the terms imposed, the Great Depression is still likely. Though just minimizing the chances of the Nazis in other areas can prevent as huge a rise in popularity for them, enough that Hitler might not be able to seize power by whining alone.

This is true, but not the cause of the Great Depression. In WW1, the countries greatly expanded the money supply (300% to 1000% growth). When they tried to restore the old money system (i.e. greatly shrink the money supply), it trigger a depression. The USA was the last to enter the depression because it contracted the money supply last (the war bonds were coming due, and war bonds acted like currency). Now yes, if there reparations on the Germans would have paid off the USA war bonds, the USA and the USA alone might, just might have skipped a great depression.

In a big war paid for largely by expanding the money supply (printing currency, issuing huge amounts of bonds), almost always end up with either a default (contracting money supply) leading to severe recession or inflation which has it own set of problems. There are a few countries like the USA after the civil war and the UK after the Napoleonic wars that paid off the war debts and gradually reduced the money supply over decades, but those are the exception not the rule.
 
Wow.....

Certain elements of the OTL treaty (the colonies, Alsace-Lorraine, Eupen-Malmedy, disposal of the High Seas Fleet) are to be retained.

Break the southern German states off and unify them with Austria.

Give Silesia to Czechoslovakia, give both West and East Prussia to Poland (make the Poles give the Lithuanians Vilnius to slightly offset this).

Give the Danes the entirety of Schleswig.

Give the Dutch something too; East Frisia, perhaps.

Give the Saar to Luxembourg, along with any territory necessary to make it contiguous with the prewar Grand Duchy.

Occupy the Rhineland for long enough to dismantle a significant portion of its industry and ship it back to France and Belgium.

Heligoland goes to Britain.

Transfer of all German patents, as well as the German gold reserves.

British, French and American corporations granted majority shares in a wide range of German industrial concerns, particularly those which might produce anything that can be put to military use. This is set up so that each involved Entente corporation is given control of a set of companies, not so that the majority stake in each German company is divided among multiple corporations. Forbid any sale of shares in any of these companies to German investors for at least twenty or thirty years, except where such shares are explicitly stated to grant no voting rights whatsoever within the corporation.

Ban the Germans from establishing tariffs of any kind, except on such goods as the Entente nations might prefer to be able to purchase more cheaply from Germany.

The Germans are to put some number of their infantry divisions at the disposal of the Entente powers. These divisions will be used up as part of the intervention in the Russian Civil War. They will also be required to supply a certain number of divisions for the use of the League of Nations, each of which will be quartered outside of Germany for the duration of its service.

The German soldiers seconded to the League of Nations will be required to purchase all of their own equipment within Germany, in quantities and at prices to be set by Entente quartermasters. German armaments manufacturers will be required to provide said quantities at said prices.

In short (or not, I suppose), give every one of Germany's neighbors a stake in containing and suppressing it, cripple their economy in such a fashion as to make them little more than an exploitable appendage of the Entente, and send as much of their military as possible to die in Russia and any other place that the Big Three don't want to expend their own lives on.

If the Germans refuse these terms, continue the blockade until either they surrender or they completely disintegrate, whichever comes first.

I'm going to assume you're joking
 
Top