Yet Another Treaty of Versailles Thread

[NoMommsen]

Too harsh ... not harsh enough ...
IMHO - as already stated ... numerous (short of uncountable) times before :

you need someone with the will as well as the means to enforce it​

how long and how much effort in finance, economy, sweat and especially blood it ever might need​

and if you can't deliver a POD that ensures this for ... 15 years post-signature of whatever treaty, discussions about such a treaty are rather - though maybe unfortunatly - vain.

 

[Palantir]

Would transferring most of the Entente war debts to Germany force the US and UK involvement post-war ?
As a plus, those debts are in $ and £, so Germany won't be able to cheat as much as OTL.

 

[Magnificate]

Poland had free trade through Germany in OTL, for as long as the western powers enforced it. When that ended, Weimar Germany began its economic war against Poland. In this TL, Poland basically has no option. The moment French and British interest (and it must be BOTH - one alone can't cut it) wanders Poland becomes a German satellite state.

Exactly. It's extremely easy for Germany to threaten Poland, such as:
- "If you do not institute such and such tariffs we'll have our railway and dock workers strike."
- "In the spirit of friendship we'll be modernizing the railway connection and doing some infrastructure projects on the mouth of the Vistula. It'll take us ten years."
- "You Poles violated the terms of our agreement! We'll of course be willing to arbitrate, but it'll take some time, won't it? Hey, Britain, wonna help us keep these guys in line?"

Without the Corridor Poland falls into German orbit, which leaves Germany even stronger than before the war.

 

[Garrison]

Would Germany be able to win? No, never, not in the slightest, at that point they were utterly doomed. What I argue was that there wasn't the will among the Entente powers to continue the war to force Germany into total surrender, If the Germans refused a treaty as harsh as the French right wanted (not rejecting it would be political and possible actual suicide for whoever in the German government did so) there would be no interest from the Americans or British to resume fighting for something that they didn't even want in the first place (as I have stated before both wanted a reasonably strong Germany to counterbalance France and Russia on the continent and to act as a large market to sell to). France might not even have the stomach to do so. The treaty could only be so harsh before the Germans wouldn't accept. And the German army, though decimated and defeated, was still capable of putting up a desperate fighting retreat and a possible holding of the Rhine, especially if they believed they were fighting for the survival of their nation. It would be a slower version of what happened in the west in 1944 and 1945, which the soldiers wouldn't want and may mutiny.

I did my best to nip the stabbed in the back myth in the bud by removing the largest source of it, Ludendorff.

After the Armistice the German army was in position to put up a fight, that was the point of the Armistice terms, to ensure the Germans couldn't do what your suggesting and change their minds. There isn't going to be a fighting retreat to the Rhine when the Entente are already there as per the following:

Among its 34 clauses, the armistice contained the following major points:

A. Western Front

• Termination of hostilities on the Western Front, on land and in the air, within six hours of signature
• Immediate evacuation of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Alsace-Lorraine within 15 days. Sick and wounded may be left for Allies to care for.
• Immediate repatriation of all inhabitants of those four territories in German hands.
• Surrender of matériel: 5,000 artillery pieces, 25,000 machine guns, 3,000 minenwerfers, 1,700 aircraft (including all night bombers), 5,000 railway locomotives, 150,000 railway carriages and 5,000 road trucks.
• Evacuation of territory on the west side of the Rhine plus 30 km (19 mi) radius bridgeheads of the east side of the Rhine at the cities of Mainz, Koblenz, and Cologne within 31 days.
• Vacated territory to be occupied by Allied troops, maintained at Germany's expense.
• No removal or destruction of civilian goods or inhabitants in evacuated territories and all military matériel and premises to be left intact.
• All minefields on land and sea to be identified.
• All means of communication (roads, railways, canals, bridges, telegraphs, telephones) to be left intact, as well as everything needed for agriculture and industry.

Taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_of_11_November_1918#Terms

So either the Germans are playing ball and the Entente is on the Rhine or they don't and the outraged Entente resumes action. There is a very big difference between the Entente wanting to see the war end and being willing to let the Germans renege on the terms of the Armistice and prepare for round two.

 

[TheSaphireDragon]

Where is the incentive for Germany to abide by its terms if it will not be enforced?

The economic benefits of peace are often underrated and people don't usually want to go fight and die unless they are stirred up.

 

[TheSaphireDragon]

Exactly. It's extremely easy for Germany to threaten Poland, such as:
- "If you do not institute such and such tariffs we'll have our railway and dock workers strike."
- "In the spirit of friendship we'll be modernizing the railway connection and doing some infrastructure projects on the mouth of the Vistula. It'll take us ten years."
- "You Poles violated the terms of our agreement! We'll of course be willing to arbitrate, but it'll take some time, won't it? Hey, Britain, wonna help us keep these guys in line?"

Without the Corridor Poland falls into German orbit, which leaves Germany even stronger than before the war.

Poland would be doomed to orbit another nation. The Polish people occupied too little land to maintain such sovereignty on their own, and the more people you add of other nationalities into Poland, the more unstable it becomes. Even now Poland remains tried to one of its larger neighbors (previously Russia, now Germany). I simply propose that a democratic Germany, one less resentful towards Poland, will be less likely to infringe on that sovereignty than the Russians. Poland would likely end up economically reliant on the Germans.

 

[DracoLazarus]

Would transferring most of the Entente war debts to Germany force the US and UK involvement post-war ?
As a plus, those debts are in $ and £, so Germany won't be able to cheat as much as OTL.

It would certainly allow France and Belgium to focus on the important stuff : rebuilding themselves, instead of securing German money to pay their war debts and rebuild.

 

[TheSaphireDragon]

After the Armistice the German army was in position to put up a fight, that was the point of the Armistice terms, to ensure the Germans couldn't do what your suggesting and change their minds. There isn't going to be a fighting retreat to the Rhine when the Entente are already there as per the following:

Taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_of_11_November_1918#Terms

So either the Germans are playing ball and the Entente is on the Rhine or they don't and the outraged Entente resumes action. There is a very big difference between the Entente wanting to see the war end and being willing to let the Germans renege on the terms of the Armistice and prepare for round two.

except the entente wouldn't be willing to invade for harsher terms. The Germans surrendered, and were willing to accept most anything the Entente through at them. Only France and Belgium were interested in a draconian treaty, the other powers wanted to maintain Germany as a counterbalance, and as such wouldn't support the French in any such push. The French could beat the Germans, but only if they had the will to, and I doubt the French soldiers would be interested in continuing the fight after believing the war to be over.

 

[TheSaphireDragon]

But you are proposing a treaty whereby Germany is made the premier power of Europe and that's something that most certainly will be bad in the eyes of the Entente, the people who are crafting this treaty. No-one then was thinking about the rise of extremism in Germany. The left-wing uprisings had been firmly quashed after the Kaiser was overthrown and Germany wasn't some barbarous place like the Ottoman Empire or Russia - it was Germany one of the leading lights of European civilization, home to multiple beacons of the Enlightenment, birthplace of many of the great thinkers that had defined western civilization, THE place to do cutting edge chemistry (in this era German was the language of the chemical sciences), one of the most tolerant places for Jews - the idea that Germany would in a little more than a decade end up a dictatorship under a rabidly anti-science, anti-reason, anti-Semitic expansionist was not something they saw coming.

The treaty is made with more foresight, with a modern understanding of how extremism rises. The treaty of OTL was the only one that could really happen with some minor variation. But the whole point of Alternate history is to tweak something in a way that didn't happen and often wouldn't happen. And I disagree about Germany being made the premier power in Europe especially with the Proto EU (similar to the European coal and steel community of OTL) allowing the other nations of Europe to benefit freely from the German economy.

 

[TheSaphireDragon]

And as it happens, I don't think the Versailles treaty itself was responsible for any of the major economic and political difficulties of the post-war world. Far more important for encouraging the rise of the Nazis and generally fostering grumpiness between nations was the failure of the victorious powers - especially the UK (and the US, but their failure to commit to what their negotiators had agreed in the treaty is understandable given the way Wilson had over-reached his legal authority as president) - to abide by the untertakings they'd made in the treaty they'd written. Any treaty that doesn't somehow address the reasons that the British and Americans threw the treaty into the dustbin as soon as they possibly could is, in my view, doomed to a poor write-up in the history books. Unfortunately, I don't think the treaty itself can address the issues that made the UK and US so faithless - WW1 left such a mess that the restructuring of the world would take sustained commitment and both countries had strong traditions of keeping their foreign entanglements brief. It's hard to see that changing without these countries facing a serious failure of their traditional approach. If one avoided Wilson and Lloyd George as leaders, one might avoid Britain's self-destructive Francophobia in the immediate post-war years and gotten more Senate and Congress involvement in the drafting of the treaty (hopefully leading to a treaty the US actually signs) but both of those things change more than just the Versailles treaty, and it doesn't necessarily mean the final treaty is overall more favourable to Germany.

Yes, which is why I wanted to make a stable, democratic Germany, which would significantly decrease the chances of it showing such aggression as OTL. If the treaty could repair Franco-German relations than it could prevent war between them. I am unsure if that would be possible but the Proto EU would be the best chance of it, just as it helped OTL. And both nations pride must be allowed to remain intact to prevent revanchism like in 1871 and OTL interwar Germany.

 

[Magnificate]

I simply propose that a democratic Germany, one less resentful towards Poland, will be less likely to infringe on that sovereignty than the Russians.

Won’t work, not with the attitudes of the time. No matter how democratic the Germans will consider the Poles to be upstart opportunists unable to run their own country properly. To use an example see Stresemann’s standpoint on Poland.

Now, it might be inevitable for Poland to orbit another nation, but if the treaty author’s job to prevent that nation being Germany.

 

[Tibi088]

The problem of Versailles and any post WWI settlement is the following:
1. Germany was an absolute beast in every sense. Population, economy and technical development all made it the only candidate for hegemony of the continent.
2. In the war Brittain, France and Russia were not enough to beat it - it also needed the USA.
3. After the war Germany was beaten, but Russia was out, the USA retired from the continent and the british didnt want an active role either.
4. This left France and small states to contain Germany. A Germany that had still much more population and potentially stronger economy than France. In the long run it was bound to outgrow it again - as it did OTL.

If Germany doesnt loose more territory it cant be contained by France in the long run.

The best option seems to be giving the Rhineland to France. That might be economically viable and it does even the populations. However that would have left France with a german minority of 5-6 million in the age of ultranatisonalism - completly unreliable and in need of constant military presence. It would likely also loose any goodwill France had from London and Washington. Its still your best bet but I still dont think thats a recipe for success.

 

[Mikestone8]

Too harsh ... not harsh enough ...
IMHO - as already stated ... numerous (short of uncountable) times before :

you need someone with the will as well as the means to enforce it​

​

You need more than "someone". You need a whole electorate.​

Keep in mind that even the 1923 occupation of the Ruhr was followed, despite its success, by the fall of the French government which had carried it out In the aftermath of WW1, a war-weary populace didn't want to know.​

​

Thus it's futile to say things like, "If only Churchill had been PM instead of Chamberlain." Given the public mood at the time, he could never have got in, and had he somehow got in and taken a hard line against Germany, he would have fallen. The country (and all this applies at least equally to France) simply wasn't ready for such a course, and wouldn't be until Hitler himself had demonstrated, by tearing up the Munich Pact six months after signing it, that he just couldn't be dealt with by peaceful means. Paradoxically, Churchill's later success was in large part due to Chamberlain, who had prepared the way by trying the search for a peaceful solution, and testing it to destruction. Everyone knew that had a peaceful solution been possible, Mr Chamberlain would have found it.​

​

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how long and how much effort in finance, economy, sweat and especially blood it ever might need

and if you can't deliver a POD that ensures this for ... 15 years post-signature of whatever treaty, discussions about such a treaty are rather - though maybe unfortunatly - vain.

Quite - and it's very hard to see a way out.

In 1919, the bitterness against Germany virtually ensured a hard peace at the time - but the general war-weariness ensured that in the slightly longer run, the will to enforce it would be lacking. So, almost inevitably, they ended up with the worst of both worlds - a hard peace that went unenforced.

 

[Palantir]

The problem of Versailles and any post WWI settlement is the following:
1. Germany was an absolute beast in every sense. Population, economy and technical development all made it the only candidate for hegemony of the continent.
2. In the war Britain, France and Russia were not enough to beat it - it also needed the USA.
3. After the war Germany was beaten, but Russia was out, the USA retired from the continent and the British didn't want an active role either.
4. This left France and small states to contain Germany. A Germany that had still much more population and potentially stronger economy than France. In the long run it was bound to outgrow it again - as it did OTL.

You forgot things in your list (and almost all commentators on the thread also) :
5. Germany has thoroughly pillaged Northern France and Belgium during the war (an other occupied territories in the East). To that you need to add the destruction of the war from the fighting and the sabotages during the German retreat (like flooding coal mines). Note that some land in the "Zone Rouge" still cannot be used as farmland, more than a 100 years after the fighting.
6. Germany industry was left totally untouched. They collapsed to the blockade, so when it ends, Germany can theoretically resume full production.

Yes, which is why I wanted to make a stable, democratic Germany, which would significantly decrease the chances of it showing such aggression as OTL. If the treaty could repair Franco-German relations than it could prevent war between them. I am unsure if that would be possible but the Proto EU would be the best chance of it, just as it helped OTL. And both nations pride must be allowed to remain intact to prevent revanchism like in 1871 and OTL interwar Germany.

Except democracy isn't an incantation, you need to build it from the ground up. And it takes time, like 20 to 30 years.
Note that Weimar Germany was reasonably stable between 1924 and 1929. But it was all wrecked by the Great Depression, thing most people tend to forget.

German Revanchism began the second the Armistice was signed, when the German High Command began to promote the "stab in the back" myth. They couldn't accept that they lost, after coming so close to victory in their 1918 spring offensive.

As for a proto EU, it's a mirage. I'm aware that some tried to created it in the inter-war period, but you don't have any of the conditions to form something like.
If you look at OTL's EU history, it was created as an alliance of equals, with the 2 biggest countries, France and West Germany, having basically the same size economically and demographically. It was latter reinforced when Italy cached up economically and when the UK joined, making the 4 biggest essentially equal in size. (You can also note that part of today's problem come from the divergence between the big 4).
Here, with your plan, you creating the conditions for Germany becoming the Hegemon in the proposed EU and Europe. And France won't accept to become a German puppet.

 

[DracoLazarus]

As for a proto EU, it's a mirage. I'm aware that some tried to created it in the inter-war period, but you don't have any of the conditions to form something like.
If you look at OTL's EU history, it was created as an alliance of equals, with the 2 biggest countries, France and West Germany, having basically the same size economically and demographically. It was latter reinforced when Italy cached up economically and when the UK joined, making the 4 biggest essentially equal in size. (You can also note that part of today's problem come from the divergence between the big 4).
Here, with your plan, you creating the conditions for Germany becoming the Hegemon in the proposed EU and Europe. And France won't accept to become a German puppet.

I think the best weapon France can have against Germany - although it can only use it once - is completely stopping iron ore exports, because Germany was so dependent on French iron ores even with the Thionville mines the German Empire still imported ores from Briey-Longwy.
And because changing ore composition isn't cheap.

 

[Garrison]

except the entente wouldn't be willing to invade for harsher terms. The Germans surrendered, and were willing to accept most anything the Entente through at them. Only France and Belgium were interested in a draconian treaty, the other powers wanted to maintain Germany as a counterbalance, and as such wouldn't support the French in any such push. The French could beat the Germans, but only if they had the will to, and I doubt the French soldiers would be interested in continuing the fight after believing the war to be over.

Yes you've rather missed the point which is that your claim that the Entente would have to fight its way to the Rhine is nonsense. If the Germans accept the Armistice terms, which again they have little choice but to do, the Entente is already over the Rhine and the German army is stripped of the means to fight on. If the Germans reject the Armistice terms then fighting will go on until Germany collapses into revolution and comes begging for peace on even worse terms. And likewise your claim that the other powers wanted to maintain Germany is supported by nothing I've read on the subject of the Armistice or the ToV..

 

[fasquardon]

Yes, which is why I wanted to make a stable, democratic Germany, which would significantly decrease the chances of it showing such aggression as OTL. If the treaty could repair Franco-German relations than it could prevent war between them. I am unsure if that would be possible but the Proto EU would be the best chance of it, just as it helped OTL. And both nations pride must be allowed to remain intact to prevent revanchism like in 1871 and OTL interwar Germany.

The problem is, the Versailles treaty makers can't make a stable, democratic Germany. It is the Germans themselves who have the lions share of the power here. Yes, external events had some impact on German politics. But all have far less influence than how the people inside Germany choose to act and react. And as I have repeatedly noted, your alternate treaty does very little about the things that really had the German right riled up.

And the OTL EU was founded in very, very different circumstances to this German hegemony. After OTL's WW2, Germany had been bombed to rubble and then thoroughly looted, millions of her citizens had died and millions more were cordoned off in the Soviet zone. And WW2 was the complete humiliation of Anglo-American isolationism. After WW2, both countries kept troops on the continent and very quickly committed to a new and very long-term alliance and all of the victorious allies (even the Soviets, who didn't commit fully to this) gave up some of their sovereignty to international bodies like the UN, IMF, GATT etc.

I simply propose that a democratic Germany, one less resentful towards Poland, will be less likely to infringe on that sovereignty than the Russians. Poland would likely end up economically reliant on the Germans.

Unfortunately, anti-Polish racism is pretty strong in this era. And while Germany will resent Poland less, they have so much more power that the lesser resentment can still lead to much, much greater damage.

except the entente wouldn't be willing to invade for harsher terms. The Germans surrendered, and were willing to accept most anything the Entente through at them. Only France and Belgium were interested in a draconian treaty, the other powers wanted to maintain Germany as a counterbalance, and as such wouldn't support the French in any such push. The French could beat the Germans, but only if they had the will to, and I doubt the French soldiers would be interested in continuing the fight after believing the war to be over.

I don't think you understand how thoroughly Germany had been defeated... And how strong anti-German feeling was in 1919. If WW1 had re-started due to Germany rejecting the treaty, I am pretty sure the Entente would have been able to pause their demobilization programs long enough to flatten the German army.

The treaty is made with more foresight, with a modern understanding of how extremism rises.

Keep in mind, the dominant model for how extremism rises in this era was Napoleon, who followed a very different path to power to Hitler. If you want to beam knowledge of how Hitler rose to power into the brains of the treaty signers, you've posted this to the wrong part of the forum.

(Also, I don't think knowledge of Hitler's rise would have made the treaty-writers produce a treaty like the one you've posted - probably they'd come out with something much more like the post WW2 settlement, which is remembered as a merciful peace because of some very vigorous propaganda and the Cold War soon derailing the Allied plans for Germany.)

And, even with more foresight, the people writing this treaty are still the 1919 representatives of the 1919 victorious powers...

But the whole point of Alternate history is to tweak something in a way that didn't happen and often wouldn't happen.

If you ignore the context of the events or people you're changing, that's not alternate history. If you don't want to engage with the actual culture, personalities and politics of the Versailles conference or the culture and politics of Germany, what do we have to discuss?

fasquardon

 

[Cubert]

The economic benefits of peace are often underrated and people don't usually want to go fight and die unless they are stirred up.

There is no incentive for Germany to not secretly violate the arms restrictions or truly disband their General Staff (things which were not done in OTL either). With the influence of the General Staff I'd argue even a democratic Germany would eventually march towards conflict, especially since they've been allowed to annex Austria which provides for immediate leverage against the Czechs as Anschluss did OTL. They also now have vast influence over Poland, so what this treaty essentially does is allow Germany to dominate all of Central Europe and much of the Balkans, then in a decade or two simply walk over the French who no longer have the means to resist.

 

[fasquardon]

There is no incentive for Germany to not secretly violate the arms restrictions or truly disband their General Staff (things which were not done in OTL either). With the influence of the General Staff I'd argue even a democratic Germany would eventually march towards conflict, especially since they've been allowed to annex Austria which provides for immediate leverage against the Czechs as Anschluss did OTL. They also now have vast influence over Poland, so what this treaty essentially does is allow Germany to dominate all of Central Europe and much of the Balkans, then in a decade or two simply walk over the French who no longer have the means to resist.

If I were the French I wouldn't even be contesting it. Clearly in this TL the UK and US have written off the European continent and are making it Germany's problem. The best chance for France here is to be Germany's lieutenant (something that was being discussed in French politics by certain people in what one might call "the reformist right", most of whom would go on to have prominent careers in Vichy France). It is the UK that needs to worry about rising German assertiveness IMO.

fasquardon

 

[cjc]

There is no incentive for Germany to not secretly violate the arms restrictions or truly disband their General Staff (things which were not done in OTL either). With the influence of the General Staff I'd argue even a democratic Germany would eventually march towards conflict, especially since they've been allowed to annex Austria which provides for immediate leverage against the Czechs as Anschluss did OTL. They also now have vast influence over Poland, so what this treaty essentially does is allow Germany to dominate all of Central Europe and much of the Balkans, then in a decade or two simply walk over the French who no longer have the means to resist.

Problem being that that was already the case in OTL, germany simply by existing, combined whith nationalism (which all the other countries at Versailles had in spades) that that was always going to happen sense non of the allies have the will or the mines to completely subjugate Germany. So wouldn't it be better to actually fix Europes security issues instead of gust punishing Germany when they can't really enforce it.