The First World War and the Treaty of Versailles
About two million German soldiers die, the Kaiser falls, and a punitive peace leaves a bitterness the Nazis would exploit.
- Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War — Margaret MacMillan, John Murray (2001)
- A History of Germany 1918–2014: The Divided Nation — Mary Fulbrook, Wiley-Blackwell (2015)
- The Coming of the Third Reich — Richard J. Evans, Penguin (2003)
Germany went to war in August 1914 expecting a short campaign. Instead came four years of trench warfare in which about two million German soldiers died, and a British naval blockade that brought hunger at home, remembered in the “turnip winter” of 1916–17.
- A History of Germany 1918–2014: The Divided Nation — Mary Fulbrook, Wiley-Blackwell (2015)
- The Coming of the Third Reich — Richard J. Evans, Penguin (2003)
By autumn 1918 the army was collapsing. Sailors mutinied, revolution spread, and on 9 November Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and a republic was proclaimed in Berlin. The armistice followed on 11 November.
- A History of Germany 1918–2014: The Divided Nation — Mary Fulbrook, Wiley-Blackwell (2015)
The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, took about an eighth of Germany’s territory, including Alsace-Lorraine and lands given to a revived Poland, limited the army to 100,000 men, and made Germany liable for reparations, later fixed at 132 billion gold marks. Article 231 assigned responsibility for war damage to Germany and its allies.
- Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War — Margaret MacMillan, John Murray (2001)
- The Coming of the Third Reich — Richard J. Evans, Penguin (2003)
- Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War — Margaret MacMillan, John Murray (2001)
Across the political spectrum Germans saw the treaty as a "Diktat", imposed without negotiation, and resented Article 231, which they read as blaming Germany alone for the war. The right spread the myth that the army had been "stabbed in the back" by socialists and Jews at home.
- Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War — Margaret MacMillan, John Murray (2001)
- The Coming of the Third Reich — Richard J. Evans, Penguin (2003)
France had lost more soldiers than any other Western ally, and its industrial north had been wrecked by the fighting. Clemenceau sought lasting security against a larger, more populous Germany; many French people thought the treaty too lenient, not too harsh.
- Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War — Margaret MacMillan, John Murray (2001)
- France and the Great War, 1914–1918 — Leonard V. Smith, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, Cambridge University Press (2003)
Most historians think the treaty was harsh but not crippling; Germany actually paid only part of the reparations. Margaret MacMillan argues that the failure to enforce or revise it, and the myths built around it, did more damage than its terms.
- Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War — Margaret MacMillan, John Murray (2001)
- A History of Germany 1918–2014: The Divided Nation — Mary Fulbrook, Wiley-Blackwell (2015)
Why it matters today
In Britain and France the Great War is the central war of memory; in Germany it is overshadowed by the Second. But the lessons drawn from Versailles still matter: postwar West Germany and its allies deliberately chose reconstruction and integration over punishment, and German leaders remain wary of peace settlements that humiliate a defeated nation.
For France, Versailles was meant to make sure 1.4 million dead had not died in vain: it returned Alsace-Lorraine and promised reparations for a devastated north. The failure to keep Germany in check afterwards is one reason postwar French leaders chose the opposite path, binding Germany into a shared Europe.