The treaty of Versailles was too Harsh, Do you agree

Ananya Sharma
‘The Treaty of Versailles’ was too harsh.
Do you agree?
In some ways the Treaty of Versailles was Too Harsh on Germany and in many ways it was also fair. Some historians also argue that the Treaty of Versailles was in fact too lenient.

The Treaty was too harsh on Germany as it crippled them, economically and physically. They had to accept all the war guilt when technically it wasn’t their fault. It angered many citizens of Germany as they were being blamed for crimes they had not even committed. This angered the Germans more than ever. The allies should have been divided the guilt between all of the losing countries. Due to the War Guilt Germany had to pay for ‘ALL’ the damages done to the countries. So they had to pay 100,000 billion gold marks to the winning countries. The amount stunned Germany because they were expecting a more lenient treaty based on Wilsons 14 points. Trying to pay these reparations would cripple the economy and would keep their citizens starving. The war had already damaged Germany. The people were on rations and them having to pay this much would be more damaging than ever. In addition to that Germany lost Alsace-Lorraine and Silesia making it harder to generate money.

The Treaty took away all of the colonies that Germany had. Germany was enraged at losing her empire but also at the fact that only the losers lost their colonies. Wilson had wanted all countries to lose their empires. For many this meant a loss of countries with which it could trade with. The colonies were Germany’s pride and power. It showed how strong they were, taking it away would be to take away their power. In addition they lost their land too. They lost Saarland, North Schleswig, West Prussia, Posen, Upper Silesia and Danzig. The Rhineland became a demilitarized zone. Germany could not send in any type of forces. This in a way could be counted as lost territory as Germany could not protect with any forces and France could come and go as they wanted to. Due to the Treaty France was allowed to come into The Rhineland and on one such occasion when Germany was falling behind on reparations, they did just that. This led to more than 100 workers dying and expelling 100,000 workers from the region.

The Treaty dealt with the Military of Germany. They stripped Germany of all her power. The allies did not want Germany to be threat to them ever again so they did the obvious of taking all her power. They could only have 6 battleships. The Germans were not allowed any air force, submarines; they weren’t even allowed armored vehicles. The army had to be reduced to only 100,000 men and that too who had a choice to join, it wasn’t compulsory to join the army. For a country as large as Germany 100,000 men were not enough. They were helplessly weak. Any country could attack and take over easily without much of a resistance. This part of the treaty crippled Germany physically.

All of these points show how harsh The Allies were on Germany. They stripped her of her pride, her power and replaced it with helplessness and fear. They made sure she would suffer. All of this is proof of how harsh the treaty really was. It showed how ruthless the treaty really was. So yes the treaty really was harsh but it was not as harsh as Brest-Litovsk which Germany imposed on Russia. The Treaty of Versailles was very lenient in comparison to what they did in The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty on March 3, 1918, between the new Bolshevik government of Russia and the Central Powers, which ended Russia 's participation in World War I. The treaty was signed at Brest-Litovsk after two months of negotiations. The treaty was forced on the Soviet government by the threat of further advances by German and Austrian forces. By the treaty, Soviet Russia defaulted on Imperial Russia 's commitments to the Triple Entente alliance. That treaty left Russia in tatters so this was basically payback and it was less than what they had done and it was much fairer so ‘The Treaty of Versailles’ really wasn’t that harsh.

Even more Germany did not lose much land in comparison to The Treaty of Trianon which dealt with Hungary. The Treaty of Trianon was the peace agreement signed in 1920, at the end of World War I, between the Allies of World War I and Kingdom of Hungary. The treaty regulated the status of an independent Hungarian state and defined its borders. The treaty left Hungary with 93,073 square kilometers, only 28% of the 325,411 square kilometers that had constituted the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary. Its population was 7.6 million, only 36% of the pre-war kingdom 's population of 20.9 million. The areas that were allocated to neighboring countries in total, and each of them separately, possessed a majority of non-Hungarian population, but 31% of ethnic Hungarians who lived in the pre-war kingdom lived outside the newly defined borders of post-Trianon Hungary. Five of the pre-war kingdom 's ten largest cities were drawn into other countries, and post-Trianon Hungary was left without direct access to the sea. In comparison to this Germany came back pretty well off so it wasn’t that harsh.

This tells us that the treaty was made with much thought, made that Germany can’t deny even if it is a bit harsh Germany would have to accept as it had done much worse with Russia and that she didn’t actually lose much in comparison to the other treaties. So Germany had no choice. If she had argued war would have continued and no-one wanted war. So ‘The Treaty of Versailles’ was a very balanced treaty made with a lot of thought.

Bibliography:
Wikipedia
Ben Walsh
JohnDClare

By: ANANYA SHARMA

Bibliography: Wikipedia Ben Walsh JohnDClare By: ANANYA SHARMA