Were the peace treaties justified at the time?

Were the Peace Treaties Justified at the Time?

On August 4th 1914 one of the most hideous events in history started – the first world war. The war was caused by many things that caused tensions between the two opposing groups within Europe (the allies and the central powers) to become strained but the assassination of the archduke of Austria (Franz Ferdinand) was what caused the fighting to start. This event took place on the 28th of June 1914 and the war began of the 4th of August that same year. It started between Austria and Serbia but it escalated until the majority of Europe (and some countries from Asia and North America) are involved. This resulted in the deaths of 20 million soldiers and the total destruction of millions of lives around the world. The Allies (Britain, France and the USA) and the central powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey) expected the war to be over within a few months but instead it dragged on for over 4 years until it ended at 11.am on the 11th of November 1918 when the Armistice was signed marking the end of the war. The next year was spent creating the peace treaties that would prevent a war like it ever happening again but obviously we know that they failed as WWII started only 10 years later. The main treaty was the treaty of Versailles which dealt with Germany, who were blamed for the war, but four other treaties were created which dealt with Germany’s allies . These were: the treaty of St Germain which dealt with Austria, the treaty of Neuilly which dealt with Bulgaria, the treaty of Trianon which dealt with Hungary and the treaty of Servres which dealt with Turkey. They all had very similar aspects- they all included the loss of territory, the loss of arms and lots of reparations to pay and obviously no one liked the terms of the treaties as they believed they were far too harsh however Turkey was the only country to refuse to sign their treaty. They were the only member of the central powers who had enough power left to fight back and they demonstrated their displeasure at being forced to sign a treaty they didn't agree with by driving the allied forces out of turkey. The big 3 responded by creating a whole new treaty -the treaty of Lausanne- which the Turks accepted and signed in 1923.

“The allied government affirm, and Germany accepts, the responsibility of Germany, and her allies, for causing all of the loss and damage which the allied governments and their people have been subjected to as a result of the war.” The treaty of Versailles, Article 231

The treaty of Versailles was probably the harshest treaty created by the big three (Georges Clemenceau - the prime minister of France, David Lloyd George - the prime minister of Britain and Woodrow Wilson – the president of the USA) and, in my opinion, it was defiantly the most unfair. Germany was crushed after the war – it had spent so much money funding its troops and had lost a large chunck of it's enconomy afterwards due to the treaty. They were expected to pay £6.6 billion in reparations and they couldn't afford it. They managed to pay one installation before they couldn't afford to pay any more. Many of the people who helped make the treaty how ridiculous this idea was – Sir Philip Gibbs (a British journalist) expressed his disbelief at how much they were expected to pay by saying “The absurdity, the wild impossibility, of extracting that vast tribute from the defeated enemy ought to have been obvious to even the most ignorant schoolboy”. Germany also lost all of their overseas empire, a large chunk of their armed forces – were only allowed to have 10000 men, 6 battleships and were not allowed any armoured planes of vehicles – and they were forbade from joining with their former ally – Austria. Also a large section of their home land was taken and turned into new countries or given to members of the allied forces. This had a huge effect on Germany economy as the land that they lost contained an immense amount of their coal, zinc and iron industry and the vast amount of coastline that they lost meant that they lost 90% of their merchant shipping as well.

Many people believed the treaties were unjust especially the treaty of Versailles which dealt with the country who were blamed for starting the war- Germany. One of the main reasons they believed this is because of the war guilt clause; Germany were forced to accept the blame for the war even though, in the eye of many people, it wasn't actually them who started it. Austria was the first country to declare war. They were the first people who attacked and many people believe that Austria should have been punished rather than Germany. Another reason why the German people utterly detested the treaty was because they had been led to believe that it would be based on Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points (which were ideas which he hoped would bring peace after the war ended). The Germans were happy with this idea as the 14 pints were fair. The main pall of his points were created in order to work towards peace and trust between the quarrelling countries and to give colonies independence and freedom. They were shocked when the treaty was released and it had barely any of the 14 points in it and the points that were included were twisted and reshaped so that they created revenge rather than peace. Its not surprising that the Germans absolutely detested the treaty and the big three who had created it.

The British and the American people had very similar opinions on the treaty – they both thought that it was far to harsh but the French were calling for revenge so they had to listen to them and respect Clemenceau's opinion. The French had good reason to be angry – the Germans had invaded France 15 times in the previous 3 centuries. Also the majority of the fighting had happened in France which meant that it completely destroyed certain towns and cities. Not only did the French want revenge for all of the destruction that was brought down on then by Germany but they also wanted to make sure they were safe against any future attacks. They wanted the Rhineland so that they had a water barriar between them and Germany but the other members of the big 3 wouldn't have it. They didn't share Clemenceau's concern for his country's safety – Britain had the English channel to protect them from German invasion and America was so far away that the Germans couldn't even think about attacking it whereas France shared a large portion of its border with Germany and the French felt vulnerable because of this. France never did get the Rhineland’s in the treaty as Lloyd George and Wilson were trying to minimise the losses for Germany as they realised that they were being far too harsh but it did get demilitarised which meant that no German troops could enter the area but Clemenceau did not think that it was enough. He had lived through 2 German invasions and his fury towards them was only getting worse so it I not surprising that so many of the points in the treaty were strongly influenced by him. The French public shared Clemenceau's opinion – they thought that Germany should be stripped of everything. They wanted them to be left so economically weak that they wouldn't be able to think about invading neighbouring countries.

Throughout the entire time spent creating the treaty, Clemenceau and Wilson had very different opinions and agreed with almost nothing. Clemenceau wanted revenge and power over Germany whereas Wilson wanted to create worldwide peace. He wanted everyone to get rid of their weapons and join together in the league of nations so that everyone would communicate rather than start wars. Although this sounds like a good idea, tensions were still running high from the war and no country wanted to sacrifice their own safety in order to create peace. Wilson didn't really understand why people wanted to keep their weapons so much but his country is pretty isolated from the rest of the world and he is not used to being at risk of attack. He couldn't relate to France as he didn't really understand Clemenceau's fears so he couldn't find a compromise. Wilson was the main member of the big three that realised if they push Germany too far then they could easily start another war but he was unable to convince Clemenceau so they never really considered it whilst making the treaty. Because of this, the treaty was made to cruel towards Germany which caused another war. The American people agreed with Wilson but they didn't really want to get involved. They had tried not to get caught up in the war but in the end it couldn't be avoided so the Americans had lost nearly 5 million men to a war that had nothing to do with them. The American public saw where the treaty would lead – to another war - and they didn’t want to get caught up in something so terrible again.

The British were on the fence between Clemenceau's plan for revenge and Wilson's arrangement to create world peace. The British hadn't lost as much to the war as the French but that not to say they weren’t wounded by it. They lost around 75 thousand men to this war and Britain was angry – but no were near as angry as France. They still wanted to make Germany pay but Lloyd George was still cautious – like Wilson, his main goal was to not start another war. I think Lloyd George had the most reasonable ideas but he was stuck between the other two bickering members and spent so much time trying to create a compromise between them that his own ideas were barely used. He seemed to understand Wilsons point best but he did not want to have to demilitarize or give up his colonies so he ended up backing Clemenceau to the point where the only idea of Wilson's that were used were twisted so that they only applied to the opposing force. I think letting Clemenceau contribute to the treaty was a mistake as he was too involved with the country in question to pitch his own ideas but still listen to the other members. I think that Clemenceau thought that he knew best as he had the most experience dealing with Germany but I think that the same point makes him the least suited to the job.

I my opinion, I think the treaty was unjust as it was far to harsh for Germany to be able to deal with. I think it should have been written by people less affected by the war who had open minds. I also think that the central powers should have had a say in what was put into the treaty as they would have been able to defend and explain themselves so that the people writing the treaty understood both sides of the argument. If Germany had had a say in the treaty they would have been able to say that they couldn't afford to pay such a vast amount on money and the treaty would have included a much fairer sum of money for them to pay. This would have saved the politicians of the time a lot of grief as they spent a lot of time trying to extract all of this money from Germany, which they couldn’t afford to give away. It would have been a lot easier and much more fair if everyone had a say in what Germany's punishment should have been but someone who was not biased in the matter (someone from a neutral country i.e. Switzerland) had the final say.

In conclusion, I don not think the big three managed to create a fair and just treaty towards all parties involved – they were never going to make everyone happy but they could have tried to get it somewhere in the middle so that each person was at least partially satisfied. Everything about the treaties of the time was cruel – intended to inflict pain and suffering on the losing side; to get revenge rather than to stop all the conflict between the victorious and the defeated.

By Elana Warburton