Versailles is one of the major treaty which leads to the world war II. World War I began in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and lasted until 1918. During the conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers).

By the time the war was over and the Allied Powers claimed victory, more than 17 million people—soldiers and civilians alike—were dead.

    Treaty of  Versailles:

    Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919 at the Palace of Versailles in Paris at the end of World War I, codified peace terms between the victorious Allies and Germany.The Treaty of Versailles held Germany responsible for starting the war and imposed harsh penalties in terms of loss of territory, massive reparations payments and demilitarization. 

    Far from the “peace without victory” that U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had outlined in his famous Fourteen Points in Early 1918, the Treaty of Versailles humiliated Germany while failing to resolve the underlying issues that had led towards in the first place.


    Wilson’s Fourteen Points are summarized below:

    1. Diplomacy should be public, with no secret treaties.
    2. All nations should enjoy free navigation of the seas.
    3. Free trade should exist among all nations, putting an end to economic barriers between countries.
    4. All countries should reduce arms in the name of public safety.
    5. Fair and impartial rulings in colonial claims.
    6. Restore Russian territories and freedom.
    7. Belgium should be restored to independence.
    8. Alsace-Lorraine should be returned to France and France should be fully liberated.
    9. Italy’s frontiers should be drawn along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
    10. People living in Austria-Hungary should be granted self-determination.
    11. The Balkan states should also be guaranteed self-determination and independence.
    12. Turks and those under Turkish rule should be granted self-determination.
    13. An independent Poland should be created.
    14. A general association of nations must be formed to mediate international  disputes.

    Paris Peace Conference:

    The Paris Peace Conference opened on January  18, 1919, a date that was significant in that it marked the anniversary of the coronation of German Emperor Wilhelm I, which took place in the Palace of Versailles at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.

    In 1919,France and its prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, had not forgotten the humiliating loss, and intended to avenge it in the new peace agreement.

    Major Terms of Versailles:

    1. The “Big Four” leaders of the victorious Western nations Wilson of the United States, David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France and, to a lesser extent, Vittorio Orlando of Italy dominated the peace negotiations in Paris.
    2. Germany and the other defeated powers, Austria Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey, were not represented at the conference nor was Russia.
    3. Clemenceau’s main goal was to protect France from yet another attack by Germany. He sought heavy reparations from Germany as away of limiting German economic recovery after the war and minimizing this possibility.
    4. Lloyd George, on the other hand, saw the rebuilding of Germany as a priority in order to reestablish the nation as a strong trading partner for Great Britain.
    5. For his part, Orlando wanted to expand Italy’s influence and shape it in to a major power that could hold its own alongside the other great nations.
    6. Wilson opposed Italian territorial demands, as well as previously existing arrangements regarding territory between the other Allies; instead, he wanted to create a new world order along the lines of the Fourteen Points.
    7. In the end, the European Allies imposed harsh peace terms on Germany, forcing the nation to surrender around 10% of its territory and all of its overseas possessions.
    8. Most importantly, Article 231( Commonly called the war guilt clause, required Germany to accept responsibility for causing“all the loss and damage”inflicted on the Allies. That provision became the basis for the Allies for demand that Germany pay reparations,which were set by a series of conferences in 1920 at $33 billion(about $423 billion in 2019 dollars) of the treaty, better known as the “war guilt clause,”forced Germany to accept full responsibility for starting World War I and pay enormous reparations for Allied war losses.

    Criticism of Versailles Treaty:

    Though the treaty included a covenant creating the League of Nations, an international organization aimed at preserving peace, the harsh terms imposed on Germany helped ensure that peace would not last for long.

    Germans were furious about the treaty, seeing it as a diktat,or dictated peace; they bitterly resented the sole blame of war being place at their feet.

    The nation’s burden of reparations eventually topped 132 billion gold Reichsmarks, the equivalent of some $33 billion, a sum so. great that no one expected Germany to be able to pay in full.

    Radical right-wing political forces—especially the National Socialist Workers’ Party, or the Nazis—would gain support in the in 1920s and ‘30s by promising to reverse the. humiliation of the Versailles Treaty.