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Unlock This CourseThe armistice of November 1918 only stopped the fighting. The peace treaty itself was written in Paris in the first half of 1919 by the winning countries, led by Britain, France and the USA. Germany was not invited to the talks.
Most Germans expected a fair peace. They hoped it would follow the Fourteen Points, a peace plan set out by the American President, Woodrow Wilson, in January 1918. They also believed that getting rid of the Kaiser and becoming a democracy would earn them gentler treatment.
On 7 May 1919 the German government was handed the terms. It was shocked. It sent long written objections, but the Allies changed very little. In June they set a deadline: sign, or the war would start again. Germany was in no state to fight. Its army had been pulled back, and the naval blockade had still not been lifted.
The chancellor, Philipp Scheidemann, resigned because he would not sign. On 22 June the National Assembly voted by 237 to 138 to accept the treaty. On 28 June 1919 two German ministers signed it in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, near Paris. This was the same room where the German Empire had been proclaimed in 1871, which made the moment even more bitter.
Key terms:
Four sets of terms caused the most anger. The method hurt too: because the treaty was a diktat, Germans felt no duty to respect it.
Article 231 made Germany and its allies accept responsibility for the war. For many Germans this was the most hated term of all. They believed they had fought to defend their country, and that other countries shared the blame. It felt like an attack on the nation's honour. It also gave the Allies their legal reason to demand payment.
Germany had to pay for the damage of the war. The treaty left the amount to be decided later, so Germans felt they had signed a blank cheque. In 1921 the total was set at 132 billion gold marks, about £6.6 billion. Germans said this would ruin an economy that was already weak after four years of war.
Germany lost about 13 per cent of its land in Europe and about a tenth of its people. Alsace-Lorraine went back to France. Land given to Poland (the 'Polish Corridor') cut East Prussia off from the rest of Germany. The port of Danzig became a free city run by the League of Nations, a new organisation of countries set up by the peace treaties. The Saar coalfield was put under the League for 15 years, with its coal going to France. Germany also lost all its overseas colonies and was forbidden to unite with Austria.
The army was cut to 100,000 men, all volunteers. Conscription (forcing men to join up) was banned. Germany was allowed no tanks, no military aircraft and no submarines, and only six battleships. The Rhineland, the part of Germany next to France, was demilitarised, and Allied troops were to stay on the west bank of the Rhine for 15 years.
Many Germans could not understand why they had lost the war at all. When the fighting stopped, German troops were still on French and Belgian soil, and no enemy army had invaded Germany. During the war, the government had controlled the news, so people at home had not been told how close the army was to collapse. When soldiers marched home in December 1918, even Ebert told them that no enemy had defeated them.
Out of this confusion grew the 'stab in the back' idea (in German, the Dolchstoss). It claimed that the German army had never been beaten in battle. Instead it had been betrayed at home by socialists, communists, Jews and the politicians who made the revolution and signed the armistice.
In November 1919 Field Marshal Hindenburg, Germany's most famous general, gave the idea his support. He told a committee of the National Assembly that the army had been 'stabbed in the back'.
It was not true. The army's own commanders had said in September 1918 that the war could not be won, and it was they who pressed for an armistice. But the idea was very useful to the generals and to nationalists on the right. It moved the blame for defeat away from the army and the Kaiser and onto the new democratic leaders, who were called the 'November criminals'.
The Weimar government had not started the war or lost it, and it signed the treaty only because the other choice was invasion. Yet it was the Republic, not the Kaiser or the generals, whose name was on the treaty. This did lasting damage.
The anger did not fade. The first violent attacks on the government are covered in the lesson Threats From Left and Right: Spartacists and the Kapp Putsch, and the crisis that grew out of reparations is in the lesson The Ruhr Occupation and Hyperinflation, 1923.
Don't say the treaty fixed reparations at £6.6 billion in 1919. The amount was set in 1921. Don't describe the 'stab in the back' as a fact. It was a myth, so write 'Germans believed' or 'it was claimed'.
Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history book)
From a modern history textbook.
The terms of the treaty hit Germany like a hammer blow. A people who had expected a fair peace were instead handed a list of punishments that they were never allowed to discuss. From left to right, Germans were united in bitter fury at this 'diktat'. The ministers who finally signed did so only under the threat of invasion, yet they were soon branded traitors for it. Hardly a voice in Germany could be found to call the treaty just.
(a) What impression does the author give about German reactions to the Treaty of Versailles?
You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]
The author gives the impression that German anger at the treaty was shared by the whole nation and was easy to understand. The language stresses how strong the reaction was: the terms hit 'like a hammer blow' and caused 'bitter fury', which suggests shock and deep pain, not mild disappointment. Phrases such as 'from left to right' and 'hardly a voice' make the anger seem to belong to everyone. The author also makes the reaction seem reasonable by choosing points that show Germany being treated unfairly: it 'expected a fair peace', was given 'a list of punishments' and was 'never allowed to discuss' them. Nothing is said about the Allies' reasons for the terms, or about the damage Germany had done in the war, so the reader is led to side with the Germans.
What lifts this to the top level: it names one clear impression, then shows how the author's choice of words and choice of what to include and leave out create it.
Don't list the terms of the treaty from your own knowledge. This question gives no marks for that. Stay inside the extract: quote loaded phrases such as 'hammer blow' and 'bitter fury', explain what each suggests, then point out that the author leaves out the Allies' side.