16. The Treaty of Versailles: The Peace to End All Peace¶
Core Argument¶
The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, was an act of imperialist plunder rather than a genuine peace settlement. The Paris Peace Conference was a sham, dominated by the ‘Big Three’—Britain, France, and the USA—whose conflicting war aims produced a botched compromise. Germany was excluded from negotiations, forced to accept full blame under Article 231, and subjected to crippling reparations initially set at 226 billion Reichsmarks, severe military restrictions limiting it to 100,000 troops with no tanks, aircraft, or submarines, and substantial territorial losses including Alsace-Lorraine to France, the Polish Corridor, and all its colonies. France sought to permanently cripple Germany; Britain wanted to bleed it without destroying the European balance of power or its own trading interests; the USA, the rising imperialist power, pushed for conciliation to secure future trade and debt repayment, masking its interests in Wilsonian idealism.
The treaty’s impossible burdens ruined the German economy, fuelled hyperinflation, and created the ‘stab-in-the-back’ myth exploited by the Nazis. John Maynard Keynes warned the “Carthaginian peace” would ruin Europe and provoke revolution. Specific territorial impositions included Soldau in East Prussia given to Poland, Memel placed under French control and later occupied by Lithuania, the Saarland under League of Nations control for fifteen years with its coal sent to France, and Danzig becoming a Free City under permanent League governance without a plebiscite. The unification of Germany and Austria was strictly forbidden despite popular support.
Soviet Russia was excluded from the peace talks, formally for signing a separate peace with Germany, but really because the imperialist powers were sworn enemies of Bolshevism, which they correctly saw as a threat. Lenin and the Bolsheviks based themselves on world revolution moving westward; the victors took this seriously. Lenin sharply criticised German Left Communists for rejecting the Versailles Treaty and advocating a German People’s War, arguing that a Soviet Germany could tolerate Versailles for the advantage of the international revolution. The treaty’s impracticability became apparent when Germany stopped reparations in 1923, leading to the French occupation of the Ruhr. The League of Nations was denounced by Lenin as a “thieves’ kitchen”; it failed to prevent Japanese aggression, Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia, or Hitler’s expansion, and collapsed with the Second World War.