Account for the German Reaction to the Terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

Authors Avatar
Account for the German Reaction to the Terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

The Treaty of Versailles was the Peace Treaty that brought a formal end to the First World War. The Treaty was an extremely long document and had 440 Clauses and impositions. The German Government was not allowed a representative at the talks in Paris to discuss the drafting of the treaty.

As soon as the Treaty was given to Germany the German Chancellor denounced the Treaty in the Reichstag his Government voted against it 8 votes to 6. The Government resigned. The German President Ebert offered his resignation declaring it 'a Peace of Violence.' He suspended all public amusements for a week as a symbol of mourning the Treaty. The new Government accepted the Treaty 237 votes to 138 votes.

The harsh Treaty outraged many ordinary German people, when Hindenburg retired he called for 'Vengeance for the shame of 1919.'

In the Treaty the population and territory of Germany was reduced by about 10 percent by the treaty. On the west Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France, and the Saarland was placed under the supervision of the League of Nations until 1935. In the north three small areas were given to Belgium; and, after a plebiscite in Schleswig, northern Schleswig was returned to Denmark. In the east, Poland was resurrected, given most of formerly German West Prussia and Poznán (Posen), given a "corridor" to the Baltic Sea (which separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany), and given part of Upper Silesia after a plebiscite. Danzig (Gdansk) was declared a free city. All Germany's overseas colonies in China, in the Pacific, and in Africa were taken over by Britain, France, Japan, and other Allied nations (see mandate).
Join now!


Another Major term was the "war guilt clause" of the treaty deemed Germany the aggressor in the war and consequently made Germany responsible for making reparations to the Allied nations in payment for the losses and damage they had sustained in the war. It was impossible to calculate the exact sum to be paid as reparations for the damage caused by the Germans, especially in France and Belgium, at the time the treaty was being drafted, but a commission that assessed the losses incurred by the civilian population set an amount of £6,600,000,000 in 1921. Although economists at ...

This is a preview of the whole essay