Do you agree that the Versailles Treaty was a damaging treaty for the future of the Weimar Republic

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Ben Waite

Do you agree that the Versailles Treaty was a damaging treaty for the future of the Weimar Republic?

This is an important question to look at because the Treaty of Versailles was heavily influential on Germany’s future for the next twenty years. It is important to look at how the different terms within the treaty, and how they affected Germany as a nation and consequently; Europe as a continent.

  Article 231, which was also known as the War Guilt Clause, was damaging to the pride of many Germans, although this does seem to be fair because of Germany’s application of the Schlieffen plan to a situation that was developing hundreds of miles away from French borders in Serbia. (Since the Schlieffen plan involved an immediate assault on France with a strategic aim of taking Paris). The blame cannot entirely be shouldered with Germany as the conflict originated in the Balkans, and Germany was really drawn in by her ally Austria-Hungary. The allies (Britain, USA, France and Italy) really wanted to implement Article 231 in order to justify reparations that they forced Germany to pay. Article 231 can be seen to be damaging because it caused resentment in many Germans towards the treaty, especially the War Guilt Clause, and those who had accepted it; the government of the Weimar Republic. This caused many extremist uprisings and on top of that many began to support these extremists because they stood for the overturning of the Versailles Treaty. Hitler succeeded eventually in gaining huge public support for his cause in part through a mutual hate for the treaty. In Hitler’s own words; ‘….that Treaty could have been engraved on the minds and hearts of the German people…their souls aflame with a feeling of rage and shame;… one common will would be forged from it. Like a sword of steel.’

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  As previously mentioned in this article, some historians argue that Article 231 was implemented to justify the reparations Britain and France (the allies) enforced on Germany. At first the sum decided upon by the allies was £6,600 million, which, by the standards of the early twentieth century was an exceedingly large amount. Many in the Weimar Republic thought this sum to large, as did many outside of it. Germany’s government was forced to borrow from banks in the USA in order to pay these reparations, which was ludicrous since the main reason that the allies needed the reparations was ...

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