'How and Why did the Treaty of Versailles differ from Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points?'

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Thursday 16th September 2004

‘How and Why did the Treaty of Versailles differ from Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points?’

        Wilson’s fourteen points indicated that what he mainly wanted was peace, justice, harmony and freedom in the world and between all different countries, whereas the Treaty of Versailles showed a different view and dealt with Germany, mainly with how the land was going to used from then on within the world.

        One of Wilson’s points said that he wanted for the wishes and views of the local people who lived in future colonies to be taken into consideration, he wanted for all the land to be returned to their rightful countries for example, Alsace and Lorraine were to be returned to France, he wanted the Germans to leave Belgium and for the other countries to leave the Russian territory.  These points were also known as Wilson’s idea of national self-determination.  However the Treaty of Versailles had other ideas.  The terms stated that all of Germany’s overseas colonies were to be taken away and put under the rule of the League of Nations, and all the land which Germany had taken away from Russia had now taken back.  Some of the land which had been retrieved back from Germany was returned to Russia, and some of it was used to create four new nations – Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.  A reason why the four new nations were created from Russian land was because it was Russia’s price for leaving the war earlier than any other country and leaving mainly just the French, British and Americans to sort it out with the Germans.  Although Germany was stripped of her colonies the French and British were able to keep theirs’, in fact it was during that time that the British Empire was at its biggest.  Another term on the Treaty read that ‘Germany was forbidden to unite with Austria to make a single German-speaking state’, what may have known to be ‘Anschluss’, by saying that, the Treaty was basically not allowing any of Wilson’s idea of self-determination, in fact, self-determination was being forbidden by the Treaty.

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The terms also stated that Germany had to give away land to five of her neighbouring countries, the country itself then was split into two sides.  One side was to be governed by the German’s and the other side which included the areas Danzig, the Saar and Memel, were to be governed by the League of Nations for a period of time, later the people who lived in those areas would be allowed to vote for whether they wanted to be part of Germany or not, however the vote was never carried out.  Wilson did not approve of the way ...

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