A point that the Germans objected to was the fact that they “said” they had been promised Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points. But this was most definitely an invalid objection on the basis the fact that when the 14 points were made in January 1918 Germany had just ignored them for they still thought there was a chance of a outright German victory. Also the 14 points had never been promised to the Germans, they were really just Wilson thinking out loud.
The loss of territory in Europe was a term of the peace treaty that really got underneath the Germans’ skin. The Germans in general had to accept the loss of Alsace-Lorraine because there was no way in hell that the French were going to leave without it. Alsace-Lorraine was one of the major objectives of the French. The Germans were thoroughly annoyed by the creation of the Polish Corridor and the splitting of East Prussia from main Germany. The Allies justified this by saying that they wanted to get Poland a piece of coast. But secretly they were trying to produce a substitute for Russia with Poland. Germany had a bit of ground to stand on because there were a few Germans in the Polish Corridor and Danzig was completely German. But Danzig was not handed over to Poland but instead declared a free city. Germans however did have grounds to complain over the loss of Upper Silesia. The Allies made a concession and a plebiscite was held and Germany retained 2/3 of it whereas the rest went to the Poles. The Germans however had much more of an argument over the loss of their African Colonies. The mandate system by which Britain and France took hold of them was really just a method of seizing the colonies without actually admitting that they were being annexed.
The Germans resented the Disarmament clauses with a vengeance. They claimed that the 100,000 troops would not be enough to keep internal integrity. This was not really justified though they did have a point by the fact that their army was tiny, but this is the way that France wanted it and one can sympathise with the French point of view. Also the fact that they were not allowed tanks, armoured vehicles, military airforce and submarines left them years behond the advancing armies of the Allies. They were also only allowed 6 battleships. This condemned the Germans to go from being a very strong military power to an extremely weak power.
The objection to the War Guilt clause was that they were not happy with having to shoulder the blame for starting the War. This I feel is a valid point as it is difficult to pin the whole blame on Germany especially because there were only 6 short weeks in which to decide who had started the war.
The final term of the treaty was that Germany had to pay a huge amount of Reparation. Eventually it totalled £6.600 million. This was thought, and rightly so, to be far too harsh. Even the Economic adviser J.M. Keynes said that it should be put down to £2000 million. The Germans argued that the original sum was ridiculous and unpayable, which in the end it was. Eventually the Allies admitted they had been wrong and through the Young Plan lowered it to £2000 million.
In the end the Germans did have valid points in some of their objections, whereas in others they were just arguing for the sake of it. But the Germans can count themselves lucky as if Clemenceau had had his way it could have been crippling whereas it only had the effect of annoying the Germans and giving them reason to retaliate.
