However, the main opposition came from the right. After the Kaiser was forced to abdicate, the new Republic was made up mainly of liberalists and socialists, the people that the right was opposed to. They believed that the war had been lost not on the battlefield, but at home before the end of the war when the socialists and Jews had betrayed the country – Dolchstosslegende, or the stab-in-the-back theory. Not only this, but they were strongly against the treaty itself, which was called the Diktat – dictated peace.
The terms of the treaty included great loss of territory. This meant that millions of Germans were suddenly under the control of other countries, for example Poland. The nationalist right was deeply unhappy with this, especially as they viewed the Poles as primitive and beneath them.
Another term of the Treaty of Versailles, which was almost unanimously hated by the German, people and not only the right was Article 231, the war guilt clause. When signing the treaty, the German people were forced to accept the full blame for starting the war, and therefore pay for the damage and loss that the four years of war had caused. When the amount to be paid in reparations was finally set, it was well beyond the amount that Germany could afford to pay, and the far right accused the Allies of trying to turn Germany into an “economic corpse”.
Another reason that most Germans were against the Treaty of Versailles was the way in which they had no choice but to sign the treaty – it was forced on them. They had to sign or face the war being restarted, and Germany could not afford to carry on with the fighting. This was why the treaty was regarded as dictated peace – the Germans had no choice, they had to sign the treaty whether or not they agreed to the terms, and there was no room for negotiation.
Most of the Germans were against the treaty, but the most violently opposed were the right wing. The socialist and liberalists, although mostly unhappy with the treaty, received more power in running the country through it with the abdication of the Kaiser and the setting up of the new Weimar Republic. The right got nothing from the treaty, and spent most of the 1920s trying to turn the rest of the country against the terms and get rid of the Republic.
