The unworkable terms of the Treaty of Versailles thats goal was to stop any possible future German Aggression.
The Treaty of Versailles was a great accomplishment, as it ended five years of world war, but it fell very short of what it had been written to do. It was badly constructed and did not address many of the problems that had plagued Europe before the war. It was said to be the treaty that would bring peace forever, but it fell quite short of that lofty goal, restoring peace for only twenty years.
One of the most ridiculous provisions in the treaty was Article 231. This article stated that Germany was solely responsible for the war. This was and still is a historic part of the treaty. This had simply never been done before. There had never been an article in a treaty that had stated that a country was guilty of causing the war.
Treaties are not to be about blame, they are about mending fences and negotiating a sustainable peace. This article was not taken very well by the German people. Anyone that has studied the war, knows that Germany was in no way the sole nation responsible for World War One. In fact it can be argued that every nation, even the Allies, had a part in the start of the conflict. To state that Germany was the sole nation at fault was irresponsible, short sited and historically inaccurate.
This article was also used as fodder by the Nazi's in their future rise to power. The message of sole blame that the treaty clearly sent, was not received well by the German citizens. It was very difficult to understand that they had lost the war, when the German army still held most of Europe. This ill contempt...
Treaty of Versailles unappreciated
This essay begins: "The unworkable terms of the Treaty of Versailles thats goal was to stop any possible future German Aggression." I am not certain whether this was something of a title, but it is incoherent. Minimally, "that's" needs an apostrophe.
The balance of the essay avoids such grammatical muddles, but it contains several very serious flaws that preclude this from being a first-rate essay. First, it argues that the Treaty of Versailles was "ridiculous," unprecedented, "irresponsible, short sited and historically inaccurate" in assigning responsibility for the war to Germany by Article 231 of the Treaty. In fact, Article 231 was the product of very careful negotiations, based on what was then known of the historical record. Modern historians have the advantage of marvelously voluminous writing on the causes of World War I, some 35,000 volumes in English alone. The negotiators at Paris could turn to none of these volumes. (Also, even if these criticisms were sound, the Treaty would have been "short-sighted," not "short sited.")
As to the punitive nature of the peace, the author is completely wrong in saying that this was unprecedented. Many treaties had unfortunately involved the victor dictating peace terms: See the treaties of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Portsmouth, and Brest-Litovsk as relatively recent examples.
The author argues that Article 231 fostered the rise of the Nazis in Germany. While this argument has been made frequently, it is questionable at best. Short of the total capitulation of the Allies, Hitler would have railed against the Treaty, no matter what.
The author also rails against the disarmament provisions of the Treaty, calling these "horrible," and "not fully thought out." What was horrible about trying to keep Germany from re-arming, particularly given the fact that at the time of the Paris Peace Conference, most of the Allies expected that there would be general disarmament that would effectively eliminate military forces throughout Europe. (The author also discusses the building of ships of greater than 100,000 tons displacement. The largest ships built in World War Two were the Japanese giant battleships, 68,000 tons fully loaded.)
In describing the Treaty as being optimistic but unworkable, the author reverses himself. If it was "the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a severed vein," what could have been done? The answer would seem to have been much more punitive measures against Germany, which would have made the Treaty even more of a target for radicals and ultra-nationalists such as Hitler. Some military leaders among the Allies wanted to impose an actual occupation on Germany, but this was totally unworkable. While the German armies were defeated, the Allied armies were so near exhaustion that there was no support for an occupation. There was also no support for continuing military controls over Germany.
The Treaty of Versailles was less than perfect, and probably no competent historian will try to argue that accomplished all that it set out to do. On the other hand, it represented some of the best and most advanced thinking coming out of a remarkable and extremely difficult international conference. This essay shows too little appreciation of the difficult or the accomplishments that the negotiators managed.
Finally, this is listed as a university level essay. If this is the case, I find the purported bibliography embarrassing. Given the vast range of library sources on the Treaty of Versailles, and even the range of excellent Internet collections such as the Avalon Project mounted by Yale University, I would expect that any good student would use something more effective that a Spartacus listing and a wikipedia page. There are reasons that wikipedia is regarded as anathema.
1 out of 2 people found this comment useful.