Treaty Versailles Quotes
He was exactly right. Two decades later Germany had started WWII.
The Germans pretended to maintain the treaty and when the French totally evacuated the Rhineland, Hitler started his preparation for WWII and a little later invaded France. Clemenceau had been snookered.
In 1918 the Treaty of Versailles—peace treaty ending WWI—was signed. Many Germans felt that their defeat in WWI forced them to sign the treaty which weakened Germany and assured that they would be a 2nd rate power thereafter. After that Germans blamed every negative aspect of their government, economy and society on the treaty that was “forced” on them. Nazism was a consequence of these feelings, and the Nazis adopted policies and practices to get around their anti-military obligations and have a strong government so that the allies could not enforce the treaty obligations on Germany.
In this case the tariffs were imposed not to protect national industries but to simply raise revenue. In the early years of the United States, almost all of the Federal Revenue was raised this way.
The President was Woodrow Wilson and the Peace Conference was that at the end of WWI. While the right of self determination is broadly accepted in American society, it was not always so.
and later wife
In the history of diplomacy and peace treaty negotiations, the various national representative would meet in secret, negotiate treaties and add secret clauses. Then the treaty was finally made public for approbal or ratification in the different countries no one would be told of the secret clauses. Each side would have a written secret copy of these clauses, but the publics of the country would never know. For example, the agreements about various WWII issues that were secret have not yet been made public in the United States or England. Wilson wanted to put an end to that diplomatic ploy and wanted all the peace treaty clauses to be public with nothing secret. He also wanted the deliberations to made in public woth press access. He had little support for the idea in most European nations.
The Nazi aggression of the Second World War was almost predictable.
The “Great War” was a term then used for the First World War. He actually understated the effect on the generations. It affected more than two.
After WWI, the Germans were reluctant to make the reparation payments that they had agreed to in the peace treaty. The French, to “motivate” the Germans, occupied the German Ruhr Valley—an area that contained very important German heavy industry and coal mines that could not function under the occupation. See {640091}.
The President had negotiated the League of Nations as a part of the treaty negotiations ending World War I. However, he could not sell the idea to the Republican controlled Senate and the treaty was never ratified. This was the death of the League of Nations, a predecessor organization to the United Nations. America had gone into a period of extreme isolationism which in many way enabled WWII to get started. After WWII, the nation did not make the same mistake and the establishment of the United Nations was ratified handily. President Truman, however, was a much better salesman than President Wilson had been, and perhaps more important, the Republicans and Congress had never been involved in the League of Nations negotiations, whereas Truman had involved them heavily in a bipartisan effort.
There were critics of the Treaty of Versailles in Britain as well as the United States.
His response was typical of the German intelligencia and the upper middle class at the time. They neither took the old militarists nor Hitler’s Fascist Brownshirts very seriously, even when they were seizing power. The Nazis and the militarists had attributed the harsh terms that the Treaty of Versailles ending WWI was attributed to a cabal of Jews who had embedded themselves in key positions advising the American, English, and French leadership so they could dominate the world. But first, they had to weaken Germany because the Jews knew that the German leadership was aware of their plans and would be their strongest obstacle. This fantastic conspiracy theory came from the notorious forgery, The Protocol of the Enders of Zion which had been published and distributed heavily among the German right wing. Hitler and his henchmen used this existing libel, to dupe most Germans, among whom there was extensive anti-Semitism, into thinking that the Jews were responsible for most of the serious ills of Germany at the time—the terrible economy and inflation, the weakened military, the loss of the Sudetenland and their overseas colonies, the sexual immorality in Germany, the Communist agitators, the perception of most of the civilized world that the Germans were dangerous militarists who had to be contained.
Referring to the peace negotiations following World War I: 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor
and later wife. Stevenson is describing the German foreign minister’s behavior at Versailles and Lloyd George’s angry reaction.
Referring to Woodrow Wilson and his 14 points he insisted upon for the World War I peace treaty.
1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor. Demands for German reparations were very popular with the British electorate at the end of World War I.
Viscount Cecil of Chelwood. He did a remarkably good job in drafting the initial covenant of the League of Nations. Many believe that one of the reasons was that he was not encumbered by having specific instructions from his government and by not being very politically involved. And the government, in turn, remarkably did not take control of the process, but saw it as a technical, professional task and left it to Cecil.
After WWI, the Germans were reluctant to make the reparation payments that they had agreed to in the WWI peace treaty. The French, to “motivate” the Germans, occupied the German Ruhr Valley—an area that contained very important German heavy industry and coal mines that could not function under the occupation. See {640090}.
