Treaty Terms and Their Impact

What hand would not wither

On 7 May 1919 the German delegation at Versailles was handed a treaty of 440 articles it had not been allowed to discuss, and given fifteen days to reply in writing. On 12 May the chancellor, Philipp Scheidemann, told the National Assembly in Berlin that the hand which signed such fetters would wither. On 20 June he resigned rather than sign. The Allies had answered the German objections with an ultimatum: sign, or the armies would march. A new government under Gustav Bauer signed on 28 June 1919 in the Hall of Mirrors, the room in which the German Empire had been proclaimed in 1871. The terms took around 13 per cent of the territory of Germany and around a tenth of its people, its colonies, its navy and most of its army, and, in Article 231, its good name: Germany accepted responsibility for causing the war, which was the legal basis for reparations that were fixed in 1921 at 132 billion gold marks. Germans of every party called it the Diktat, the dictated peace. AQA asks four things on this key element: what the terms were, how Germans and the Allies reacted, what the settlement got right and wrong, and what it did to the new states of Eastern Europe. It asks them through sources: a cartoon to read, two documents to weigh, an account to write, and a judgement to defend. This module gives you the figures and the shapes.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with the moment it mattered, because a bare definition earns nothing in a source answer.

From the terms to the Ruhr, in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• The German delegation is handed the draft treaty with fifteen days to reply
• Scheidemann resigns rather than sign and the Bauer government takes office
• The treaty is signed in the Hall of Mirrors
• The United States Senate refuses to ratify the treaty
• Freikorps units due to be disbanded under the military terms seize Berlin in the Kapp Putsch
• The reparations commission fixes the bill at 132 billion gold marks

Why did Germans hate the treaty?

Germans had expected a peace on the Fourteen Points. Which explanation best accounts for the depth of the reaction against Versailles?

• The terms were harsh in themselves, taking 13 per cent of the land, the colonies, the army and a reparations bill that reached 132 billion marks; they were imposed without negotiation and under threat of invasion, which is what Diktat meant; Article 231 made the whole nation guilty in law; and the principle of self-determination Wilson had promised was applied to everyone except Germans, who were forbidden union with Austria and handed to Poland and Czechoslovakia in their millions.
• Germans did not believe they had lost the war.
• Only the reparations mattered, because they ruined the economy.
• Hitler persuaded Germans to hate the treaty.

The terms, and what each cost

The account question needs the terms with figures; the judgement question needs what each term did. One row here carries both.

Question 1: how do you know?

Source A: a description of a cartoon published in the German satirical magazine Kladderadatsch in 1919. A gaunt figure in a frock coat with the face of Clemenceau, the French prime minister, bends over a sleeping woman who wears a crown labelled Germania; his mouth is at her throat and he has the wings of a bat. The caption reads: The Vampire. AQA Question 1 says: Source A is critical of the treatment of Germany at Versailles. How do you know? Tap the TWO details that show the criticism most directly.

• Clemenceau is drawn as a vampire with bat wings feeding at the throat of Germania, which presents the French terms as bleeding Germany to death.
• The cartoon was published in a German magazine in 1919.
• Germania is shown asleep and crowned, a victim who cannot defend herself, so that Germany is presented as helpless rather than guilty.
• Clemenceau wears a frock coat, the dress of a statesman.
• The caption is a single word.

The Allies and the new states

Select the THREE statements that correctly describe how the Allies reacted to the settlement or the problems it left for the new states.

• Clemenceau was attacked in France for accepting too little: he had wanted the Rhineland detached from Germany and got a fifteen-year occupation, and Marshal Foch said the treaty was not a peace but an armistice for twenty years.
• In Britain the economist Keynes resigned from the delegation and published The Economic Consequences of the Peace in December 1919, arguing that the reparations would ruin Germany and Europe with it, and Lloyd George himself had warned in March that a Germany treated unjustly would seek revenge.
• The new states carried the minorities the treaty had created: around 3 million Germans in Czechoslovakia, a third of the population of Poland who were not Polish, and an Austria cut from an empire of 50 million to a republic of 6.5 million forbidden to join Germany.
• The United States ratified the treaty and joined the League of Nations in 1920.
• All three Allied leaders returned home satisfied that they had achieved their aims.
• Poland was given only land in which every inhabitant was Polish.

The map after Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles redrew the map of Germany, and almost every crisis of the 1930s happened on that new map. In the west, Alsace-Lorraine went back to France, the Rhineland was demilitarised, and the coal-rich Saar was run by the League of Nations for fifteen years. In the east, the Polish Corridor gave Poland a route to the sea and cut East Prussia off from the rest of Germany, with Danzig made a free city. The Sudetenland, the German-speaking rim of Czechoslovakia, was never German before 1938, but Hitler claimed it all the same. Austria, to the south, was forbidden to unite with Germany.

Question 2: how useful are two sources?

AQA Question 2 gives you two sources and asks how useful they are to a historian studying one thing, for 12 marks. The two below are described for this module; the exam prints the real text. Enquiry: German reactions to the Treaty of Versailles. Source B. From the speech of Chancellor Scheidemann to the National Assembly on 12 May 1919, five days after the terms were handed over, in which he called the treaty unacceptable, said that Germany would be reduced to slavery, and asked what hand would not wither that bound itself in such fetters. Source C. From The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes, published in London in December 1919, in which the British economist who had resigned from the Paris delegation argued that the reparations were beyond the capacity of Germany to pay and that the treaty would impoverish the whole of Europe. The method is the same for both: content (what it says about the enquiry), provenance (who, when, why, and what that does to its value), and own knowledge to test it. Source B is useful for the official German reaction at its first and angriest, from the man who resigned over it five weeks later; its purpose was to rally a parliament, so it shows what Germans were told to feel more than what each of them felt. Source C is useful for how the treaty looked to a hostile British expert and for the argument Germans would quote for twenty years; but it is not a German source, it was written before the sum was fixed in 1921, and Keynes had a case to make. This meant that B tells you about German reaction directly and C about why that reaction found allies abroad, and a top-level answer says what each is useful FOR rather than whether it is useful.

In the shoes of the German government, 1919

Four decisions between May and June 1919. Choose what was actually done, and notice what each choice led to.

• 7 May 1919. You are the German delegation under Brockdorff-Rantzau. You have the terms and fifteen days. What do you do?
• 16 June 1919. The Allies have conceded a plebiscite in Upper Silesia and almost nothing else, and have given Germany five days to sign or face invasion. You are Scheidemann. What do you do?
• 22 June 1919. You are the new chancellor, Bauer. The army has told the president it cannot resist an invasion. What do you do?
• March 1920. The military terms require you to disband the Freikorps brigades that saved the republic from the Spartacists a year ago. Their commanders say they will not go. What do you do?

From cause to consequence

Because the German delegation was excluded from the negotiations and given fifteen days to object in writing, Germans of every party called the treaty a _____. Because Article 231 made Germany responsible for the war, the Allies had a legal basis for reparations, fixed in 1921 at _____ billion gold marks. Because the treaty put around 3 million Germans inside _____, the Sudeten crisis of 1938 was written into the map of 1919. Because the army was cut to _____, the Freikorps due for disbandment seized Berlin in March 1920. And because the United States _____ refused to ratify, the power that had written the Fourteen Points never joined the League meant to enforce them.

The Upper Silesia plebiscite

In the plebiscite of March 1921, 707,000 people in Upper Silesia voted to stay in Germany and 479,000 voted to join Poland. By how many votes did Germany win the plebiscite?

Name the places on the map

Tap a place name, then tap the pin on the region it names.

Question 1: how do you know, marked

AQA Question 1 asks: Source A (the Kladderadatsch cartoon) is critical of the treatment of Germany. How do you know? It is marked for 4 on identifying the message and supporting it from the source with own knowledge. Which answer scores all four?

• I know because the cartoon shows Clemenceau as a vampire feeding on a sleeping Germania, which presents the French terms as draining the life from a helpless Germany rather than punishing a guilty one. That fits the German view of 1919 that the reparations and the loss of 13 per cent of the land were designed to bleed the country, and the magazine was a German one whose readers had just seen the terms of 7 May.
• The cartoon shows Clemenceau as a vampire and Germany as a woman asleep.
• It was published in a German magazine, so of course it is critical.
• The cartoon supports the treaty because it shows France was strong.

Germany split in two

This strip gave Poland a route to the sea and split Germany in two. Tap it.

Question 3: an account, marked

Question 3: Write an account of how the Treaty of Versailles created problems for Germany in the years 1919 to 1923. The problems began with the terms themselves. The treaty signed on 28 June 1919 took around 13 per cent of the territory of Germany, including Alsace-Lorraine, the Polish Corridor and every colony, cut the army to 100,000 men with no tanks or aircraft, and in Article 231 made Germany responsible for the war. Because the republic had signed it under threat of invasion, the nationalist right called its leaders the November criminals, which led to violence against the state: when the government moved in March 1920 to disband the Freikorps brigades the military terms required, the Ehrhardt Brigade marched into Berlin in the Kapp Putsch and the regular army refused to fire on it. The financial terms followed: in April 1921 the reparations commission fixed the bill at 132 billion gold marks, and when Germany fell behind in 1922 France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr in January 1923. This in turn destroyed the currency, because the government paid the striking Ruhr workers by printing money, and by November 1923 the mark stood at over four trillion to the dollar. The treaty created problems in a chain, each one making the next: the terms bred the grievance, the grievance bred the violence, and the reparations bred the ruin. What earned the marks: a sequence of events with dates and figures; each linked to the next by because, which led to and this in turn, so that the account explains rather than lists; and a closing sentence that says what the chain shows. That structure, sustained across the whole period asked about, is what reaches the top level of the 8-mark account.

Question 4: the 16-mark judgement

"The main reason Germans hated the Treaty of Versailles was the war guilt clause." How far do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer.

• One paragraph on the war guilt clause: what Article 231 said, what it was for, and why Germans read it as a moral verdict
• At least two paragraphs on other reasons, each with specific support: the territorial losses with figures, the military terms and the Kapp Putsch, the reparations and the Ruhr, or the Diktat and the exclusion from negotiation

Question 2: usefulness, marked

AQA Question 2 asks how useful Sources B and C on the callout card are to a historian studying German reactions to the treaty, for 12 marks. Which of these paragraphs on Source C would score in the top level?

• Source C is useful for showing that the German case against reparations was shared by an Allied expert: Keynes had sat in the British delegation and resigned in June 1919, so his claim that the bill exceeded what Germany could pay carried weight the German notes of May did not. For the enquiry, though, it is useful at one remove: it is a British book written to change British policy, published in December 1919 before the sum was fixed at 132 billion marks in 1921, and it tells the historian why German objections found an audience abroad rather than what Germans themselves felt. It is most useful read beside Source B, which gives the German reaction it helped to make respectable.
• Source C is not useful because Keynes was biased against the treaty.
• Source C is useful because it says the reparations were too high, which is true because Germany could not pay them.
• Source C is very useful because it is a primary source from 1919.