Versailles and the League of Nations

Part One of the Treaty

Most people learn these as two topics. First the Treaty of Versailles, the settlement that punished Germany. Then, separately, the League of Nations, the organisation set up to keep the peace. ⚠️ They were never separate. THE COVENANT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS WAS PART I OF THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES. The rules of the new peacekeeping body were literally the opening articles of the peace treaty itself. Sign the Treaty and you joined the League. Reject the Treaty and you rejected both. Once you know that, four things stop being coincidences. Every country that resented the settlement resented the League as its enforcer, and Germany was shut out of it until 1926 anyway. The League was asked to do two jobs that pull against each other: keep the peace, and uphold a settlement many thought unjust. The United States rejected the Treaty and so never joined the League, which cost the League the man who designed it. And every power the League had was borrowed from its members, who could always decline to act. That last point is what its record in the 1920s is really a test of.

Words for the peace settlement

Six terms. Learn them as things that existed, and let the questions do the explaining.

Order the peace, 1918 to 1926

Six moments, earliest first.

• The armistice stops the fighting on the Western Front
• The Paris Peace Conference opens, with Germany not invited
• The Treaty of Versailles is signed at the Palace of Versailles
• The League of Nations holds its first meeting
• The United States Senate refuses to ratify the Treaty, keeping America out of the League
• Germany is finally admitted to the League as a member

What each of the Big Three came for

Three men, three publics to answer to, three different things they needed from the same room.

Match each term to what it took from Germany

How to explain a reaction instead of describing it

This paper asks constantly why people reacted as they did. The commonest weak answer describes the reaction and calls it explained. Saying that Germans were angry is not an explanation of German anger. ⚠️ An explanation has to name what the people involved BELIEVED, and what they EXPECTED, and then show the gap between that and what they got. So build it in three parts. What did they think was coming? What actually arrived? And what did the difference between the two mean for them in practice? A reaction is never just to an event. It is to an event measured against an expectation, which is why two countries can receive the same news and respond in opposite ways. ⚠️ Watch for the word that gives a weak answer away: UNFAIR. Saying a settlement was unfair states your own verdict. Saying which group thought it unfair, and on what grounds they had expected otherwise, is history. The same three-part move works for a government, a crowd or a single politician, which is why it is worth learning now rather than meeting it again in every topic on this paper.

Why they called it a Diktat

German representatives were summoned to Versailles in 1919, handed the completed terms, and told to sign. Germans called the result a Diktat. Which of these best explains why that word, rather than simply calling the terms harsh?

• They had been allowed no part in negotiating any of it, so the settlement was imposed rather than agreed
• The terms were harsher than any treaty had ever been before
• Germans did not accept that they had lost the war at all
• The terms were kept secret from the German public for several years

True about what the League could do

Select the TWO statements that are true.

• It could call on members to impose economic sanctions on an aggressor
• Any armed force it used had to be supplied by member states
• It kept a standing army of its own to send into disputes
• A simple majority vote in the Council was enough for it to act

The author who could not bring his own country

Woodrow Wilson arrived in Europe as the most admired man in the world. The Fourteen Points were his. The League of Nations was his idea, and he insisted its Covenant be written into the Treaty as Part I rather than agreed separately later. He got that. Then he went home, and the United States Senate refused to ratify the Treaty. ⚠️ Because the Covenant was Part I of the Treaty, that single vote did two things at once. It kept America out of the peace settlement, and it kept America out of the League. The organisation lost its author in the same act by which the settlement lost its most powerful guarantor. Now put that beside what the League actually was. Its only real weapon short of war was to ask members to cut off trade with an aggressor. The world's largest economy was not a member, so any state facing sanctions could go on trading with America regardless. ⚠️ And notice the shape of the argument, because a strong answer needs it. The American absence did not make the League powerless on its own. It removed one of the supports from a structure whose every power was borrowed to begin with - and a body that has to ask its members for everything is only as strong as their willingness to be asked. That is the thing its record in the 1920s tests.

The 1920s record run

Five questions on what the League did between 1920 and 1929. Three lives.

Spot the true League facts

Tap the TWO statements that are true.

• The League's Covenant formed the first part of the Treaty of Versailles
• Decisions in the Assembly and the Council had to be unanimous
• The League kept a standing army of its own
• Germany was a founder member of the League in 1920

Complete the Versailles facts

The clause in which Germany accepted responsibility for the war was _____, and it was the basis for the _____ Germany was required to pay to the Allies. Germany's overseas colonies were taken away and handed to Allied powers to govern as _____. The rules of the new League of Nations were set out in its _____, which formed the first part of the Treaty itself.

Build the explanation

Assemble the sentence that links the settlement to the organisation. It is the argument the whole module has been building.

Three judgements from Geneva

Three pieces of reasoning to weigh. Each answer has to carry the argument, not just the verdict.

• A student cites the Aaland Islands settlement of 1921 as proof that the League was strong. How should that be qualified?
• In 1923 Mussolini occupied Corfu, and the dispute was resolved over the League's head in Italy's favour. What is the sharpest thing to draw from that?
• A student writes that the League was doomed simply because the United States never joined. How would you improve that?

Explain why the League began weak

A classmate can list the League's aims, its structure and its 1920s disputes, and still writes that it "just was not strong enough". Write them the explanation that says why.

• Explain how the League came into existence, and why signing the Treaty and joining the League were the same act
• Explain what powers the League actually had when a state broke the peace, and where each of those powers had to come from
• Explain what the absence of the United States cost it, being careful not to make that the only cause
• Use one 1920s success and one 1920s failure to show what its authority actually depended on
• Finish with a judgement on how strong the League was by the end of the 1920s, supported by the evidence you have used