How did Germany feel towards the terms of the treaty of versaille?

Question

I've been reading up on the causes of world war 2. I realise that the treaty of versaille seems to be one main reason. THe terms seem quite harsh for e.g taking blame for the world war. Can anybody tell me how Germany felt towards the terms of the treaty?

Answer 1

Yes the treaty was one of the main reasons for the continuation of WWII.

The Germans felt humiliated and the terms left them broke, and as sole responsibility for the war and had to pay huge reparations and was not allowed a Military of much magnitude after.

This infuriated the Germans esp Hitler who fought in WWI as did Goering. they used the hatred of WWI to help launch WWII.

In Irony the Germans made the French surrender in the same train as they had when they lost WWI. Another odd thing is though Germany lost WWI their Army was still Undefeated.

AN Armistice was signed, we did not beat them militarily, their army was still in tact. They actually might have won had they left the USA out of it! Both times.

Answer 2

German's felt agrieved that they had to take all the blame for the war, especially once the Kaiser had been overthrown in the revolution and a new republic installed. Another grievance was the huge amount of money in reparations they had to pay in damages to the winners. This left the country with massive debts and difficulties in rebuilding Germany after the war. It was seen as insulting that they weren't allowed to keep the big and well-armed army that they had before the war which caused many former career soldiers to be unemployed as well as those returning after serving just for the war. Loss of territory was another humiliation, ie the return of Alsace and Lorraine to France and the loss of eastern territory to Poland and the creation of the Polish corridor to the Baltic coast. An important seaport on the Baltic, Danzig, now Gdansk, became part of Poland. Many recent historians now regard the First and Second World Wars as one major 20th century conflict with a pause in the middle between actual fighting.

Answer 3

Yes I think it was, however you have to consider the mood at the time. All protagonists were worn out, broke, and had decimated their man power. People had had enough. You must also remember that while Germany is blamed for starting the first world war it would not have happened if Britain allowed Germany to have a navy of any size and let Germany ally herself to Britain as she wanted to. So yes in a way it was unfair and laid the ground work for the next war.

Answer 4

Well considering the ones who signed it were reffered to as, November Criminals they were not to happy with it! Hitler was able to use the Treaty to back up his beliefs and rise to power. If you google it you will be able to find lots of information about it rather than be blabbing on here!!!!

Answer 5

As well as being blamed, Germany also had to pay reparations. This is how Forte Knox got its gold researves. General poverty and the unsucessful industrial strike were direct causes of this. Combine this with the national indignity of not being allowed an army.

You get the idea.

Answer 6

against it very much - politicians were blamed for signing the treaty as all the terms had a direct effect on the people in some way.

and it was forced... 'diktat'

Answer 7

Very hard done by indeed in fact it was one of the key factors in Hilter managing to gain the support of most German people which eventally led to WW2.

Answer 8

It was salt in the wounds.

The the official end of World War I, November 11, 1918 - the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany at Compiègne, France,

This was the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning — the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month." While this official date to mark the end of the war reflects the ceasefire on the Western Front, hostilities continued in other regions, especially across the former Russian Empire and in parts of the old Ottoman Empire.

No other war had changed the map of Europe so dramatically — four empires disappeared: the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and the Russian. Four defunct dynasties, the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburg, Romanovs and the Ottomans together with all their ancillary aristocracies, all fell after the war. Belgium was badly damaged, as was France with 1.4 million soldiers dead, not counting other casualties. Germany and Russia were similarly affected. The war had profound economic consequences. In addition, a major influenza epidemic that started in Western Europe in the latter months of the war, killed millions in Europe and then spread around the world. Overall, the Spanish flu killed at least 50 million people.

The politicians Just like the first Gulf war, had stopped the army from entering Germany, because they were so sick of war. Thus Germany as a population never really accepted defeat, it was to them a cease fire. Because much of the western front had been fought on French soil - Clemenceau - wanted revenge upon the German nation. When the terms of the treaty arrived, it was a great shock to many in Germany, and they initally rejected them.

The German people had understood the negotiations at Versailles to be a peace conference and not a surrender. At first, the new government refused to sign the agreement, and the German navy sank its own ships in protest of the treaty. The sinking hardened Allied attitudes and the Allies demanded, by ultimatum, that Germany sign the treaty within twenty-four hours. The alternative was understood to be a resumption of hostilities, with the fighting now on German soil.

Faced with this crisis, the German provisional government in Weimar was thrown into upheaval. “What hand would not wither that binds itself and us in these fetters?” asked Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann who then resigned rather than agree to the Treaty. Army chief Paul von Hindenburg did the same, after declaring the army unable to defend Germany against Western attack. With four hours to go German President Friedrich Ebert agreed to the terms. The German delegation to Paris signed the treaty on June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Thus Germany was kept under blockade until it signed the treaty, which declared that Germany was responsible for the war. The treaty required Germany to pay enormous war reparations, which it did by borrowing from the United States, until the reparations were suspended in 1931.

Thus the Treaty of Versailles caused enormous bitterness in Germany, which nationalist movements, especially the Nazis, exploited. The stab-in-the-back legend (German: Dolchstoßlegende, literally "Dagger stab legend") refers to a social myth and persecution-propaganda theory popular in Germany in the period after World War I through World War II. It attributed Germany's defeat to a number of domestic factors instead of failed militarist geostrategy. Most notably, the theory proclaimed that the public had failed to respond to its "patriotic calling" at the most crucial of times and some had even intentionally "sabotaged the war effort."

The legend echoed the epic poem Nibelungenlied in which the dragon-slaying hero Siegfried is stabbed in the back by Hagen von Tronje. Der Dolchstoß is cited as an important factor in Adolf Hitler's later rise to power, as the Nazi Party grew its original political base largely from embittered WWI veterans, and those who were sympathetic to the Dolchstoß interpretation of Germany's then-recent history.

The treaty also contributed to one of the worst economic collapses in history of Germany, sparking runaway inflation globally, with the stock market crash.

In all fairness, the Treaty of Versailles was extremely lenient in comparison with the peace terms Germany herself, when was she was expecting to win the war, had had in mind to impose on the Allies. Furthermore, it was hardly a slap on the wrist when contrasted with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that Germany had imposed on a defeated Russia in March 1918 - that took away a third of Russia's population, one half of Russia's industrial undertakings and nine-tenths of Russia's coal mines, coupled with an indemnity of six thousand million marks.

In strategic terms Germany was in a superior position after the Treaty than in 1914, for then Germany had eastern frontiers with Russia and Austria, who had both in the past balanced German power. Now the Austrian empire was replaced with smaller, weaker states and Russia with Poland in between. In the West Germany was only balanced by France and Belgium, both of whom were smaller in population and economically than Germany. Proof of this can be seen in the second world war.

Instead of weakening Germany, the Treaty had made German power somewhat greatly enhanced. If Britain stuck to the hymsheet it had used to justify entering the war, then they and France should have divided and permanently weakened Bismarck's Germany - partitioned into smaller, weaker states so it could never have disrupted the peace of Europe again.

By failing to do this and therefore not solving the problem of German power and restoring the equilibrium of Europe, Britain had failed in her main purpose in taking part in the Great War.

Answer 9

idk