The Treaty of Versailles Was Unjust

X. A Summary of Arguments A. In this debate, Pro has the responsibility to prove that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were unjust. 1. Pro has argued that Germany was not at the table when the terms of peace were discussed. I have argued that peace talks are the proceedings of soldiers on the field of war, not lawyers at court. Did Saddam Hussein have a right to be in on the conference call between Bush, Baker, Cheney, and Scwarzkopf that discussed the terms of peace for the Persian Gulf War? No. Did Hitler and Hirohito have a right to be at Yalta to discuss the post-war world? Obviously not. Pro seems to think that Germany should have been an exception to thus rule, but has never once explained why. 2. Pro argues that the reparations were too harsh, but he wants to have his cake and eat it too: he wants to argue that Germany was both innocent and punished too harshly for her crimes. Germany lost a little land and had to pay one-third of one year's military budget in reparations. Since she was required to downsize her military this was not just an affordable fine. We have shown that Germany could have, should have paid that fine in one year and moved on. By comparison, when they had the upper hand the year before at Brest-Litovsk, Germany extracted 9/10ths of all Russia's mineral wealth, all of her Eastern European possessions and one quarter of her people. In fact, we have seen that the TofV was far more merciful than any terms Germany has ever offered, in spite of their complaints of unfair treatment, far more merciful than the terms that most vanquished nations are ever offered. So Germany's only possible grounds for complaint was that they were innocent but Germany was not innocent. 3. Pro has argued that Germany was unjustly held responsible for WWI. Because a Balkan terrorist shot a nobleman of a neighboring country on Balkan soil, Pro argues, Germany had no choice except to invade 4 non-Balkan countries. Pro argues that Germany had no choice because of the tangled network of alliances. I have argued this is all mythology. At the end of the war, the only nation that had broken her treaties was Germany. Every other nation upheld her treaty obligations, while Germany violated at least 4 treaties while pretending that the Dual Alliance, a defensive treaty, obliged Germany to invade much of Europe in the name of Austrian friendship. Pro may buy into such patently false propaganda but we need not. Germany invaded first on every front, murdering farmers on foreign soil before war was yet declared. Only Germany prosecuted the war for four years while the France and Russia begged for peace. Only Germany invaded neutral countries and torpedoed neutral ships. As soon as Germany was done the war was over because the Allies did not seek to press their new advantage. WWI was the war that Germany dreamed of and prepared for. But for a few misplaced troops Germany might realistically have taken Paris in the second week of the war and never given it back. But for the German habit of never knowing when to stop while invading Russia, the Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic States might realistically be modern Germany. No other nation went into WWI with such ambition and no allied nation exploited victory, preferring instead to create a series of small democracies. German war guilt is impossible to deny and so Germany's cries about unjust fines become unseemly - German soldiers had killed one half million non-combatants on foreign soil while losing fewer than 800 of her own civilians. Paying out a third of one year's war budget was not just a merciful punishment, it was an insult to the innocent French and Russian and Belgian dead. B. Of course, my main argument has addressed German responsibility since any cry of unjust punishment requires such inquiry. Was the punished guilty of the crime? Does the severity of the punishment match the severity if the offense? I've also argued that Germany re-offends by 1. signing the contract for peace without honoring any of its terms. Pro thinks it is irrelevant that Germany paid no reparations, re-armed in violation of the treaty and went right back to war as soon as she was able. I am confident readers won't agree. How can any party cry unjust punishment if the punishment was never enforced? 2. By whining about the terms of contract while never offering such fair terms themselves in any peace negotiation, and 3. By blaming those ignored terms for all of Germany's mismanaged failures in the years to come. XI. Dropped arguments I can't say whether Pro's claims of arguments dropped is due to a failure to read my rebuttals carefully, or a tactic of easy dismissal in reply to cases for which Pro has no adequate response. Readers will forgive the repetition, but Pro's complaint provokes another review. A. Pro claims I DROPPED his complaint that Germany was denied a fair trial, but I clearly STOPPED that argument by pointing out that Germany was an invader at war. We shoot home invaders, we don't ask them if they brought a lawyer. Pro claims that Germany had already surrendered, but this is false. The TofV was the instrument of peace, the terms of German surrender, like telling an invader to get down on his knees. If the invader fails to meet those terms, runs away or reaches for his gun, he forfeits any expectation of a fair trial. B. Pro claims that I DROPPED his argument that Yugoslav nationalists started the war by assassination, AND C. Pro claims that I DROPPED his argument that Austria started WW1 by declaring war on Serbia. Pro, it seems, is uncertain about who started the war just certain it could not have been Germany. Of course, both statements were TOPPED when I showed that only Germany sought a war beyond the Balkans. No Serbians or Austrians had died yet when German troops were marching through Brussels. That is how WW1 started- not because of lone gunman in Sarajevo. D. Pro claims that I DROPPED his argument that the Allies had their own interests in war, which means he neglecting to read where I agreed with him on this point. Every nation pursues self-interest in the moment. But our agreement here refutes Pro's claim that Germany was compelled to aggression. And so, Pro's point is POPPED. E. I'll forgive Pro, on the other hand, for dismissing so many of my arguments although I think that my points regarding * German expectations for a fairer treaty than any Germany has offered to her vanquished, * Germany's non-compliance with any if the treaty's terms * Germany's invasion and harsh treatment of neutral countries and violation of treaties regarding neutrality * Germany's exaggeration of TofV impacts while at the same time hurting their economy via non-compliance * German, English, and American motivations for myth-making All deserved a complete response rather than a simple dismissal as irrelevant. F. I'll also forgive Pro for violation of the "no new arguments in final round," like those regarding German spending and German peace offerings as these seem minor. If Germany made any serious peace offering to France or Russia during the July crisis, he has not substantiated that claim with evidence and I find no evidence to support that claim. Thanks again to Pro for the classic topic and the keen intellect he has brought to it. My apologies for format errors and typos , I am reduced to updating by some fairly primitive means.