The Treaty of Versailles Was Unjust

I. The Myth of VersaillesPro has fairly outlined the conventional political judgement regarding the Treaty of Versailles, a political judgement that unfortunately does not generally align with the analysis of historians. Popular revisionists like diplomat George Kennan have preached for decades that the vindictiveness of terms, "the very silly and humiliating punitive peace," paved the way for the rise of Nazism and the Second World War. [1] The popularity of the myth is understandable. Nobody likes to think that the apex of human malevolence which was Hitler's fascist regime might be the responsibility of a single nationality or a single line of political choices. Like the psychopath whose murders must be in some part the fault of a weak or wicked society, we tell ourselves that many acts of evil result from a complex environment of mistakes and misunderstanding. By allotting every person some little portion of fault we make the monsters seem less monstrous and convince ourselves that those terrors might be prevented by reason and perhaps sometimes this is so. But we can also be duped by that plausible narrative. We are tempted to accept the popular narrative without a critical examination of the facts. Such is the case with Versailles.II. The MythmakersA. GermanyThe truth is that few defeated nations are permitted to walk away from war with as little harm as was Germany's blessing in 1919. For the most part, this young, aggressive upstart nation emerged from a unnecessary war of her own making with her cities unburnt and her farmland unflattened, more than could be said for France and Belgium. No army had invaded her borders or forced the mass starvation of her children, more than might be said for Russia and Poland. Although she lost territory, Germany did not suffer the implosive collapse of her allies, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires- empires that were lost forever.The truth is that in spite of Versailles (and in some ways because of Versailles), Germany emerged from the Great War with better potential for economic growth than she enjoyed before the war. She had divested herself of her idiot Kaiser, Wilhelm II. She was the unrivaled economic and military master of Eastern Europe. Her ancient rival Russia was in revolutionary disarray. All Austrian competition had dissolved and the fragments of that empire looked to Weimar for leadership. Germany had lost a few petty colonies but had gained the pole position in rebuilding Europe. How unfortuate it is that the German people could never appreciate their advantage. If Germany felt humiliated, it was certainly not because France and Russia and Britain ceased to fear her. If Germany felt weak, it was not because her neighbors were not weaker. If Germany felt punished, it was not because the Allies felt vindicated.We can understand why any nation so defeated might resent the terms of peace and define those term "unjust," but we need not accept the judgement of those so biased.B. The United StatesNowhere was the promulgation of the myth of the unfairness of Versailles more political than in the US. Congress never ratified the Treaty of Versailles. Very much like today, Republicans controlled half of Congress during the second term of a Democratic President. Foreign interventions were traditionally unpopular with the relatively isolated and prosperous American mainstream. Further, Republicans exploited the traditionally Democratic voting blocks of German and Irish immigrants to prevent ratification. In spite of Wilson's successes in making war and making peace, Republicans were able to gain political ground by denouncing the Treaty as Pro-British and Anti-German. [2]C. Britain and KeynesAs much as to any single individual, the myth of Versailles may be attributed to the renown economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes' motivation is well understood: as the representative of the British Treasury and a man whose reputation depended on the health of the British economy, Keynes was primarily interested in maintaining Germany as the economic powerhouse of mainland Europe. By the 1910's, England imported more goods from Germany and exported more goods to Germany than any other country. Hence, the German Blockade during the Great War by itself caused grave harm to the British economy. Keynes was not so much interested in any perceived injustice against Germany. Rather, he felt an urgent need to restore Britain's favorite customer to good credit. [3]By 1922, Keynes was not so much opposed to amount of the reparations he was the rate of repayment. Keynes advocated a 3% annual payment for 60 years and opposed the official British position of 7% repayment rate. Nevertheless, his moderation in public policy did not prevent him from making political hay from Versailles' unpopularity when it came time to write his book on the subject.Unlike Keynes, British negotiators had to consider British opinion during negotiations. With 800,000 dead men and boys, the British masses were demanding the dismantling of Germany and the public execution of Kaiser Wilhelm. In retrospect, the balance between Keynes' liberalism and the British electorate's calls for blood, the Treaty's actual demands appear not just moderate, but acutally in favor of Keynes.III. Germany's OptionA large part of the Versailles myth depends on the notion that Germany was not consulted during negotiations and was not offered alternatives to acceptance of terms. One need only examine the history of peacemaking to conclude that the losers of wars are seldom invited to discuss the terms of their surrender. Almost always, the choice is to accept the terms of surrender or to continue the war and so it was with Germany. At the end of the day, The Treaty of Versailles was a contract like any other. Germany could sign or they could continue the war. That Germany preferred accepting full responsibility for the war to renewed fighting is as strong an indicator as any that the Treaty of Versailles was more just than any offer of peace the Allies might offer down the road.IV. Comparative JusticeAny assessment for the relative justness of any peace treaty must include a comparison to like treaties. Was the Treaty of Versailles less just, for example, than the Armistice of Versailles in 1871? Then, German victors demanded French a smaller French reparation (Germany suffered few damages in the Franco-Prussian War) but larger territories and those territories were permanent annexations. When one considers that the war was brought about by Bismarck's fraudulent publication of invented French diplomatic insults and aggressive exploitation of France's post-revolutionary weakness, the conclusion must be no.Was the TofV less just than the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk?Clearly not. This was Germany's 1918 peace offering to the newly Bolshevik state of Russia and while reparations were relatively small (the new government was penniless), that treaty stripped Russia of one-fourth of her population, 1.3 million sq miles of land including Poland and the Ukraine, 9/10ths of her mineral resources and a third of her factories. Considering that most of Germany's concessions at Versailles came from these Russian conquests and that one of the main reasons Germany lost was because she took more territory from Russia than she could possibly defend, Brest-Litovsk was far less just.Was the TofV less just than Germany's 1940 Armistice with France?Just 21 years after the TofV, Germany again invaded France. This time, the terms were more than half of the French Republic including her capital, Paris. Comparatively, the TofV was a slap on the wrist compared to Germany's unjust treaty-making.Was the TofV less just than the terms the Allies offered the Axis in 1945? No again. Considering that the terms offered to both Germany and Japan were essentially unconditional surrender, the TofV seems particularly moderate by comparison.V. Germany ignored most of the TreatyClaims of an unjust treaty seem particularly pale when one considers just how few of the conditions were ever actually met by Germany and how flexible the Allies were were in the re-negotiations of 1922, 1925, and 1929. Stephen Schuker points out that since Germany's paltry repayments were all pulled from US loans and since Germany was always behind in repayments to the US until defaulting, the US essentially paid for all and any of Germany's actual repayments. [7]VI. Impacts were exaggeratedConsidering that the true cost of reparations was less in terms of %GDP than the adjusted US Debt today, Germany's burden hardly seems insurmountable. Especially when one considers that Germany was free of military threat and required to divest herself of most of her military expenditures. Further, considers Germany's enviable economic position in Europe at the end of the war. We must conclude that the real economic impact to Germany was entirely negotiable by a competent government. That Germany lacked such competence in no way reflects on the TofV.VII. Germany Was Responsible I lack the space to complete this arguments and I have more to say regarding V and VI, so I'll detail at the top of Round 3.[1] http://books.google.com...[2] http://www.u-s-history.com...[3] https://www.mtholyoke.edu...[4] http://cheaptalk.org...[5] http://en.wikipedia.org...[6] http://en.wikipedia.org...[7] American "Reparations" to Germany, 1919-33: Implications for the Third-World Debt Crisis. (Princeton: Princeton Studies in International Finance, 1988).