The Great War - WW1
The Aftermath
In the summer of 1918 Germany occupied vast tracts of western Russia, containing one-third of her agricultural land and over half her industry. Through her Bulgarian and Austrian satellites, Germany controlled the Balkans. In the West, German armies were only 50 miles from Paris, having regained all the territory contested with France since the First Battle of the Marne in 1914.
Five months later the war had been won, not the Germans but by the British, French and Americans. The German Army, still not entirely defeated in the field and still numbering over 200 divisions, had effectively demobilised itself and marched home.
The feeling among Germans that they had been 'stabbed in the back' was increased when the victorious Allies met at Versailles in January 1919 to redraw the map of Europe, a task made all the more urgent by the collapse of the Russian, Austrian-Hungarian and Ottoman empires.
By the time of the Versailles conference a cloud of ambiguity hung over the Allied victory. The Allies themselves were now disarming. Although Germany was prostrate, and her very existence placed in doubt by revolution, her potential to rise again remained intact. To the French, above all, the securing of a durable peace meant the neutralisation of Germany's potential by political or economic means. While the Germans considered the final terms, presented to them on the 16th of June, the Allies remained ready to resume war and the naval blockade on Germany stayed in place.
The treaty was signed on the 28th of June. The numbers of the German armed forces and the arms they might bear were severely limited. Germany also lost all her colonies and much territory in Europe. France took Alsace-Lorraine, the Belgians Eupen and Malmedy, the Poles much of Posen and West Prussia. Danzig was to become a Free State and plebiscites were to decide the future of Upper Silesia, Schleswig and the Saar - which was first to have 15 years of international administration. The French were given control of the coal mines in the Saar to compensate for the German wrecking of their own mines in north-east France.
The east bank of the Rhine was demilitarised to a depth of 30 miles and occupied by the Allies for 15 years. The cost of this occupation was to be met by the Germans, who were also to make repayments for war damage to the tune of 6'600 million pounds sterling, a sum fixed by a reparations committee in 1921.
The treaty with Germany concluded the main business of the Versailles Conference, but work continued for the next 12 months on agreeing the boundaries of the states which were to emerge from the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the administration of large chunks of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East.
The 1914-18 conflict had been the war fought to end all wars. The instrument by which new wars were to be prevented and peace maintained was the League of Nations, the formation of which had been the last of President Wilson's famous 'Fourteen Points' for peace. From the start, however, the League was crippled by the United States' refusal to join it. Marshal Foch, the Allied Supreme Commander in 1918, remained convinced that Germany would rise again. He boycotted the signing of the Versailles Treaty, observing with some accuracy that 'This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years'.