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The Treaty of Versailles (signed in 1919) and the 1921 London Schedule of Payments required the Central Powers to pay 132 billion gold marks (US$33 billion at the time) in reparations to cover civilian damage caused during the war. This figure was divided into three categories of bonds: A, B, and C. Of these, Germany was required to pay towards ...
- Overview
- German reparations and military limitations
- The Covenant of the League of Nations
- German resentment
The war guilt clause of the treaty deemed Germany the aggressor in the war and consequently made Germany responsible for making reparations to the Allied nations in payment for the losses and damage they had sustained in the war. It was impossible to compute the exact sum to be paid as reparations for the damage caused by the Germans, especially in France and Belgium, at the time the treaty was being drafted, but a commission that assessed the losses incurred by the civilian population set an amount of $33 billion in 1921. Although economists at the time declared that such a huge sum could never be collected without upsetting international finances, the Allies insisted that Germany be made to pay, and the treaty permitted them to take punitive actions if Germany fell behind in its payments.
The Big Four, especially Clemenceau, wanted to make sure that Germany would never again pose a military threat to the rest of Europe, and the treaty contained a number of stipulations to guarantee this aim. The German army was restricted to 100,000 men; the general staff was eliminated; the manufacture of armoured cars, tanks, submarines, airplanes, and poison gas was forbidden; and only a small number of specified factories could make weapons or munitions. All of Germany west of the Rhine and up to 30 miles (50 km) east of it was to be a demilitarized zone. The forced disarmament of Germany, it was hoped, would be accompanied by voluntary disarmament in other nations.
The war guilt clause of the treaty deemed Germany the aggressor in the war and consequently made Germany responsible for making reparations to the Allied nations in payment for the losses and damage they had sustained in the war. It was impossible to compute the exact sum to be paid as reparations for the damage caused by the Germans, especially in France and Belgium, at the time the treaty was being drafted, but a commission that assessed the losses incurred by the civilian population set an amount of $33 billion in 1921. Although economists at the time declared that such a huge sum could never be collected without upsetting international finances, the Allies insisted that Germany be made to pay, and the treaty permitted them to take punitive actions if Germany fell behind in its payments.
The Big Four, especially Clemenceau, wanted to make sure that Germany would never again pose a military threat to the rest of Europe, and the treaty contained a number of stipulations to guarantee this aim. The German army was restricted to 100,000 men; the general staff was eliminated; the manufacture of armoured cars, tanks, submarines, airplanes, and poison gas was forbidden; and only a small number of specified factories could make weapons or munitions. All of Germany west of the Rhine and up to 30 miles (50 km) east of it was to be a demilitarized zone. The forced disarmament of Germany, it was hoped, would be accompanied by voluntary disarmament in other nations.
The treaty included the Covenant of the League of Nations, in which members guaranteed each other’s independence and territorial integrity. Wilson had been convinced that no lasting peace would be possible unless an international organization came into existence, and he chaired the commission that drew up the Covenant, a short and concise document ...
The final version of the Treaty of Versailles was presented to a German delegation on May 7, 1919, and signed, after their remonstrances, on June 28. (The Treaties of Saint-Germain and Neuilly provided the Allied terms for peace with Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, respectively.) It was bitterly criticized by the Germans, who complained that it had been “dictated” to them, that it violated the spirit of the Fourteen Points, and that it demanded intolerable sacrifices that would wreck their economy. In the years after it was ratified, the Treaty of Versailles was revised and altered, mostly in Germany’s favour. Numerous concessions were made to Germany before the rise of Adolf Hitler, and by 1938 only the territorial settlement articles remained.
Many historians claim that the combination of a harsh treaty and subsequent lax enforcement of its provisions paved the way for the upsurge of German militarism in the 1930s. The huge German reparations and the war guilt clause fostered deep resentment of the settlement in Germany, and, when Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936 (a violation of the treaty), the Allies did nothing to stop him, thus encouraging future German aggression.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
peace treaty. reparations, a levy on a defeated country forcing it to pay some of the war costs of the winning countries. Reparations were levied on the Central Powers after World War I to compensate the Allies for some of their war costs. They were meant to replace war indemnities which had been levied after earlier wars as a punitive measure ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
These treaties stripped the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary, joined by Ottoman Turkey and Bulgaria) of substantial territories and imposed significant reparation payments. Seldom before had the face of Europe been so fundamentally altered. As a direct result of war, the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires ceased ...
Jun 27, 2019 · In 1924, the Dawes Plan reduced Germany’s war debt and forced it to adopt a new currency. Reparations continued to be paid through a strange round robin: The U.S. lent Germany money to pay ...
t. e. Article 231, often known as the "War Guilt" clause, was the opening article of the reparations section of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War between the German Empire and the Allied and Associated Powers. The article did not use the word guilt but it served as a legal basis under which Germany was to pay reparations ...
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Jun 25, 2019 · German Humiliation, Debt & World War II. Eventually, the United States came up with the idea of lending money to Germany to pay the reparations. In the end, though, the Allies got very little ...
