Three Points:
1. Germany was forced to surrender much of the territory they gained during the war. They lost the territory that they gained from France and also had many other restrictions. They also had many restrictions put on their control of the Rhine, saying “Germany is forbidden to maintain or construct any fortifications” around the Rhine. They were forced to return all of their newly controlled territories.
2. Germany was forced to disassemble their armed forces. First of all their army was not allowed to have more than 100,000 members. Those 100,000 members were only allowed to manage the territory and not actually invade any countries. Along with this they were only allowed to have men in the army and not use any technology such as vehicles.
3. Germany was forced to accept all responsibility for the war. The main aspect of this is that Germany would be forced to pay for all damage committed to the “Allied and Associated Governments”. This put all the fault of the war on the Germans and that the “Allied and Associated Governments” recognized that Germany had to assume responsibility.
Questions:
1. Was there a less aggressive way to handle this and not put all of the blame on Germany?
2. How much of an impact did the Treaty of Versailles have on how Germany handled World War II.
Interesting Fact:
There was actually a second agreement, the Locarno Treaties in 1925 that was signed by the same group of countries that was used to fix relations with Germany.
I think the Treaty had a huge impact on Germany and its involvement in World War II. After the Treaty, Germany’s economy was all but destroyed. Thus, the German populace found the Nazi Party would help their economic woes. Unfortunately, they did more than help the economy.
Nice separation of the main points of the treaty, but your questions both look at how the treaty affected the onset of World War II, and are not very different from each other. I would also be interested to see how effective the second agreement you mentioned was.
One of the large factors causing Germany’s role in WWII could have been avoided if Germany were completely crushed, dissolved, and absorbed by other nations. Another route would have been to not be too harsh on Germany. While it’s impossible to tell whether either option could have prevented WWII on its own, it is likely that either being far more or far less aggressive towards Germany would have had a completely different outcome for Europe in the mid nineteenth century.
Germany had much responsibility of the war. In addition to your points, Germany also lost the territory of coal mine. Therefore, this treaty could also influence on domestic economy of Germany.