Breaking the Chains of Versailles
Breaking the Chains of Versailles
By John Wear
2020-05-07
The Treaty of Versailles is sometimes said to have been the beginning of World War II. The Versailles Treaty crushed Germany beneath a burden of shame and reparations, stole vital German territories, and rendered Germany defenseless against enemies from within and without. Britain’s David Lloyd George warned the treaty makers at Versailles: “If peace is made under these conditions, it will be the source of a new war.”[1]
Unfairness of the Versailles Treaty
In an address to Congress on January 8, 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson set forth his Fourteen Points as a blueprint to peacefully end World War I. The main principles of Wilson’s Fourteen Points were a non-vindictive peace, national self-determination, government by the consent of the governed, an end to secret treaties, and an association of nations strong enough to check aggression and keep the peace in the future. Germany decided to end World War I by signing an armistice agreement on November 11, 1918, which bound the Allies to make the final peace treaty conform to Wilson’s Fourteen Points.[2]
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