"The Treaty of Versailles was not about punishing Germany or deterring her per se, but was
ultimately conceived to further the national interests of the victors." Discuss.
This statement is a very valid one. The fact that the Treaty of Versailles was formed to
benefit the countries which wrote it is very easy to see. Two of them specifically, Britain and France,
had a hand in ensuring that the treaty was leveraged upon as an opportunity to further their
national interests of security and economic recovery. The other influential victor, the USA, did
genuinely want fair punishment and secure deterrence but was forced to back down on its ideals
because of the strong will of the other two influential parties.
If the treaty had truly been about punishing Germany for its crime of starting and continuing the
war, the terms of the treaty should have matched the crime. As such, the aims of limiting Germany's
military prowess and nullifying the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk were acceptable, but not to the degree to
which these general ideas were exploited by the Allies.1 The terms imposed upon Germany were so
harsh that they seemed to be intent on ensuring that the German Empire crumbled away
completely.
For one, the German army was limited to 100 000 soldiers without the possibility of expanding it
through conscription.2 This was meant to ensure that Germany would be too weak to wage another
war against the victors in the near future, at least. As such, it adequately punished Germany by
tackling the very factor which had allowed the war to be fought in the first place and also deterred it.
That sounds like a reasonable aim but if one takes a look beneath the surface it can be seen that
such severe limitations went beyond merely punishing Germany. Such a small army, what more with
its weapons also limited by the treaty, meant that Germany would not even be able to sufficiently
defend itself if it were attacked by another country. The treaty was used by France on this ground to
further its national interest of security. It wanted to completely eradicate the possibility of a war
with Germany and it used the treaty to achieve this aim. It made Germany so weak that any threat
of war seemed gone. Britain too had a hand in limiting Germany's navy because it saw this as an
opportunity to permanently set Germany back in the naval race between the two countries that had
been a cause of World War 1 in the first place. Britain wanted to ensure that it maintained its place
as a superior power in the naval arena. Thus it is seen that Britain and France used the notions of
punishment and deterrence to further their national interests.
A very weak Germany was not however what Britain wanted because it was afraid that Germany
was the only barrier which could stop the communist ideology from spreading to Western Europe
from Russia. Therefore, Britain did not want to leave Germany powerless and without the possibility
of recovering. An example of this is that although France wanted the Saar coalfields for an indefinite
period of time, Britain proposed that they should be kept for 15 years before a plebiscite would be
performed. Britain also wanted to use Germany as a block for rebuilding European trade and
industry and thus did not want it too weak to do even that. France on the other hand wanted a
guarantee that Germany would not invade it again and demanded a demilitarisation of the
Rhineland and insisted on the harsh military limitations. Both countries wanted to use the treaty to
1
"Treaty of Rapallo, 1922", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Rapallo,_1922, (accessed 17th August
2009)
2
Arasumani R., Yeo Lloyd. Crisis and Conflict, An Enquiry Approach to Modern World History Singapore: Times
Graphics Pte Ltd, 2008, pg 34
enhance their national interests. The fact that these two victors, furthermore those who had faced
similar losses, had vastly differing viewpoints on what should happen to Germany showed that
ultimately what each country wanted featured more strongly than any notion of a simple
punishment that could have been reached by a consensus.
Other terms of the treaty were also about more than simply punishment and deterrence. For
instance, the clause which stated that Germany had to lose all her colonies had no relevance to the
war at all and could therefore not have anything to do with a fair punishment for Germany's war
crimes or with deterring her from a future war. While some fighting did indeed take place in the
colonies, their removal from Germany's empire would not have made a war more or less likely to
occur. This clause was used by the victors to humiliate Germany, because the enforced loss of some
of its territories was synonymous with a loss of sovereignty. They used this clause to reiterate to
Germany that they were the ones with the power. Britain probably also saw this as a chance to
cripple Germany economically by removing the eventuality that it would start to become an empire
built on trade just like the British Empire. This would ensure that Germany would be economically
weaker than Britain and thus Britain would retain its status as a leading nation. Here again Britain
used the treaty to punish Germany on the surface but underneath, it had hidden aims it wanted to
achieve.
The USA, on the other hand, was in favour of a fairer treaty that would punish Germany, but not too
severely, and one which would successfully deter it from causing further conflict. The driving force
behind this was Woodrow Wilson whose points about self-determination and the establishment of a
society to preserve peace featured prominently in his national interests. The USA's interests differed
so vastly from those of Britain and France because they had not played such a big role in the war and
thus could take a more idealistic view of what the Versailles peace could accomplish. They thus
influenced the loss of some of Germany's European territories and the formation of the League of
Nations. However these terms were not about punishing Germany, as those had been decided by
Britain and France. Instead the USA wanted to form a sustainable peace which it saw as ultimately in
the interest of the whole world. It fulfilled the aim of the treaty to deter Germany but was used also
to live up to its ideals and assert itself as a major world power.
Here once again we see that a victor has a very different view of what the treaty should be about.
This speaks volumes about the fact that indeed what each country wanted was to further its own
national interests. The extent to which Britain and France used the Treaty of Versailles to accomplish
their national interests went so far as to turn away from simple justice to weakening Germany
further and further by taking away more parts of its empire and forcing tighter military restrictions.
The effect this had was that the treaty neither actually punished Germany fairly nor deterred her.
Conversely, it increased resentment of the Allies and made war even more likely. The great
weakening of Germany's economy by the victors was to ensure that their own economies would be
able to develop. However, Germany was so weak that for the first few years after the treaty was
signed that Britain and Frances' economies were slowed down too. Hence we see that the Treaty of
Versailles punished Germany unjustly and to such a degree that the Allies were also harmed by the
terms and created resentment in Germany. Thus the purpose of deterrence was not accomplished
and the punishment was so severe in the mistaken belief that the it was to Britain and Frances' best
interests, that it ultimately harmed them too.
1190 words
Bibliography
Arasumani R., Yeo Lloyd. Crisis and Conflict, An Enquiry Approach to Modern World History
Singapore: Times Graphics Pte Ltd, 2008.
"The Treaty of Versailles- 28th June 1919" http://www.rpfuller.com/gcse/history/2.html (accessed
5th July 2009)