How wars ended
The Treaty of Versailles
On 28 June 1919 the parties signed a treaty in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles that only one side had drafted. How long it could hold was decided by that
In numbers
440
articles
in fifteen parts, plus annexes
27
states at the table
the German Empire was not one of them
100,000
troops permitted
ceiling for the army, no air force
- Period
- January 1919 to January 1920
- Place
- Paris and Versailles
- Parties
- The German Empire and 27 allied and associated powers, with France, Britain, the United States and Italy setting the terms
- Outcome
- A treaty of 440 articles, signed 28 June 1919, in force from 10 January 1920, with the Covenant of the League of Nations as its Part I
What was the Treaty of Versailles?
The Treaty of Versailles is the peace treaty that formally ended the First World War between the German Empire and the allied powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919 in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles and entered into force on 10 January 1920.
The armistice of 11 November 1918 had stopped the fighting without ending the state of war. The treaty closed exactly that gap: it settled borders, compensation, armament and responsibility, and with the League of Nations it created an institution meant to prevent future wars.
The text runs to 440 articles in fifteen parts. Part I contains the Covenant of the League of Nations, Part XIII founds the International Labour Organization. The treaty is therefore not only a reckoning but also the beginning of modern international organisation.
Who negotiated, and who did not?
From 18 January 1919, representatives of 27 allied and associated states met in Paris. Four set the direction: France, Britain, the United States and Italy, and in substance mainly the first three.
Their aims were far apart. France sought lasting security against a neighbour on whose soil the war had not been fought. Britain wanted a balance that would get trade moving again. The American president Woodrow Wilson had put forward fourteen points whose core was self-determination and an organisation to keep the peace.
The German Empire was not at the table. Its delegation received the finished text on 7 May 1919 and could raise objections only in writing. That procedural decision produced the word about a dictated peace, which shaped the German debate about the treaty from the start.
What was agreed?
The German Empire ceded roughly a seventh of its territory: Alsace-Lorraine to France, large parts of West Prussia and the province of Posen to the restored Poland, smaller areas to Belgium, Denmark and Czechoslovakia. Danzig became a free city under the protection of the League of Nations, the Saar was placed under its administration for fifteen years. The colonies went to the victorious powers as mandates.
Militarily the army was capped at 100,000 men, conscription abolished, heavy artillery, tanks, an air force and submarines prohibited, and the Rhineland demilitarised and occupied for fifteen years.
Article 231 assigned responsibility for the damage of the war to the German Empire and its allies and grounded the obligation to pay reparations. The amount was left open at first; the London schedule of payments of May 1921 set it at 132 billion gold marks, a figure revised several times during the twenties.
How long did the peace hold?
Twenty years lay between its entry into force in January 1920 and the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. None of the historic settlements this series covers carried for a shorter time.
There were years in which it looked otherwise. The Locarno treaties of 1925 settled the western border by agreement, in 1926 the German Empire joined the League of Nations, and reparations were repeatedly adjusted to economic conditions. That phase shows the treaty itself was open to change.
At the same time it remained permanently contested at home and became a reference point for the opponents of the republic. Historians still disagree about how much weight the treaty carries on the road to the next war and how much belongs to the world economic crisis, to domestic conditions and to the decisions of the thirties. Research does not draw a straight line from 1919 to 1939.
What is there to learn from it?
The most striking difference from the Congress of Vienna a century earlier lies not in the content but in the procedure. In Vienna the defeated power sat at the table and regained weight during the talks. In Paris it was negotiated about. One peace held for decades, the other for twenty years.
No rule follows from that, but a question does. Whoever ends a dispute decides twice: on the outcome, and on who was allowed to take part. The second decides whether the first still carries once the signing is over.
The other half of the same treaty is worth noting. The League of Nations was the first standing institution meant to negotiate conflicts between states rather than fight them out. It failed for want of means, yet the United Nations of 1945 build recognisably on the idea. Even failed institutions leave tools behind.
What follows from it
A peace that one side merely signs is a document. It carries only once both sides find something of their own in it.
Sources
How it unfolded
- 11 November 1918The armistice of Compiègne ends the fighting. In law the war is not over but suspended.
- 18 January 1919The peace conference opens in Paris. Twenty-seven states negotiate; the defeated side is not invited.
- 7 May 1919The German delegation receives the finished text. There is no negotiation over it, objections are to be submitted in writing.
- 28 June 1919Signature in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, five years to the day after the shots at Sarajevo.
- 9 July 1919The Weimar National Assembly votes to ratify, after a debate that splits the young republic.
- 10 January 1920The treaty enters into force. The same day the League of Nations begins work, the first standing organisation for securing peace.
- May 1921The London schedule of payments puts reparations at 132 billion gold marks. The figure is revised several times in the years that follow.
- September 1926The German Empire joins the League of Nations. The path there ran through the Locarno treaties a year earlier.
More in this series
- The Congress of ViennaOctober 1814 to June 1815After more than twenty years of war, the European powers negotiated a new order in Vienna. What came out of it held longer than anything before it
- The Treaty of Brest-LitovskDecember 1917 to November 1918In March 1918 the war on the eastern front ended with a treaty dictated by one side. Eight months later it was void
From history to a mission of your own
Every one of these treaties was the work of people who thought it could be done. The same stance is what it takes on a small scale: in a neighbourhood, a school, a club.
Find your peace mission