An overview of the peace treaties which ended WWI and their consequences

World War I ended with the armistice signed on

11 November 1918, and the Paris Peace Conference, which determined the nature of the post-war settlement, held from January 1919 to August 1920

What were the six major peace settlements and what did they entail

• Treaty of Versailles → signed with Germany on 28 June 1919

  • Germany was not allowed to negotiate these terms or hostilities would resume

    • Germany had to pay $40 billion in reparations to allies for war damage

    • Clause 231, known as the ‘war guilt clause’, placed full responsibility for the war on Germany and its allies

    • Germany’s economy was further reduced, sending trains and machinery to Belgium and France, and sending coal deliveries to Belgium and Italy, and to France indefinitely

    • Germany lost its colonies, given to allies as mandates

    • Germany’s army was limited to 100,000 and denied tanks and heavy artillery

      • Not allowed an air force or submarines, with strict limits on the size of naval battleships and bases

      • The Rhineland was demilitarised and administered by allies

    • Germany lost over 100,000 sq kms of territory and 7 million people

      • Alsace-Lorraine to France

      • Posen and Upper Silesia became the ‘Polish Corridor’

      • Saar region was under the League of Nations, although France had control of its coal mines

      • Anschluss was forbidden

• Treaty of St Germain → signed with Austria on 10 September 1919

  • Austria became a small landlocked country of 7 million people

    • Territory was ceded to Romania (Bukovina), Czechoslovakia (Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia), Italy (Istria and Tyrol) and Yugoslavia (Dalmatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina)

    • Austria’s army was cut to 30,000 and its navy reduced to a few boats

    • Reparations

• Treaty of Neuilly → signed with Bulgaria on 27 November 1919

  • Bulgaria faced similar consequences

    • Ceded territory to Greece (Western Thrace), Romania (Dobruja) and Yugoslavia (North Macedonia)

    • Bulgaria’s army was limited to 20,000

    • Reparations

• Treaty of Trianon → signed with Hungary on 4 June 1920

  • Hungary also became a small, landlocked state

    • Ceded territory to Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), Yugoslavia (Croatia) and Romania (Transylvania)

    • Hungary’s army was limited to 35,000

    • Reparations

• Treaty of Sèvres → signed with Turkey on 10 August 1920

  • Signed with the Sultan’s government based in Constantinople

    • Limited Sultan’s army to 50,000 and restricted navy

    • Financial affairs were under Allied control

    • Territory was ceded to Britain (Palestine and Iraq) and France (Syria and Lebanon)

    • The independence of the Hejaz Kingdom of Arabia was recognised

    • Zones of influence were granted to Italy, Greece and France

• Treaty of Lausanne → signed with Turkey on 23 July 1923

  • This treaty was invalidated as Mustapha Kemal’s forces gained control of the country, defeating Allied and Greek forces in the Straits region

  • The treaty was rewritten as Kemal was a Turkish nationalist, not an Ottoman imperialist

    • Turkey retained all of Anatolia, Constantinople and eastern Thrace

    • Claims to Arab territories were dropped, and Anglo-French mandates confirmed

    • Straits were demilitarised

    • No limits were placed on Turkey’s military

    • No reparations

What was the attitudes of the leaders of the major powers after the Paris Peace Conference

Few delegates left the Paris Peace Conference satisfied

• Georges Clemenceau, the French Premier, sought revenge on Germany, compensation and security

  • Dissatisfied with the harshness of reparations

• Woodrow Wilson, the United States President, believed the peace settlement was too vindictive and lacked idealism

• David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, was unhappy with the economic provisions which would hinder Germany’s economy

• Vittorio Orlando, Italy’s Prime Minister, believed that they were not rewarded enough for their sacrifices

• Germany saw Versailles as a humiliating slave treaty which it would not accept

Consequences of the post-World War I peace treaties

• Political geography of Europe

  • Disappearance of four European empires

    • The collapse of the Hohenzollern Empire of Germany, the Habsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary, the Romanov Empire of Russia and the Ottoman Empire led to new countries

      • Finland

      • Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia

      • Resurrected Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia

  • The appearance of a host of new countries across Europe

    • Many nationalist groups in central and eastern Europe took over territory during the chaos of the war

  • Post-1919 produced a brand new map of Europe

    • The Polish corridor divided East Prussia from Germany

    • Russia’s western frontier after the Russo-Polish War in 1930-1921 was pushed eastward after an unsuccessful war

• Beyond Europe

  • The power of an isolationist USA

    • The US entered the war in April 1917, and its minimal impact by the war allowed the nation to emerge stronger

      • European nations were indebted to the US, which had also poached British and French overseas markets during the war

      • The US lost 100,000 men, but its homeland was not touched

    • Due to a combination of poor health, loss of domestic political control and rising isolationist sentiment, the US was unable to pursue an international role

      • The US refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and did not join the League of Nations

      • This isolationism would continue until the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour

  • The end of empires

    • Nationalist feeling was growing in Europe, as Poles, Slavs and Czechs achieved nationhood

      • Although these feelings began to destabilise imperial empires, it would take another war for them to be fully realised

      • Britain and France’s empires had never been larger after taking control of German and Ottoman territories

    • Nationalist feelings were also growing inside colonies

      • Ho Chi Minh spoke at Versailles fighting for Vietnamese independence in the face of Slavic and Polish self-autonomy

  • The power of a dissatisfied Japan

    • Japan’s military prowess was proven with the Russian defeat in 1905

    • An ally of the Entente powers, it was accepted as a major power at the Paris Peace Conference, which had a mixed impact on Japan

      • Able to assert increasing control over China, taking over German concessions

      • Similar to the US, it took over Asian markets formerly held by Britain and France

      • Japan gained mandates over Germany’s former northern Pacific colonies (Caroline, Marshall and Mariana Islands)

      • Offended by the denial of a racial equality clause in the treaties

• A dangerous future for Europe and the world

  • Discontented minorities

    • Wilson believed that the desires of national groups for self-determination were a major cause of conflict, and creating new nations would satisfy these demands

      • The result was that many minority groups were forced to live in nations they did not want to

        • Millions of Hungarians were forced into Romania

        • Germans were forced to live in Poland and Czechoslovakia

        • Border regions across Europe had a mixed array of populations

  • An angry and humiliated Germany

    • Majority of Germans, including politicians, sought the destruction of Versailles Treaty

    • Weimar’s acceptance of it harmed its progress politically and economically

  • An excluded Russia

    • Russia played no part in these talks, embroiled in civil war and then conflict with Poland

    • Russia would seek revisionism of peace settlements in the next war

  • Disappearance of a stable balance of power

    • The balance of power in Europe was unstable and did not reflect international reality

      • Although attempts were made to weaken it, Germany was still a dominant power

      • Russia was removed from the European balance

      • The US declared isolationism

    • Thus, the dominant powers were now Britain and France by default, who were, in reality, second-rate powers

      • The war had devastated both their economies and left them massively indebted

      • Wartime casualties were in the millions, and France’s population (40 million) was dwarfed by Germany’s (70 million)

      • Imperial arrangements meant both powers were overextended more than they could afford

    • Anglo-French relations were also greatly strained in the 1920s over reparations and how to deal with Germany, weakening dominance

  • Creation of conditions for another war

    • Although the peace treaties of 1919 did not make another war inevitable, it enabled the circumstances for dissatisfied nations, Germany and Italy, to revise peace settlements through force

• Future hope

  • Creation of the League of Nations

    • Woodrow Wilson hoped that peace treaties would bring in a new world order, credited with the phrase, ‘the war to end all wars’

    • Wilson’s idealistic hope was crushed in the post-war world

      • Violence spread from Ireland to India

      • Germany faced several years of political violence before its new democratic system was able to bring about stability

      • Russia was engulfed in a bloody civil war until 1921

    • Wilson presented the ‘14 Points’ to the US Congress, which included the League of Nations, believing that such a body could have prevented conflict