Versailles Signed: WWI Ends, Seeds of War Sown

Delegates from 32 nations gathered in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles to sign the treaty that ended the Great War and planted the seeds of an even greater one. On June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles, accepting responsibility for the war and agreeing to punishing terms that would destabilize European politics for the next two decades. The treaty was the product of six months of negotiations in Paris, dominated by the "Big Four": Woodrow Wilson of the United States, Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of Britain, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy. Their goals were fundamentally incompatible. Wilson wanted a just peace built around his Fourteen Points and a new League of Nations. Clemenceau, whose country had suffered 1.4 million dead and enormous physical destruction, demanded security guarantees and punitive reparations. Lloyd George navigated between them, seeking to weaken Germany without destroying it. The terms imposed on Germany were severe. Article 231, the "war guilt clause," forced Germany to accept sole responsibility for the conflict. The treaty stripped Germany of 13 percent of its territory and 10 percent of its population, eliminated its air force, reduced its army to 100,000 men, and imposed reparations eventually set at 132 billion gold marks, equivalent to roughly $400 billion today. Germany’s delegation was given no opportunity to negotiate and signed under threat of resumed hostilities. The treaty’s harshest critics proved prophetic. John Maynard Keynes resigned from the British delegation and published "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," predicting the reparations would cripple Germany’s economy and breed resentment. Marshal Ferdinand Foch of France took the opposite view, calling the treaty too lenient and predicting it would last only twenty years. The armistice he predicted expired almost exactly on schedule: Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, twenty years and sixty-four days after Versailles was signed.