Versailles: A Harsh Treaty On June 28th one year after world war one world leaders meet at Versailles,
France to discuss the terms of the treaty they were imposing Germany to sign. The world leaders were President of the United States Woodrow Wilson, Prime Minister of
France Georges Clemenceau. Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy, and Prime Minister
David Lloyd George of Great Britain. It is the opinion of the writer that the treaty was harsh, because Germany lost land, was force to pay huge sums of money, and had its military turned into a joke. Plus it wasn’t aloud to unite with Austria when the polish people got a new Poland. Even so many people see that the treaty wasn’t that harsh or even harsh at all some of the things they would say are. All the damage done by the Germans is a very good reason for them to pay thirty billion dollars to the allies. They had laid waste to thousands miles of forest, thousands of miles of agricultural land, and destroyed hundreds of thousands of buildings. Plus tons upon tons of merchant ships decimated that is why they deserve to pay thirty billion dollars to the allies. Also German general Schlieffen worked up a plan called the
“Schlieffen Plan meant to take out France within weeks”. This plan was devised in 1906 thats eight years before the war so they had been planning a huge war for years so they
were probably ready for the “Great War”. Lastly they were the first to use long ranged weapons, poison gas, submarines and also one of the best machine guns of WW1. All of these weapons were responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
However the treaty was certainly harsh because. Germany lost all of its colonies in Africa and Asia which was all of the colonies
Germany had. They also where forced to give France the city's Alsace and Lorraine that they had won from France forty years earlier. Plus
Denmark received Northern
Schleswig
and the Rhineland was to be demilitarized that meant that no troops or forts could be in the area. In total Germany lost 27,000 sq miles thats 13 percent of its european territory and lost one tenth of its population ( between 6.5 and 7 million people). Thats not all the other terms of the treaty were very harsh because Germany was turned from a powerful country to a very weak country. How this happened was they were restricted to a 100,000 man army thats not enough soldiers to defend
Germany. Also they could have no war planes, no tanks, no submarines, and no more poisonous gas. On top of that Germany was forced to pay the allies 30 billion dollars for the damage they caused. But the thing is they shouldn't have had to pay that huge sum of money because war is war things will get destroyed in war. The Germans were forced to take total responsibility for starting the war which they didn't. The Serbian terrorist group called the black hand started the war by killing the Archduke and his wife.
On top of all that the germans were forced to make 200,000 tons of ships for the allies per year. Sadly thats not all that happened to Germany.
At the time the President of the United States was Woodrow Wilson. Wilson said that he believed that people should live in their own country with the same culture
