In December 1918 the three biggest powers of the war, also known as the "Big Three" met in Versailles to discuss the peace settlement. The main countries were : The United States of America, Great Britain and France, who were represented by Woodrow Wilson (United States), David Lloyd George (Britain) and George Clemenceau (France).The problem was that each of the leaders has separate ideas about the Treaty of Versailles, and once again, the three leaders found them self in a battle. Clemenceau felt that, since the majority of fighting had been on French land and they were most at threat from Germany felt very hostile towards Germany and wanted to treat them as harshly as possible, in order to re-build French building which were destroyed and to pay for other damages. Also France wanted to reduce Germany's size and re-take Alsace and Lorraine.
Due to the severity of Clemenceau's demands during the peace treaty conference he was nick-named "The Tiger". Great Britain did not feel too hostile towards the German's since they had had very little fighting on their soil, but it became apparent that Britain was easy going with most things in the Treaty, but when it threatened Great Britain directly they were very interested, such as Britain wanting to have the German's to not have a navy or have any overseas colonies. America were afraid of the Treaty of Versailles being too harsh, because they did not want to cause another war in Europe, but also they really had no reason to feel too hostile to Germany due to the fact that they joined the war late, so lost very little men, there was no fighting on their homeland and they even made money from the war by selling arms and ammunition to Britain. It was evident that there was going to be conflict over the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty of Versailles was not officially completed until 1921 when the amount of money Germany had to pay was settled on. This shows that there was obviously a lot of disagreement.
The clauses of the treaty go as follows:
Firstly the Germans had to accept full war guilt for starting the war; this seemed unfair due to the fact that it was not entirely their fault since there was a lot of tension between many of the European countries before World War I.
Secondly Germany was restricted to make sure that Germany would be unable to strike again. Their army was limited to 100,000 all of which had to be made out of volunteers since conscription was banned in Germany, and also Germany were not allowed to possess armoured vehicles, submarines or aircraft. The German navy was restricted to 6 battleships and The Rhineland became a "demilitarised zone" which meant that no German troops were allowed there due to the fact that it was the border between Germany and France, who were most under threat if Germany did rise again.
Thirdly, probably the most damaging clause of the Treaty of Versailles was the fact that Germany had to pay for war reparations. Germany was not consulted about these repartitions and when the amount of money was finally stated in 1921 at £6600 million, if this debt was still active it would not have been paid off till 1984. What made this clause so damaging is that 16 percent of Germany's coal fields were taken away, along with half of its iron and steel industry making it incredibly hard for Germany to pay off their debt.
The fourth clause of the treaty of Versailles was that the size of Germany was greatly reduced and its overseas colonies were taken away. North Schleswig was given to Denmark. Alsace and Lorraine were given to France. West Prussia and Posen were given to Poland as well as Upper Silesia along with Danzig which was given to Poland as a sea port. Lastly a large chunk of German land which was taken from Russia became independent states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The fifth and final clause of the Treaty of Versailles was that a League of Nations was set up as an "international police force". Germany was not allowed to join the League until it had proven it was a peace-loving country. Unfortunately since America did not join the League of Nations it was not very affective since America was the most powerful country.
The end of the war came as a shock to the German's since the day before the end of the war the Germans were told that they were winning, Germany were very angry at the Treaty of Versailles. Due to the way the German's military statues was poorly reported by the German's everyone thought that the German government had agreed to a ceasefire, so should have been at the Paris Peace Conference, but instead it had been treated as though it was a defeated state, and felt that they were being forced into something. Germany at first refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles, and sunk their own navy but eventually it became evident that the Treaty must be signed for the good of the German people. So on the 28th of June 1919 Ebert the President of the Weimar republic signed the Treaty.
