Discuss the impact of the Treaty of Versailles and how it led to the rise of Nazism in Germany - Research Paper Example

The Treaty of Versailles Led to the Rise of Nazi Germany The catastrophic effects of WWI crippled Europe. Its people, infrastructure and economy suffered extensively. The war ended in 1918 but the aftereffects continued the misery. The winning allies rebuilt their respective countries while Germany, the loser, plotted vengeance due to the suppressive armistice agreement drawn up by the winners, a short-sighted document that would ultimately cause further catastrophic results for Europe. The allies crafting the treaty at the Paris Peace Conference were more interested in punishing Germany than securing long lasting peace. Ironically, the Treaty of Versailles was intended to make sure Germany was rendered too weak to wage war but due to its restrictive nature served to enrage and embolden factions within the beaten nation which fanned the flames of an emerging fanaticism. Germany not only lost massive amounts of land, economic sanctions caused severe hardships to a people trying to recover from the devastation of war. The worldwide depression in the 1930’s worsened the already desperate situation. In addition, German’s greatly resented foreign troops occupying parts of their country. The German government was weakened as a consequence of the ill conceived Treaty of Versailles which allowed for a fanatical form of fascism led by Adolph Hitler to flourish in Germany following World War I. (Henig, 2010). These issues, which were instigated by the Treaty of Versailles, caused Germany to again become aggressive against its neighboring countries which started WWII. The Treaty of Versailles was designed specifically to weaken Germany in many vital areas. Large sections of German territory were taken away and given to surrounding countries. France and Poland especially received lands that had been important to the Germany economy. Germany also lost all of its worldwide outposts to various allied nations. The new country of Austria was carved from previously held German lands as was the former Czechoslovakia, now called the Czech Republic. The allies were given all of Germany’s mercantile marine ships, another severe blow to the German economy. On top of that, the Treaty required Germany to construct civilian and war ships for selected Allied countries. The Treaty also placed stringent restrictions on the Germany’s capacity to defend itself or to wage war. Germany was not permitted to possess heavy guns, tanks, armored cars, u-boats, Zepplins or airplanes, no air force of any type was allowed. The defeated nation could keep no more than one hundred thousand troops in its army and fifteen thousand sailors in its navy. Germany was forbidden by the Treaty to import materials used for war and was made to pay steep reparations to the Allied nations as well as to the territories it ceded. All types of valuables were seized to make these payments such as precious metals, building materials, vehicles and ships. On top of that cash payments were mandated on an annual basis for years to come. The Treaty also greatly diluted Germany’s transportation system. It gave control of Germany’s railroads to Poland and placed Germany’s river system, an important transportation artery at that time, under foreign management. Poland also gained free use of Germany’s northern ports. (Bell, 1986) Though the Treaty of Versailles accomplished its intended purpose by crippling Germany’s military and economy ensuring it too weak to wage war, this tactic caused the next great world war just 20 years later. The Allied delegation in Paris assumed they had been successful in both ending the “war to end all wars” and preventing Germany from ever again waging war against its neighbors in Europe. They were tragically mistaken. The Treaty contained strong language but weak enforcement characteristics. Many military and political leaders understood this from its inception and predicted the horrific consequences. The Treaty was “the peace to end peace” according to British Colonial Secretary Alfred Lord Milner. (Greenhalgh, 2010). French General and Allied Supreme Commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch said “This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years.” (Greenhalgh, 2010). Many at the time could foresee a backlash to the harsh sanctions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles but the allied contingent in Paris bent towards the political winds that were demanding Germany pay steep retributions for their actions. Various people had various reactions to the Treaty; some even considered the sanctions it imposed were not nearly harsh enough and thought justice would be best served if Germany were dismantled altogether. Though the reactions to the armistice agreement were varied no reaction was as intense as that those inside the newly formed German borders. Germans were collectively incensed upon reading the terms of the Treaty in the newspapers. They considered the German effort in the war to be just, that many German soldiers’ lives had been lost simply trying to protect its borders. “Germany was a country which saw itself as having been encircled by France, Russia and Britain in 1914 and provoked into war.” (Henig, 2010) In addition, Germans didn’t think Germany had lost the war. It had held essentially the same line for four long years and, same as the allies, has agreed to end the conflict and go home. The Treaty was a two-fold affront. First, it made Germany admit it lost the war and secondly, imposed sanctions so tough that Germany could not possibly rebuild at near the rate as all other nations involved in the war. The country was on the edge of an economic collapse, as were other European nations at the end of the war. The Treaty pushed Germany into a depression which worsened as the world was entering the Great Depression days of the 1930’s. Germans had thought the Treaty would closer resemble President Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” speech delivered in January of 1918, prior to the Paris Peace Conference. Wilson’s vision for armistice advocated much more equitable treatment for Germany than resulted from the Treaty of Versailles. Germans were surprised, offended and infuriated as was to be expected upon reading the account of the Treaty. This anger was also directed toward their own government. They were shocked that their government’s representatives accepted the Treaty. This initial reaction of anger developed into feelings of deep-seeded resentment that, one, the Western allies wrote the treaty in that way and two, their own government agreed to it. “Perhaps the greatest resentment, however, was caused by the ‘War Guilt Clause’, which forced Germany to accept full responsibility for causing the war. In a nation that had lost 2 million men, and was quickly developing a myth that it had not been militarily defeated in the war, but ‘stabbed in the back’ by its own politicians, this was difficult to bear” (“Treaty,” 2011). The feelings of resentment and of rabid nationalism continued to grow because they blamed their growing economic problems on the Treaty and considered their nation, culture and race to be surrounded by hostile enemies. Hitler exploited this sentiment to garner widespread support which culminated in the next world war. (Henig, 2010) Prior to WW I Germany’s economy depended heavily on the iron and coal industry in addition to international trade. The provisions of the Treaty’s damaged all facets of the German economy. International trade was interrupted because Germany’s railroad service was sporadic, their major northern port was shared with Poland and former colonies all over the world had been taken by the allies. Germany had been a major trading power for all of Europe, Russia and even the U.S. before the war. Most of Italy and Russia’s imports were from Germany and, besides each other, France and England’s foremost trading partner. Germany’s trading status could not be regained after the war due to the Treaty which effectively took away its means of moving goods to other countries which all but stifled its economy. Furthermore, Germany was forced to pay for goods to be transported, money which it did not have. The war left the country in debt and the Treaty imposed reparations which had to be paid in addition to prohibiting Germany from collecting import tariffs from former allied nations. Multilayer’s economic suppression kept the German government and its citizens desperately poor. The regions ceded to France and Poland contained 75 percent of Germany’s iron-ore fields. As part of the reparations, the Treaty also required Germany to send Italy, France and Belgium millions of tons of coal which further depleted the supply. The total bill for reparation was enormous, about $40 billion, quite a sum in 1918 especially for a country with a depressed economy. Reparations caused runaway inflation and the German currency to collapse which wiped out the savings of German citizens. Germany could not rebuild following the war because any income it made went to aid former enemy nations. The Treaty, as intended, made the German economy weak but this fanned the flames German resentment and fed their desire to once again become strong. (Bell, 1986) Widespread food shortages, poverty and unemployment resulted from the Treaty which not only seized land from the nation of Germany but also seized private property without compensation from Germans citizens in areas where territory was ceded to other countries. This further enraged Germans and made them more vulnerable in Germany’s ravaged economy. Germany was an industrialized nation prior to WWI, more so than most any other and its economy had come to depend on raw materials to feed the industrial complex and food to feed the workers being imported. Due to the provisions of the Treaty, Germany could not import sufficient food stocks to feed its people. This, the lack of money and transportation services led to the famine. The Treaty was also responsible for the skyrocketing unemployment rate in Germany. Germany lost its coal resources and import capabilities therefore raw materials needed for industries to survive which put many people out of a job. (“Treaty of Versailles,” 2011). Germany forfeited its merchant marine in accordance with terms of the Treaty and the resulting decline in trade also contributed to the escalating unemployment. The Treaty had an immediate negative impact on Germany’s unemployment rate in addition to reducing the amount of benefits. German citizens were paid generous unemployment benefits prior to WWI but due to the reparations component of the Treaty and the impact it had on the economy, the German government was forced to end its generosity to unemployed workers. Unemployment compensation along with the salaries of government employees were cut dramatically further damaging the economy. The German people endured a long, costly war then were humiliated because history would record it lost that war and afterwards were plunged into a deep economic depression caused by the Treaty to end the war. Their resentment of foreign nations and peoples grew fervently along with their collective sense of nationalism. (Degrelle, 2009) The German territories ceded to form Austria and Czechoslovakia by the Treaty left seven million Germans in Austria, three million in Czechoslovakia. The German government never officially acknowledged this loss of lands following WWI and German citizens didn’t accept it at all. The desire to regain German lands taken by what German people considered an oppressive enemy was strong, an emotion easily exploited by the Nazi party which help bring them to power and led to the Second World War. This desire was alluded to by Hitler in the book Mein Kamp, his defining work: “The reunion of these two German states (Germany and Austria) is our life task, to be carried out by every means at our disposal. Common blood belongs to a common Reich.” (Hitler, 1971) Separating German peoples and taking German lands galvanized their already strong sense of nationalism. Racism also took hold in this environment which added more fuel to an already hot vengeful fire. The ruling faction in Germany, the Weimar Republic, a parliamentary republic system of government installed in 1919, lost its brief period of popularity follow the signing of the Treaty. The Weimar Republic was widely thought to be favored among the allies therefore encouraging the delegates constructing the Treaty to be more lenient on Germany. This assumption hardly came to fruition and the Weimar Republic were soon ostracized and loathed by the German public for signing the Treaty. The more intense the nationalistic feeling among Germans, the more they hated the Treaty. Some believed officials of the Weimer Republic should be tried for treason en masse. As unemployment and inflation rose while wages fell as a result of the Treaty, German citizens became increasingly and more openly opposed to the government they blamed for letting it happen. As time passed Germans came to consider the Weimar Republic an illegitimate government. The Weimar Republic demonstrated its weakness in Paris and continued its lack of aggressive tendencies after the Treaty was signed by being extraordinarily indulgent to opposing factions in its homeland. The Weimar Republic went as far as to give government positions to persons who openly opposed it and did nothing to suppress groups that called for its removal by violent means. (Degrelle, 2009) The political impotence of the Weimar Republic government encouraged those sought to undermine it. Soon, the German people were looking for leadership who shared their sentiments regarding the Treaty, their longing for Germany to be strong again and would overthrow the weak, ineffective government. They would rally behind a vocal leader that fit this criterion, Hitler and the Nazi Party. “The Versailles Treaty represented one of the platforms that gave radical right wing parties in Germany, including Hitler’s Nazi Party, such credibility to mainstream voters in the 1920s and early 1930s.” (“Treaty of Versailles,” 2011). The effects of the Treaty caused the German people to change its leadership, ushering in Hitler which culminated in World War II. Hitler formed the Nazi Party in 1919, the same year the Treaty was signed. The Party’s numbers grew in correlation to the growing discontent produced by the Treaty. Hitler exploited his fellow countrymen’s resentment of the Treaty. He, as other German’s, became a passionate nationalist due to how feeble their country had become due to the over-reaching tenets of the Treaty. In his rise to power, Hitler and his Nazi propaganda machine’s main theme were criticizing the Treaty and the Weimar Republic that capitulated to it. The charismatic Hitler loudly and repeatedly called for an end to the repressive Treaty which echoed the sentiments of a frustrated and angry German people. (Meier, 2000). The Treaty all but eliminated what had been a vibrant middle class in Germany. The great loss of jobs and deflation of the currency, with no reason to think the misery would ever end, transformed what had been a relatively stable political environment into volatile one, a situation from which Hitler was able to recruit easily. The high unemployment rate supplied massive numbers of people available for Hitler’s promise of creating jobs. The disgruntled German population embraced the Four Year Plan introduced by the Nazi Party which called for infrastructure improvement, the reclamation of lost territories, building quality hosing and eradicating slums, all problems a product of the Treaty. “The Four Year Plan was launched with the purpose of promoting economic self-sufficiency and of mobilizing the economy for war.” (Meier, 2000). Hitler became the voice of the German people who were convinced he would deliver on promises so they voted him Chancellor of Germany in1933. His agenda was fairly simple, to reverse the oppressive outcomes initiated by the Treaty. The Treaty had caused economic havoc by requiring reparations, reducing Germany’s trade opportunities, the appropriation of natural and manufacturing resources and producing currency devaluation and unemployment. The Treaty also physically separated the German people by the seizing of German lands and led to a hated governing body being put into power. Hitler promised to make Germany a powerful force economically and militarily as it once had been. He also wanted to reunite German lands along with its people and do away with democratic government. Upon gaining power, Hitler began fulfilling his promises. The Weimar Republic was replaced the moment he became Chancellor. In 1935 Hitler began increasing the size and scope of German ground forces, weapons and machinery in violation of the Treaty. Later that year he negotiated a Naval Pact with Britain which allowed for a great expansion of the German Navy. The military build-up continued in earnest throughout 1936 as Hitler continued to ignore provisions of the Treaty. Hitler slowly, at first, began reclaiming relatively small amounts of lost German lands concentrating on those lands that had large German populations and those that were rich in resources, natural and industrial. He legally annexed part of Austria and regained sections of Czechoslovakia in 1938. The big push came in 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland eliminating any doubts as to his intentions regarding the Treaty. This act of aggression started WWII. (Deist, 1990) The Treaty of Versailles caused considerable difficulties for a Germany nation just emerging from a four year war. It was the reason the German people felt a deep bitterness toward their European neighbors following WWI. No surprise to anyone including some notable leaders at the time of its signing, the Treaty instigated the desire of Germans to reverse its ill effects. The limitations and forfeitures defined by the Treaty caused an economic depression, separated the people and radicalized the population against other nations, races and their own government. The industrious desire of the German people to rebuild their country was combined with feelings of bitterness and a destructive desire to exact revenge on its oppressors which paved the way for Hitler rise to power and the Nazi’s reign of terror. The Treaty of Versailles led to the rise of Nazi Germany. If the delegates crafting the Treaty had sought to rebuild Europe instead of simply punishing Germany, Hitler and his fascist regime likely never would have gained power and World War II would not have happened. References Bell, P. H. M. (August 1986). “The Origins of the Second World War in Europe” Longman Publication Group Degrelle, Leon. (January 23, 2009). “How Hitler Consolidated Power in Germany and Launched a Social Revolution” Accessed December 2, 2011 from Deist, Wilhelm. (1990). Germany and the Second World War.  Vol. 1.  The Build-up of German Aggression. Clarendon Press. Oxford Greenhalgh, Elizabeth. (2011) “Command in a Coalition War: Reassessing Marshal Ferdinand Foch” Society for French Historical Studies Accessed December 2, 2011 from Hitler, Adolf.  (1971). Mein Kampf.  Houghton Mifflin Company.  Boston.  Henig, Dr Ruth. (March 10, 2010). “Versailles and Peacemaking” BBC History Accessed December 2, 2011 from Meier, David A. (August 13, 2004) “Adolph Hitler’s Rise to Power” Accessed December 2, 2011 from “Treaty of Versailles” (2011). History Channel Accessed December 2, 2011 from “Treaty of Versailles, 1919.” (January 6, 2011). United States Holocaust Museum Memorial Accessed December 2, 2011 from Read More