The Treaty of Versailles (ended WWI)

World War I was the first conflict to encompass various major and minor nations from all segments of the world. The two opposing forces, the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, shed casualties for four years until 1918, when an armistice was signed. It was the armistice signed in the Compiegn Forest in France that ended the conflict, but what truly brought in the after effects of the war was the Treaty of Versailles. Major nations all reached the conclusion that Germany was the central cause of the war, and therefore had to pay full responsibility for all its actions of hostility towards the other nations.

The Treaty of Versailles, reluctantly signed by Germany, forced them to take complete responsibility for the war. Many of the effects of this Treaty on Germany were regarded towards territorial losses, however, others were regarded also towards its economy. Territorial loses include Alsace-Lorraine, which was given back to France after it had lost it during the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. Other territorial losses included its overseas colonies from pre-world war I, which severely reduced its general size and profit income. The northern portion Schlieswig was also lost and returned back to Denmark; it had originally lost it in 1864 during the Second War of Schleswig. The remainder of the overseas colonies were partitioned between the members of the League of Nations. At the end of all territorial losses, Germany's total area was reduced by 13%.

Among the other punishments issued to Germany for starting the war was the reduction of the size of Germany’s army and navy. The treaty set a very strict limitation of 100,000 infantry. Along with this, they were not allowed to produce an artillery or armed vehicles, including tanks, battleships, submarines, supply carriers, ranged artillery, or aircraft.

It was the mix of these effects in Germany help to further fuel a growing revolution in Germany at the time, the German Revolution. Supported by various historians, I also think that the results of the war and the Treaty of Versailles helped carve the way to Adolf Hitler and Fascism. The citizens of Germany did not take their humiliating loss too lightly. Before the war, Germany looked down on all the other European nations, believing that theirs was superior (nationalism), and this was actually true before 1914. But, after the war, people became displeased with their country, and turned to resenting the nations who defeated them (already setting some of the stage for World War II). On top of this, Germany was in an extremely weakened state: not only did they lose huge sums of money from war expenses alone, they lost money to compensate for causing the war, and also had their military reduced. Ex-German soldiers (those removed from the army as a result of the treaty) did not wish to be taken away from the fighting so forcefully, so multiple independent mercenary groups became active all over the nation; one of larger of these mercenary groups was the Freikorps.

However, though all these provisions were set against Germany by the majority of the European nations, ironically, Germany was not present at that meeting. Therefore, it can be said that this Treaty was very unfair.The reparations decided by the Big Three(Woodrow Wilson (U.S), David Lloyd George (Britain), and Georges Clemenceau (France)) added up to 6,000 million British pounds, an extremely unfair cost.