What was the aims of the treaty of versailles

It was signed exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which had directly led to the war. The other Central Powers on the German side signed separate treaties. Although the Armistice, signed on 11 November , ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty.

The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October Rens Steenhard on 14 June Jordan, W. Kleine-Ahlbrandt, W. Lowczyk, O. Between and , , Hungarians fled former Hungarian territories attached to Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. The Russian Empire, which had withdrawn from the war in after the October Revolution, lost much of its western frontier as the newly independent nations of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland were carved from it.

Romania took control of Bessarabia in April The Ottoman Empire disintegrated, with much of its Levant territory awarded to various Allied powers as protectorates, including Palestine. The Turkish core in Anatolia was reorganized as the Republic of Turkey. This treaty was never ratified by the Sultan and was rejected by the Turkish National Movement, leading to the victorious Turkish War of Independence and the much less stringent Treaty of Lausanne.

The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. It was signed on June 28, , exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Although the armistice signed on November 11, , ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on October 21, This article, Article , later became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty forced Germany to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers.

On the other hand, prominent figures on the Allied side such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch criticized the treaty for treating Germany too leniently. The result of these competing and sometimes conflicting goals among the victors was a compromise that left no one content: Germany was neither pacified nor conciliated, nor was it permanently weakened.

The problems that arose from the treaty would lead to the Locarno Treaties, which improved relations between Germany and the other European Powers, and the renegotiation of the reparation system resulting in the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, and the indefinite postponement of reparations at the Lausanne Conference of German Johannes Bell signs the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors, with various Allied delegations sitting and standing in front of him.

The remaking of the world map at these conferences gave birth to a number of critical conflict-prone international contradictions, which would become one of the causes of World War II.

The British historian Eric Hobsbawm claimed that. The League of Nations was formed to prevent a repetition of the First World War, but within two decades this effort failed. Economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation particularly in Germany eventually contributed to World War II. It was the first international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace.

Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Other issues in this and related treaties included labor conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe.

At its greatest extent from September 28, , to February 23, , it had 58 members. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, and provide an army when needed. However, the Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply.

After a number of notable successes and some early failures in the s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the s. Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain, and others.

The onset of the Second World War showed that the League had failed its primary purpose to prevent any future world war. The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations UN replaced it after the end of the Second World War in April and inherited a number of agencies and organizations founded by the League. House to draft a U. The two principal rchitects of the covenant of the League of Nations were Lord Robert Cecil a lawyer and diplomat and Jan Smuts a Commonwealth statesman.

He also proposed the creation of a mandate system for captured colonies of the Central Powers during the war. Cecil focused on the administrative side and proposed annual Council meetings and quadrennial meetings for the Assembly of all members.

After lengthy negotiations between the delegates, the Hurst-Miller draft was finally produced as a basis for the Covenant. After more negotiation and compromise, the delegates finally approved of the proposal to create the League of Nations on January 25, On June 28, 44 states signed the Covenant, including 31 states that took part in the war on the side of the Triple Entente or joined it during the conflict. The League would consist of a General Assembly representing all member states , an Executive Council with membership limited to major powers , and a permanent secretariat.

Opposition in the Senate, particularly from two Republican politicians, Henry Cabot Lodge and William Borah, and especially in regard to Article X of the Covenant, ensured that the United States would not ratify the agreement. Their objections were based on the fact that by ratifying such a document, the United States would be bound by international contract to defend a League of Nations member if it was attacked.

They believed that it was best not to become involved in international conflicts. Given the contradictory aims of reparations and future stability, statesmen found themselves in a terrible bind. The Allied nations ultimately rejected the idea of peace without victory in favor of making Germany pay for causing the war in their minds and for perpetuating and escalating the conflict for four long years.

The treaty forced Germany to surrender colonies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific; cede territory to other nations like France and Poland; reduce the size of its military; pay war reparations to the Allied countries; and accept guilt for the war.

We tend to think the reparations payments were controversial, but these provisions must be viewed in proper historical context. Reparations and harsh peace settlements were not unusual. For example, when Russia surrendered to Germany in , Germany issued extraordinarily harsh peace terms under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk these terms were invalidated by the Paris peace settlements.

Equally controversial, perhaps, were the territorial adjustments dictated by the Versailles Treaty as well as other postwar treaties. These adjustments led to resettlement of populations, and in central and eastern Europe, new nations were carved out of old empires. New nations were created, but they were unstable and vulnerable, given that they had little support or funding from more established nations. No one in Germany was happy with the settlement, and the Allies threatened Germans with military invasion to get them to sign the treaty.

After four years of war and sacrifice, German citizens felt humiliated to accept blame for the war and territorial loss. Wilson wanted to build a better world in which to live which would not need to resort to war to deal with problems. Wilson was determined to work to get a fairer world, and would use all different kinds of leverage to get his way. Wilson did not think that Germany should be punished for the war, and therefore he did not want to treaty on Germany to be too harsh.

It was a worry of Wilson that if Germany was treated particularly badly then it could provoke another war. Wilson believed that countries should be working together to solve problems and that democracy should be the prevailing ideas in running countries. He stated that a League of Nations, a meeting place for all countries to talk about their problems and solve them, should be created.