I have just written and submitted my end of unit test on Britain and Appeasement to my ICS tutor. Generally I am happy with what I have done, although I think I could have done better on the source question. I could see what the sources were saying and how they related to the question, but think that I struggled to get as much out of them as possible. I'm happier with the longer question, although my tutor might say (
as before) that I should back up what I'm saying more. I tend to go for broad brushstrokes and general trends with odd bits of detail rather than supporting everything I say with all the possible facts and figures. I justify this by saying that this is as much as I could write in the time and possibly remember, but I wonder whether I should try and write more and with more detail in the time.
All will be revealed once I get my mark...
my long answer was:
Why was the Treaty of Versailles controversial, and why did the terms of the Treaty continue to influence European politics between 1919 and 1939?
The Treaty of Versailles was controversial at the time, and indeed afterwards, for several reasons, not least because of the detrimental effect it had on European politics in the interwar years. Indeed, a case could be made that the conditions of the Treaty sowed the seeds for war two decades later.
Turning first to the Treaty itself, it can be seen to have been a controversial document both among the victors and defeated nation. The victorious powers disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the treaty, with the French seeing it as a way of punishing Germany for the war and reducing Germany’s power so that she would not be threatened again. The British echoed this view publicly while privately wanting to ease French punitiveness, evidenced by the Fountainbleau Memorandum. Central to this was the view, put forward by JM Keynes, that without a German economic recovery, Europe would not prosper and another war would be likely. Finally, the USA under Wilson, was guided more by an idealistic vision, wanting to create a peaceful post-war order built around the League of Nations and national self-determination. These disagreements - particularly between Britain and France - continued throughout the post-war years, with each international incident (such as German’s reparations bill, and the later re-occupation of areas taken from her under the Treaty) dividing the 2 nations over whether compromise with Germany should be sought or whether the terms of the Treaty should be enforced, perhaps militarily.
Moreover, the Treaty was also extremely controversial for the defeated power. Not only did Germany lose territories and colonies, such as the Sudetenland to the Czechs, Alsace and Lorraine to the French, and have the Rhineland occupied and demilitarized, she also had her army reduced dramatically to what was essentially a small defensive army with no tanks or heavy artillery. Last but by no means least, Germany also had to accept responsibility for the war through the so-called War Guilt clause and pay reparations to the allied powers - at a figure that was later set at £6,600m). Put together, these were seen as a humiliation by the Germans who saw the Treaty as a Diktat, the result of the German military being, like the Wagnerian hero Siegfried, ‘stabbed in the back’ by those that Hitler referred to as ‘The November Criminals’ (despite it being the case that the military itself had sued for peace). Germans were particularly aggrieved that, as they saw it, the Treaty went against the 14 Points put forward by Wilson that had promised “no annexations, no contributions, no punitive damages” as well as national self-determination. Through the Treaty, Germany suffered each of these and her national self-determination was undermined through, for example, the occupation of the Rhineland. Finally, Germany was aware of the allied, particularly the French, desire to punish her and the way that the Treaty was framed through this motivation.
These two factors, the disagreements between the allies (particularly Britain and France as the USA had subsequently withdrawn into isolationism) and German grievances about the treaty influenced - indeed arguably poisoned - European politics in the interwar period in several ways. First, it led to those allied powers who had, they felt, contributed to the war but gained nothing from the Treaty, Italy and Japan, to embark in the 1920s and 1930s on military struggles to gain land and influence. Mussolini in Italy, for example, felt that the Treaty of Versailles had given Italy nothing, and wanted to extend Italian influence through a new Roman empire, a view that led him to invade Abyssinia in 1935. Secondly, throughout the two decades, France and Britain frequently disagreed on the question of how Germany should be treated, with the actual political decision being an uneasy compromise between the two. Whereas in questions such as the payment of reparations, how to respond to German rearmament in the early 1930s and finally German territorial re-acquisitions in the mid to late 1930s (The Rhineland, Austria, Sudetenland and the rump of Czechoslovakia), France responded with alarm and calls for action, Britain, in contrast, sought to appease Germany and avoid making any firm commitments to France. Thirdly, while it would be wrong to argue that the Treaty of Versailles led inevitably to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis and ultimately to the Second World War, the Treaty did create many of the grievances that the Nazis, as well as other far right groups, capitalized on in their rise to power. A central theme in Nazi rhetoric from the early 1920s was that the ‘November Criminals’ should be punished, that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles should be broken and Germany given national self-determination, and later, that Germany should be a great military power again (and indeed, should expand). Once the Nazis gained power in 1933, Germany may be seen to have done just this - undermining the territorial and military changes enshrined in the Treaty. Indeed, it could be argued that German foreign policy throughout the mid to late 1930s, culminating in the invasion of Poland and the outbreak of war, was aimed at undermining the Treaty and destroying the European order that it had created.
In this way, to sum up, the Treaty of Versailles was controversial in the way that it divided the allies and laid sole blame for the Great War on Germany, through punitive measures such as territorial loss and reparations and war guilt clause. From the Treaty to the outbreak of war in 1939 it is possible to see how these two themes interlinked and influenced European politics - most notably through German attempts to roll back the Treaty and Anglo-French disagreement over how to respond to this.
