analyze the aims and negotiating roles of the leaders at Paris, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the Fourteen Points, and the causes and effects of the United States’ rejection of the League of Nations.
Instruction
In January 1919, delegates from more than thirty countries gathered in Paris to make peace. The defeated powers were not invited to negotiate; they were handed terms. Five treaties followed, one for each defeated state, and the most important was signed with Germany at Versailles on 28 June 1919 — five years to the day after the assassination in Sarajevo.
The Big Four and their aims. Woodrow Wilson of the United States came with his Fourteen Points: open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, lower trade barriers, arms reduction, adjustment of colonial claims, borders drawn along lines of nationality, and a League of Nations to keep the peace. Georges Clemenceau of France, whose country had lost about 1.4 million soldiers and whose northeast lay in ruins, wanted security: a Germany too weak ever to invade again, and reparations to rebuild. David Lloyd George of Britain had promised voters to make Germany pay, but privately feared a humiliated Germany would seek revenge. Vittorio Orlando of Italy wanted the territory promised to Italy in 1915, and walked out when he did not get all of it.
The terms for Germany. Germany lost about 13 percent of its European territory, including Alsace-Lorraine to France and land to a restored Poland; its army was limited to 100,000 men, with no air force; the Rhineland was demilitarised; its colonies were taken; and Article 231 made it accept responsibility for the war’s loss and damage — the basis for reparations, set in 1921 at 132 billion gold marks. Germans called it the Diktat, the dictated peace.
The world outside Europe came to Paris too. Japan proposed a clause affirming the equality of races in the League Covenant; it won a majority of votes in committee but Wilson, as chair, ruled that it needed unanimity, and it was dropped. China, an Allied country, asked for the return of the German concession in Shandong; the treaty gave it to Japan instead, and in China the news set off the May Fourth Movement of 1919, a turning point for Chinese nationalism. A young Vietnamese man later known as Ho Chi Minh submitted a petition asking for rights for his people; it was ignored. Emir Faisal spoke for Arab independence. Instead, Germany’s colonies and the Ottoman Empire’s Arab lands became mandates under Article 22, administered by Britain, France, Japan and others as a “sacred trust of civilization” — colonial rule in a new form.
Worked example: promise versus outcome. Take Point V. Promise: the interests of colonized populations must have equal weight. Outcome: the mandate system gave former German and Ottoman territories to other empires, and the colonies of the victors were not discussed at all. Judgment: the promise was applied, if at all, only to the losers’ empires. Your chart does this for four points.
America says no. Wilson brought the treaty home, but the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate for ratification. Republican senators led by Henry Cabot Lodge wanted reservations, especially to Article 10 of the Covenant, which they feared could commit the United States to war without a vote of Congress. Wilson refused to compromise, suffered a stroke during a speaking tour in 1919, and the Senate rejected the treaty in November 1919 and again in March 1920. The United States never joined the League. Without it — and without Germany and the Soviet Union at first — the League lacked the power to enforce its decisions, a weakness the aggressors of the 1930s would exploit.
Could it have been different? (HI.4) Historians still debate whether the treaty was too harsh to accept and too weak to enforce, as the economist John Maynard Keynes argued in 1919, or whether later leaders’ choices, not the treaty itself, led to the next war, as the historian Margaret MacMillan has argued.
Reading: Wilson’s promises and the treaty’s terms
Woodrow Wilson, Address to Congress (the Fourteen Points), 8 January 1918, Points I, V and XIV; Treaty of Versailles (28 June 1919), Article 231; Covenant of the League of Nations, Article 22 · Public domain
As you read, mark every phrase that a colonized person in 1919 might have read as a promise.
Point I: Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
Point V: A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
Point XIV: A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.
Treaty of Versailles, Article 231: The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.
Covenant, Article 22: To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilisation…
Formative check
Work through these before moving on. They are not graded — they tell you, and your teacher, whether the standard below has landed yet.
What was Clemenceau’s main aim at the peace conference?
The United States joined the League of Nations after the Senate ratified the Treaty of Versailles.
Why did news from Paris set off the May Fourth Movement in China?
Complete the promise-versus-outcome chart for Points I, V, XIV and one other point of your choice: quote the promise, describe the outcome with evidence, and judge whether it was kept, partly kept or broken. Then write one paragraph: what difference might United States membership have made to the League, and what evidence makes you more or less confident?
How confident are you that you can analyze the peacemakers’ aims, the treaty’s terms and the effects of the United States’ rejection of the League?
Practice
Work these on paper or in your notebook, then open Check your answer. Aim for all of Fluency and Application; try at least one Challenge.
Printable version: this unit’s practice workbook (PDF)
Fluency
Build speed and accuracy with the core skill.
- Order: (a) Treaty of Versailles signed; (b) Fourteen Points; (c) Senate’s second rejection of the treaty; (d) reparations set at 132 billion gold marks; (e) May Fourth Movement.
Check your answer
Answer: (b) 8 January 1918 → (e) May 1919 → (a) 28 June 1919 → (c) March 1920 → (d) 1921.The treaty was signed five years to the day after the Sarajevo assassination; the reparations total came two years later. - Define mandate as used in Article 22 of the League Covenant, and give two examples.
Check your answer
Answer: A territory taken from Germany or the Ottoman Empire and administered by an Allied power under League supervision. Examples: Syria and Lebanon (France); Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan (Britain).A strong answer notes that colonized peoples often saw mandates as colonial rule under a new name.
Application
Use the skill in context. Show your reasoning.
- Source Article 231: “The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage…” Who wrote it, and why did Germans call the treaty a Diktat?
Check your answer
Answer: The victorious Allies wrote it; Germany was not allowed to negotiate the terms, only to sign. Germans therefore saw the treaty, and this clause especially, as a dictated peace.A strong answer identifies the authors, the conditions under which Germany ‘accepted’, and why that matters for reading the clause. - Promise versus outcome: Point V promised that in colonial questions “the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight.” How did the settlement treat that promise in China and in the Ottoman Arab lands?
Check your answer
Answer: China’s request for Shandong was refused and the German rights went to Japan; Ottoman Arab lands became British and French mandates rather than independent states. The promise was applied, if at all, only to the defeated empires’ territories, and not in the populations’ favor.A strong answer quotes the promise, gives specific outcomes, and judges whether it was kept. - Perspectives: how would Clemenceau and a German voter of 1919 each describe the treaty’s terms for Germany?
Check your answer
Answer: Clemenceau: necessary security for a France invaded twice in fifty years, and reparations to rebuild. The German voter: a humiliating, dictated peace that took territory, colonies and the army and blamed Germany alone.A strong answer states each view in its holder’s terms and connects it to that country’s experience of the war.
Review
Keep earlier skills sharp.
- Review (World History A, Unit 4): which event of 1914 does the date of the Versailles signing, 28 June 1919, deliberately recall?
Check your answer
Answer: The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914.The choice of date linked the peace directly to the crisis that began the war, which reinforced the treaty’s message of German responsibility.