Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles marked the end of the war that caused the deaths of over 40 million people.  The conflicts that began the Great War were numerous as they were complicated.  Even as Britain, France, and the United States emerged victorious from such devastation, new conflicts arose.  The task of drawing up a peace treaty that would prevent future wars and officially end the current one was left to the leaders of the victorious nations.  The peacemakers tried very hard to make a treaty that would satisfy all nations, however, they made many mistakes within the treaty, and did not attend to some of the more important matters with enough attention.  The Treaty of Versailles was the root cause of World War II because of the many flaws throughout the document.           

First and foremost, the peacemakers started by redrawing the maps of Europe.  They broke up the weak and defeated empires into many small countries.  Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia all emerged onto the European map after the treaty was done redrawing the borders (MacMillan).  The peacemakers did not take into account the various ethnic groups within each country and many of these countries contained large amounts of Germans who wanted to rejoin Germany.  The many different minority groups within each nation created civil unrest that often destabilized the new countries.  On top of it all, these new nations were not given a very good form of government in which to stabilize their society on.  The primitive form of government used by these new nations caused for these countries to be very weak, and made them prime targets to be conquered by a stronger nation in years to come.

Germany was given a more viable government system than the new nations.  The Weimar Republic replaced the old monarchy.  The republic, drawn up with the guidance of Max Weber, was made to “embody all the best features of the American constitution.  But it had one serious weakness.  The president, elected for a seven-year term, was not the head of the government: that was the chancellor, a party figure responsible to parliament.  But the President, under Article 48, was endowed with emergency powers when parliament was not in session.  From 1923 onwards this article was perversely invoked whenever parliament was deadlocked. And parliament was often deadlocked, because proportional representation prevented the development of a two-party system and absolute majorities” (Johnson).  This system made it so that whenever parliament was jammed, the president could behave similar to a dictator.  The instability created by having both democracy and near dictatorship at the same time caused dissatisfaction among some of the German citizens.  The dissatisfaction led to the formation of several political parties that called for government reform (most notable being the Nazi party).  Fortunately, the Weimar Republic had done well until 1929, but once the depression hit and the Weimar Republic failed miserably, the German people looked towards the person that was giving them the answers to their problems.  The Nazi party was able to gain immense popularity during the depression, by promising jobs, and stability to the people.  If the Treaty of Versailles had provided the Germans with a better government, then the depression would not have been as bad and the Nazi party would never have taken power.