Quick questions on Consequences of WWI and the Treaty of Versailles 1919: VCE Modern History Unit 3

The German Spring Offensives (March to July 1918) failed; the Allied counter-offensives broke the Hindenburg Line. The German High Command (Ludendorff, Hindenburg) advised the Kaiser on 29 September 1918 to seek an armistice. The Kiel naval mutiny (29 October 1918) and the Kaiser's abdication (9 November 1918) ended imperial Germany. The armistice was signed at Compiegne on 11 November 1918.

WWI ended four multi-ethnic empires:

The conference opened on 18 January 1919 with delegates from 32 Allied states. Real decisions were made by the Council of Four: Woodrow Wilson (USA), David Lloyd George (Britain), Georges Clemenceau (France) and Vittorio Orlando (Italy). Germany and the new Soviet Russia were excluded.

Germany signed the Treaty under duress on 28 June 1919 in the Hall of Mirrors, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Key clauses:

The Covenant of the League of Nations (Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, in force 10 January 1920) created the first permanent international organisation. The League had an Assembly (all member states), a Council (permanent members Britain, France, Italy, Japan, plus rotating non-permanent seats), a Secretariat in Geneva, and the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague.

The post-war years compounded the Treaty's effects.

Margaret MacMillan (Paris 1919, 2001) argues the Treaty was the best compromise possible given Allied disagreement and that blaming the Treaty for WWII is a 1930s German propaganda construction.

The Spartacist Uprising in Berlin (January 1919), the Bavarian Soviet Republic (April 1919), the Hungarian Soviet Republic under Bela Kun (March to August 1919), and the Italian Biennio Rosso (1919-1920) all alarmed European elites. Each was crushed but each pushed governments rightward.

Bolshevik victory, Western intervention (British, French, US, Japanese forces in Murmansk, Archangel, Vladivostok), and the formation of the Soviet Union (30 December 1922) sealed the East-West ideological divide for the rest of the century.

Britain and France were burdened by war debts to the United States. Germany defaulted on reparations in late 1922. France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr (11 January 1923).

Italy was promised Trieste, South Tyrol, Istria, parts of Dalmatia, and colonial gains by the secret Treaty of London (April 1915). Versailles delivered less. Gabriele D'Annunzio's seizure of Fiume (September 1919) and Mussolini's March on Rome (28 October 1922) followed.

The Treaty was a grievance, but the slide to war in the 1930s required the Depression, the rise of Hitler, and the collapse of collective security. Pin causation specifically.

Article 231 assigned responsibility for losses and damage caused by the war "imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies." The phrase "war guilt clause" is a German political shorthand, not a literal article title.

Versailles dealt with Germany. Austria signed Saint-Germain, Hungary signed Trianon, Bulgaria signed Neuilly, the Ottoman Empire signed Sevres (later Lausanne).

The US Senate rejected ratification on 19 March 1920. The United States never joined.