The Question of Blame

Since my in-laws are German and both grew up in Germany during World War II as children, I became intrigued by World War I and the implications of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany. My mother in-law experienced first hand the annexation of the German speaking part of Czechoslovakia to Germany while my father-in-law lived in a small town outside of Stuttgart during World War II. Their lives were severely impacted by the hardships of the war. Going back historically to World War I, the Treaty of Versailles provided the conditions for World War II; however, I was struggling with the “punishment” concept imposed on Germany from the Versailles Treaty. I couldn’t get the answer I was looking for in our textbook so I did some online research to better understand why Germany was blamed for the Great War and the subsequent punishment that was metered out in the Versailles Treaty.

There are a number of superficial and fundamental causes of the Great War. In reading through a number of web sites, the most comprehensive site, http://www.firstworldwar.com laid it out pretty succinctly. The struggle for power, domination, land, military might and a lot of political posturing was prevalent in Europe, but it was the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand that lit the fuse for war. Germany had a big hand in all of this because they were considered the instigators behind Austria declaring war on Serbia. Due to the alliances that had been formed, Triple Entente (Russia, France, Great Britain) versus the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy), each big power came to the aid of the little guy because of treaties that had previously been signed. Germany’s biggest mistake and which drew a lot of criticism, was the invasion of Belgium, a neutral party, to obtain access into France during the war. It seems fair to say that Germany should shoulder much of the blame for World War I since it had the opportunity to prevent it and German military establishment seemed eager to go to war to advance their agenda; however, there were other factors and circumstances for the power struggle that was going on in Europe and all parties involved were at fault. I kept coming back to my question as to why punish Germany so severely in the Versailles document?

Germany was a big fish in the struggle for power within Europe. Through historical documents from this time period, Germany single-handedly precipitated an escalation of the Austrian-Serbian crisis in order to launch the war they were looking for with Russia and France. After the assassination of the Archduke, Germany told Austria to be unreasonable in their dealings with Serbia. Austria had issued an ultimatum to Serbia “that the assassins be brought to justice effectively, nullifying Serbia’s sovereignty (www.firstworldwar.com).” but instead of rejecting the ultimatum as was expected, Serbia conceded all but a few minor points. Austria-Hungary could then have accepted Serbia’s concessions as they stood; however, Germany encouraged Austria to attack Serbia anyway. Germany had given Austria a “Blank Cheque” which was an almost unconditional guarantee of support for Austria-Hungary no matter what she decided to do. Germany was actually looking forward to war. Additional documents show that Germany also had a plan called the Schlieffen Plan - which included passing through Belgium in order to get to France and after France’s defeat the German army would make their way east to Russia. All fingers pointed to Germany and they would pay for their “war-plans” at the end.

The end of the Great War was declared with the signing of the Versailles Treaty. Germany was presented with the document at the Palace of Versailles and was given three weeks to accept the terms. German delegates complained about the severity of the conditions, but these went unheeded, and it is well documented that Britain and President Woodrow Wilson felt that the document was extremely harsh against Germany. According to the Versailles Treaty, Germany had to take sole responsibility for the war, pay steep reparations to the “winners”, lost 13.5% of its 1914 territory and all of its overseas possessions, had growth on its army restricted to 100,000 men and was banned from the use of heavy artillery, gas, tanks and aircraft. This was a huge blow to Germany. Their chances of domination had dissipated, and by all historical accounts, Germany’s pride and nationalism would resent this treaty for the next twenty years. It is easy to look back now and speculate as to what might have happened if all of these situations were handled differently. I am glad I did a little more research to understand Word War I and the Treaty of Versailles. It helps me understand what happened next in the course of world history.