Under each of the following six points briefly explain why Germany reacted so angrily to the Treaty of Versailles.
1. Germans were no aware of the situation in 1919.
- They thought that the German government had simply agreed to cease fire and that Germany should have been at the Paris Peace Conference
- Angry that the government was not represented at the talks and that they were forced to accept a harsh treaty.
2. War guilt and reparations
- Germans felt that the blame should be shared
- They feared the reparations would cripple them
3. Disarmament
- An army of 100,000 was small for Germany's size plus the army was a symbol of German pride
- None of the allies were disarmed to the extent that Germany was
4. German territories
- Germany lost alot of territory
- It was a major blow to German pride and it's economy
- Lost important industrial areas
- Britain and France was increasing their empires
5. Fourteen Points and League
- Treatment of Germany was not keeping up with Wilson's 14 points
- Divided by the terms forbidding Anschlus with Austria or hived off into new countries such as Czechoslovakia to be ruled by non Germans
- Felt insulted
- Many people felt that the Germans were themselves operating a double standard
- Their call for fairer treatment did not square with the way that they treated Russia in the Treaty of of Brest-Litovsk in 1918- Versailes was much less harsh than Brest-Litovsk
- Germany's economic problems were partially self inflicted
- Other states had raised taxes to pay for war- Kaiser's government planned to pay war debts by extracting reparations from defeated states
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