Topic: Effects of the Treaty of Versailles

Topic: Effects of the Treaty of Versailles

Kara Beauchamp

April 9, 2010

Key Passages Handout

Conflict: WWII.

Topic: Effects of the Treaty of Versailles.

Argument: The Treaty of Versailles is the most significant cause of WWII because it made the whole of Germany and Europe angry, allowing Hitler to easily rise to power and the war to start when this would not have happened otherwise.

Key Passages:

1. Primary Source

“The peace conditions imposed upon Germany are so hard, so humiliating, that even those who have the smallest expectation of a “peace of justice” are bound to be deeply disappointed. Our opinion of the lust of power and conquest of Germany is well known. But a condemnation of wartime actions must not amount to a lasting condemnation of a people. In spite of all they have done, the German people is a great and noble nation.…These conditions will never give peace. All Germans must feel that they wish to shake off the heavy yoke imposed by the cajoling Entente, and we fear very much that that opportunity will soon present itself. Fettered and enslaved, Germany will always remain a menace to Europe. We understand the bitter feelings of the Entente countries. But that does not make these peace conditions less wrong, less dangerous to world civilization, or any less an outrage against Germany and against mankind.”

  • Horne, Charles F. “Dutch AlgemeenHandelsblad Editorial on the Treaty of Versailles,June 1919.” First World War.com. 2000. Web. 3 April 2010. <

htm>.

2. Secondary Source

“The verdict of war guilt handed down against Germany seems hard to fault. France did not invade Germany, Germany invaded France. Britain did not violate Belgian neutrality, Germany did. Russia did not declare war on Germany, Germany declared war on Russia.”

  • Hays, Jeff, ed. The Treaty of Versailles. San Diego: Greenhaven Press Inc., 2002. Print.

3. Primary Source

“Which hand, trying to put us in chains like these, would not whither? The treaty is unacceptable.” –Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann. He refused to sign the treaty and later resigned. He was also Germany’s first democratically elected leader after WWI. Perisoco,

  • Joseph E. Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour. Toronto: Random House, Inc., 2004. 385-397. Print.

4. Secondary Source

“Everywhere, there was hatred in the air…Everyone was hated: the Jews, the capitalists, the nobles, the communists, the soldiers, the homeowners, the workers, the unemployed, the control boards, the politicians, the department stores, and the Jews again….it was as though Germany had been split in two, and both halves hated each other like in the Nibelungensage. And we know it, or at least we began to realize it.”

  • Mak, Geert. In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century. London: Random House Group, Ltd., 2004. 222-23. Print.
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