Describe the Terms in the Treaty of Versailles Which Caused the Most Bitterness in Germany
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Describe the terms in the Treaty of Versailles which caused the most bitterness in Germany.
The treaty of Versailles was very harsh on the Germans and they hated it. There were several different terms in the treaty which affected different people in different ways.
The first was Clause 231. This was the guilt clause. This was important because it meant that Germany had accepted responsibility for the damages caused in the war. By accepting this they also accepted punishment that came with it including the rest of the treaty. The Germans hated this term the most because if they hadnt accepted it they wouldnt have to accept the others.
The Second term limited the number of people allowed in the German armed forces. Germany was also not allowed to force people to join the army, they had to join as a volunteer. It limited them to having 100,000 soldiers, 6 battleships and no submarines or airforce. This left Germany defenceless from attack in several places. Many people felt uncomfortable because neighbouring countries could just walked into Germany whenever they liked. For example, the Rhineland was left open to attack from France. This term mostly bothered the people around the borders of Germany, so those deeper in Germany were not as affected.
The third term was reparations. Germany was to pay the countries in the war back. They had to pay 6.6 billion pounds, money it could not afford. This affected everyone in Germany and destroyed the German economy. They just couldnt keep up with the payments as their main sources of income had been removed. The government tried to come up with a way to solve this, they printed more money in the hope that they could use this to help pay off the debt. This made the money worth less though because there was more of it, so the government printed more. The economy fell apart and prices rose enormously. Everyday things would cost millions of German marks, so the governments plans had only made things worse.
The fourth term was about Germany losing some of its land. It lost all its colonies and several valuable parts of Germany. This is one of the reasons the reparations were so hard to pay, the rich bits of land that were the source of most of Germanys money, with their coal, trees and other things that they could sell (for example, Poland) were all taken away from them with this term.