The Treaty of Versailles

1919 CE — Europe, The Allied powers

Today: France (the palace of Versailles)

The victors met at the palace of Versailles in 1919 to settle the war, and Germany was not invited to negotiate — it was handed the terms and told to sign, which Germans bitterly called the Diktat. The treaty's Article 231 assigned Germany and its allies responsibility for the war, and that clause became the legal basis for reparations later fixed at 132 billion gold marks. Germany lost Alsace-Lorraine to France and territory to a reconstituted Poland, forfeited its overseas colonies, had the Rhineland demilitarized, and saw its army capped at 100,000 men with no air force, submarines, or tanks. The treaty also created the League of Nations — which the United States, whose president had proposed it, then refused to join. The British economist John Maynard Keynes resigned from the delegation in protest and published a book predicting the settlement would wreck Europe's economy and produce another war. Whether it actually caused what followed is genuinely disputed by historians — but the resentment it fed was real, and it was harvested.

Worth knowing: Keynes called the treaty a 'Carthaginian peace' after Rome's erasure of Carthage — and Germany's final reparations payment was not made until October 2010, ninety-two years after the guns stopped.

Pattern: Legitimating-narrative collapse — The story that justifies an order (divine right, mandate, ideology) loses credibility; the order it propped up follows.

Entry 209 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.