History Essay Paper 1-November

HISTORY ESSAY
PAPER 1-NOVEMBER 2004
QUESTION 5

A)Clemenceau who was the prime minister of France was a very tough politician. As France’s population, land and industry was in decline compared to Germany’s, Clemenceau and other French leaders saw the treaty as an opportunity to cripple Germany. They wanted revenge, and more. They wanted Germany to pay, recover France as well as USA andBritain for all the damage they have done. Clemenceau wanted to weaken their economy by asking a hug amount of money for reparations, the French president (Poincaré) even wanted Germany broken up into a collection of smaller states, but Clemenceau new that British and American’s will not agree to this. Germany wanted demilitarize the Rhineland and them to have a weak navy and army, to humiliate them sothey would have a negative public image. All this issues were to prevent a future war, as France was just beside Germany and they already had the bad experience where they invaded them. But, Clemenceau was a realist, and knew he would probably be forced to compromise some of this issues. Lloyd George, the prime minister of Britain was a also a realist, and as an experienced politician he knewthere would have to be compromise. At the peace talks Lloyd George was often in the middle ground between Clemenceau and Wilson, he wanted Germany to be punished but not too harshly. Britain was threatened by its navy and colonies so Lloyd George wanted the to lose them, but he didn’t want another war as Wilson, he didn’t want a revenge in the future. He really wanted to restart trade with each otheragain. Before, they were the second largest trading partner. Even though, British people may not like it but the fact was that trade with Germany meant jobs for them.
295 words.

c) We cant say the treaty of Versailles is right or wrong. Each sides have their reasons. The treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty to establish the conditions over the defeated Germany. None of the big three(George Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George) was happy with the eventual terms of the treaty. After months of negotiations all of them had to compromise on some of their aims, other wise there would never had been a treaty. On one hand, the treaty of Versailles was fair because the allies treated Germany with similar criteria’s used by the German’s in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In otherwords when the Russians surrendered the Germans took advantage of their weakness and imposed, a harsh treaty. Russia lost 34% of it’s populations, 32% of it’s agricultural land, 54% of their industry.
From the point of view of the big three, specially France and Britain had started war and have to accept the blame for it and should be punished:
War had occurred in France , that crippledthem, they where the ones who suffered the most, and they needed compensations, and for the reason written ahead Germany had to pay reparations to the allies caused by the war, an enormous amount of money.
To take Germany’s overseas empires was fair since they had tried to take France and Britain’s, it had been one of the causes of the bad relation between Britain and Germany before was. Now Franceand Britain controlled them.
The treaty restricted German armed forces to a level well bellow what they have been before; the army was limited to 100.000 men, conscription was banned, this meant that soldiers had to be yes or yes volunteers, no armored vehicles, submarines neither aircraft, the navy could only build six battleships. All this restrictions where taken to prevent a future war. Alsothe Rhineland became a demilitarized zone, put differently no German troops where allowed, and Rhineland was important because it was the border area between Germany and France, France wanted to be able to control them and be aware of anything happening in Germany and they wouldn’t be able to attack them. It was OK for German and Belgian soldiers to enter Rhur region and take what was owed to...