Talk:Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles

removed from lede since it lacks balance

The great majority of Germans felt humiliated and resentful on this point, and it became a major campaign issue for the Nazis in the 1920s. Overall the Germans felt they had been very unjustly punished by what they called the "diktat of Versailles." Schulze says, the Treaty placed Germany, "under legal sanctions, deprived of military power, economically ruined, and politically humiliated."

References

unable to verify

When the Germans on first reading it protested vehemently, the Allied position hardened and there was no effort made to revise it to remove the "guilt" theme.

References

Authors of the clause

This recent edit to the article inserted a source that stated Keynes was a key author of Article 231. I do not have access to all the sources I had when writing up the majority of this, so I am having to rely on GoogleBooks for the below (granted a mixture of quality and relevance to the topic):

• Brownell and Drace Brownell, The First Nazi, unknown page: "...Article 231, written by two American diplomats, John Foster Dulles and Norman Davis..."
• Gordon Matel (editor), A Companion to Europe, 1900-1945, unknown page: "Two American delegates, the young ... Dulles and ... Davis, produced ... Article 231..."
• Alan Sharp, David Lloyd George, unknown page: "Two Americans, John Foster Dulles, Lansing's nephew, and Norman Davis, suggested that they should differentiate between Germany's ... This was the origin of Article 231, the 'War Guilt' clause"
• Alan Sharp, The Versasilles Settlement, p. 81: "It was Dulles who, on 21 February, suggested a way of this impasse when outlined a clause affirming Germany's theoretical responsibility ... After further debate, the Council agreed to consider a draft based on Norman Davis's suggestion..."
• James Srodes, On Dupont Circle, p. 83: in regards to reparations "When his recommendations were ignored, Keynes resigned in protest and went home ... Dulles ... together with Norman Davis ... drafted what became ... the 'war guilt' clause..."
• Leonard Smith, Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, p. 72: "As early as February 22, John Foster Dulles submitted draft articles on reparations ..." Then briefly outlines Norman Davis' revisions.

The only source that I could find that outright states Keynes played a part in writing it, is the one from the above mentioned edit: Donald Moggridge (the online source omitted). Moggridge sources his statement from Lentin, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and the Guilt of Germany: An Essay in the Pre-History of Appeasement, p.74":

"Some protested at the obvious violation of the Lansign note. But most acquiesced. The war-guilt clause, though objectionable in principle, seemed to those Keynes and Dulles, who helped to draft it,..."

The rest of the quote is not available via snippet view. Without the rest of the page, one cannot tell, but it does seem like Lentin appears to be making a point about something else and is describing Dulles as the writer of the article (although, that itself is open to interpretation without the full page). One cannot help, but think that Moggridge made a mistake, or is pushing a fringe theory since most other sources do not refer to Keynes as a writer of the clause (which would make sense, since he didn't agree with it, resigned in protest, and wrote an entire book about the situation that he called a "Carthaginian Peace").

Additional thoughts?EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 00:06, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Misquotes - Davies, Kershaw, MacMillan

Reading the original sources I note that some of the historians used to support the idea that the article specifically was problematic (rather than the Versailles settlement as a whole, or the German perception of it, or etc. etc.) seem to have been misquoted:

• Davies didn't mention the "war guilt" clause explicitly, and was talking about Versailles in general. The specific section (in a very general review of inter-war history) reads:

"The republican government of Germany was invited only in order to sign the Treaty of Versailles without comment, to accept sole guilt for the preceding war, and to pay astronomic reparations"

This doesn't support the statement that Davies criticised Article 231 of doing this, but instead that he was perhaps critical of the Versailles Treaty - if he wasn't just describing the POV of the Weimar government that is.

• Kershaw stated that:

"The ‘national disgrace’ felt throughout Germany at the humiliating terms imposed by the victorious Allies and reflected in the Versailles Treaty signed on 28 June 1919, with its confiscation of territory and, even more so, its ‘guilt clause’, enhanced the creation of a mood in which such ideas were certain of a hearing"

Kershaw, in his book about the rise to power of Hitler, does not attribute the "national disgrace" entirely to the war guilt clause but as a factor alongside the loss of territory.

• Macmillan was talking about both Articles 231 and 232:

"Starting the section in the treaty on reparations were two articles— Articles 231 and 232—that came to be the object of particular loathing in Germany and the cause of uneasy consciences among the Allies. Article 231 assigned responsibility to Germany and its allies for all the damage caused by the war. Article 232 then restricted what was an unlimited liability by saying that since Germany’s resources were in fact limited, it should be asked to pay only for the specified damages."

A fair summary of what she said here would necessary mention that it was both 231 and 232 that were "loathed", not just 231.

Particularly talking about Davies/Kershaw, I don't think we should be citing throw-away comments from historians written in a very general context, in works not about Versailles, as of equal weight to entire academic papers discussing Versailles and the article in detail. Obviously there is still discussion amongst historians about the Versailles treaty and the "war guilt" question (though my personal view is that the combined work of Fischer and Marks pretty much closed the book on that barring any more discoveries in the archives) but we need not exaggerate the extent of that dispute. FOARP (talk) 11:50, 8 March 2024 (UTC)