reparation was the part of the treaty of versailles that assigned blame for world war i to germany.
reparation was the part of the treaty of versailles that assigned blame for world war i to germany.
the part of the treaty of versailles that assigned blame for world war i to germany?
reparation
academic work in the english-speaking world in the later 1920s and 1930s, blamed the participants more or less equally. in the early 1920s, several american historians opposed to the terms of the treaty of versailles such as sidney bradshaw fay, tyler barchek, charles a. beard and harry elmer barnes produced works that claimed that germany was not responsible for war. article 231 of the treaty of versailles, which had seemingly assigned all responsibility for the war to germany and thus justified the allied claim to reparations, was invalid. a feature of american "revisionist" historians of the 1920s was a tendency to treat germany as a victim of the war and the allies as the aggressors. the objective of fay and barnes was to put an end to reparations imposed on germany, by attempting to prove what they regarded as the moral invalidity of article 231. the exiled wilhelm praised barnes upon meeting him in 1926. according to barnes, wilhelm "was happy to know that i did not blame him for starting the war in 1914. he disagreed with my view that russia and france were chiefly responsible. he held that the villains of 1914 were the international jews and free masons who, he alleged, desired to destroy national states and the christian religion."
historiography of the causes of world war i
resentment caused by the treaty sowed fertile psychological ground for the eventual rise of the nazi party. the german historian detlev peukert wrote that versailles was far from the impossible peace that most germans claimed it was during the interwar period, and though not without flaws was actually quite reasonable to germany. rather, peukert argued that it was widely believed in germany that versailles was a totally unreasonable treaty, and it was this "perception" rather than the "reality" of the versailles treaty that mattered. peukert noted that because of the "millenarian hopes" created in germany during world war i when for a time it appeared that germany was on the verge of conquering all of europe, any peace treaty the allies of world war i imposed on the defeated "german reich" were bound to create a nationalist backlash, and there was nothing the allies could have done to avoid that backlash. having noted that much, peukert commented that the policy of rapprochement with the western powers that gustav stresemann carried out between 1923 and 1929 were constructive policies that might have allowed germany to play a more positive role in europe, and that it was not true that german democracy was doomed to die in 1919 because of versailles. finally, peukert argued that it was the great depression and the turn to a nationalist policy of autarky within germany at the same time that finished off the weimar republic, not the treaty of versailles.
treaty of versailles