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The Treaty of Versailles [ii] was a peace treaty signed on 28 June 1919. As the most important treaty of World War I , it ended the state of war between Germany and most of the Allied Powers . It was signed in the Palace of Versailles , exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand , which led to the war.
Article 231, often known as the "War Guilt" clause, was the opening article of the reparations section of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War between the German Empire and the Allied and Associated Powers.
The Treaty of Versailles of 1871 ended the Franco-Prussian War and was signed by Adolphe Thiers of the Third French Republic and Otto von Bismarck of the newly formed German Empire on 26 February 1871. A preliminary treaty, it was used to solidify the initial armistice of 28 January between the powers. [1]
The Treaty of Versailles (signed in 1919) and the 1921 London Schedule of Payments required the Central Powers to pay 132 billion gold marks (US$33 billion at the time which is US$1052 billion in 2024 [2]) in reparations to cover civilian damage caused during the war.
Historians and economists differ over the causes of the German hyperinflation, particularly on the subject of whether it was caused by reparations payments. The Treaty of Versailles had imposed an undefined debt on Germany, which the London Schedule of Payments agreed in May 1921 had determined to be essentially 50 billion marks in A and B ...
The occupation of the heavily industrialized Ruhr district came in response to Germany's repeated defaults on the reparations payments required under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The French and Belgians intended to force Germany to supply the coal and other raw materials that were part of the reparations.
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. [109] 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. [110]
Paul French argues that the only victor of the Treaty of Versailles in China was communism, as rising public anger led directly to the formation of the CCP. The Treaty also led to Japan pursuing its conquests with greater boldness, which Wellington Koo had predicted in 1919 would lead to the outbreak of war between China and Japan. [26]