What do you think about the Treaty of Versailles (1918)

Post Reply New Topic

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/inde ... 531AAbTmMl

That link goes to a person (presumably you) posting a question on a website, but the person is writing in such broken English that you cant figure out what he is asking.

Among the many things dealt with in the treaty of V, which ended the first world war, was to redrew the map of both of much of Europe, and of the whole middle east . So its a broad topic that you're asking us to opine on.

Among the many things the treaty did was to give you Poles back your country. About the same time the USA was put on the map (back in 1790) Poland got erased from it when Prussia, Austria, and Czarist Russia, ganged up on Poland and partitioned it between them. So giving you all back your country was a good thing.

Many folks credit our President Wilson for pressuring the diplomats at Versailles to restore Polish independence. And some folks (of Irish descent) are still angry at Wilson for doing that: for delivering Poland freedom, but for NOT also getting freedom for Ireland from the British Empire. Wilson couldnt do EVERY thing! Jeeze!


That person (you?) in your link talks about Palestine. The Ottoman Empire (basically the whole mideast west of Iran) got dismantled. And what is now Israel-Palestine was created as the "British Mandate of Palestine". But the Versailles treaty didnt really go beyond that. Later things (like the Balfourd Resolution) dealt with Jews and Arabs in Palestine. So the Versailles treaty can neither given much credit, nor much blame, for the later Arab Israeli situation.

So its not clear what point you're making, or what question you are asking.

I was concerned about the feelings of the Germans that they were living in our area.
These lands have returned to the newly reconstituted Poland after 123 years of non-existence

Every Pole including myself of this happy, but the Germans that lived here must not be laughing manner, for them it was their little homeland, when these lands returned to us, to Poland, probably they feel like the Palestinians after they learned to their lands now belong to Israel.

I'm just trying to look at each case from all perspectives.

I think that it is largely irrelevant after nearly a century. True, much of Europe and the Middle East are still configured much the same way as they were back then, but who among the signatories are still alive 98 years later? Who is still around to remember why it was drawn up in the first place?

In this sense, it is much like our own Constitution, in that only the Founding Fathers knew what the words really meant, and why those particular words were chosen.

An historical document, much debated and mis-construed.

Okay. About Poland (as I understand it) what you're talking about has more to do with the end of the Second World War then with the earlier ending of the First World War.

Poland got reinstated as a country with V treaty at the end of the First War. But it was created mostly out of land that had been part of Czarist Russia. The parts taken from what had been the Kaiser's Germany to make Poland were much smaller. Basically one narrow (but strategic) sliver of land that included a really narrow part that touched the Baltic coast called "the Polish Corridor" that gave Poland access to the sea via a small coastline. But it also split through Germany ( separating East Prussia from the rest of Germany).

But after the end of the second world war Poland jumped west on the map. It stayed about the same size but moved west making the country to the east (the Soviet Union) fatter, and making the western neighbor (Germany) thinner.

Poland lost a big chunk in the east (parts of what are now Belarus), but gained roughly the same large amount of real estate in the west from Germany.

It was then that Poland got big chunks of long time german territory inhabited by millions of ethnic Germans (Pomerania, East Prussia, Silesia). I think that most of those Germans were simply evicted to the west en masse and had to be resettled within the modern boundries of Germany. But you hear about folks in Silesia who still identify as Germans even today. You would know more about that than I.

My point is that (to my understanding) the ethnic German issue in Poland came a generation later than the Versailles Treaty.

Since Germany was the aggressor and started the Second World War its hard for me to feel sorry for the ethnic Germans. Loosing territory was part of the reparations to the victim countries, and part of the punitive fines of the crime. Niether the Palestinians nor the Zionist Israelis are guilty of starting a World War. So frankly- I have more sympathy for both the Palestinians and for the Israelis than I have for the Germans stuck in Pomerania after they lost the war that their own Fuhrer had started.

Wilson was the worst president the US ever had, he got us hooked on credit with the creation of the Federal Reserve and then got us involved in Europe's war decisively changing the outcome. There were a lot of war profiteers in the US that became very rich during first world war. WWI and treaty of Versailles set the course for WWII, it didn't happen in a vacuum. If the US never got involved in WWI then Adolf Hitler and the Nazis would of never taken power in Germany. Adolf probably dies of syphilis as a failed artist instead of the leader of Germany. Syke-Picot is basically why the Middle East is so screwed up, the British/French/Russian imperialists wanted to divide up the Ottoman Empire for themselves with imaginary lines in the sand. Almost all current problems can be traced to WWI.

The first part of this was really the macabre of it. It forced the Kaiser to hand over control of the country and set Germany into the kind of financial spiral that set up the Wiemar Republic and scraped the populace through such a dark valley that increasing numbers of the populace were ready for what John Ralston Saul often coins the secular hero - which is another way of saying a charismatic mad man who'll promise the stars.

For the most part, I agree with you. The treaty did nothing but lay the foundation for WWII. I especially agree that Wilson was a terrible President.

How were ethnic Germans in Poland responsible for the actions of Hitler?

Well duh. Because most of the "ethnic Germans in Poland" were not in Poland but were citizens of Germany until Hitler's war was over and the boundries were suddenly redrawn.

I was not talking about "ethnic Germans" who were not citizens of Germany itself like those in regions of Europe far from Germany (like the enclaves of Germans in the Ukraine).

I was talking about citizens of the Third Reich in the eastern parts of Germany itself (in Pomerania, East Prussia, and Silesia). They had been part of Germany (lived in areas that had been part of German states for centuries) and were no different than people in any other region of Germany during the Nazi regime. They voted for Hitler, and were part of the Third Riech and its war machine. So they had the same degree of collective guilt as folks in any other part of Germany. The Germans I am talking about suddenly found themselves in Poland when the war was over when the Soviet Occupiers of Eastern Europe gave Germany's eastern provinces to Poland. I am not talking about folks who had been a ethnic minority in Poland for ever.

You mean Edith Wilson because Woodrow was physically and mentally disabled for much of this peroid

We in Poland like Woodrow Wilson, because thanks to him, Poland regained its independence, but we do not like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for the sold Poland to Stalin.
After 1989, several streets in Poland, was named in his honor, as did other leaders of the Allied War II, with the exception of Stalin.

But a few years ago, in on city where city Council after local election right-wing parties gained majority argued that the streets are named after Franklin Delano Roosevelt should disappear because he sold to Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the American president on behalf of the American Democratic Party and everyone knows that the Democrats, the crypto communists

So they did change the street name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to Theodore Roosevelt went on the cost does not have to replace all the signs on the street

I'm not big on blaming populations or individuals, or assigning collective guilt (that's what Antisemitism is all about, after all). Not every German supported Hitler, even those who fought in the German army. Even those who did hardly knew the extent of Hitler's evil. Klaus Von Stauffenberg, who had attempted the failed bomb plot to assassinate Hitler, had actually been swept up in the nationalistic fervor at the beginning of the war, but eventually came to recognize the full extent of Hitler's crimes.
In the same vein, are the English who colonized Ireland to be held responsible for the atrocities committed by the British crown? Are the Irish all responsible for acts of terrorism perpetrated by the IRA, even if they see that terrorist organization as freedom fighters?

I think the reparations were a mistake.

I wish we had joined the League of Nations. Maybe the Nazi menace might never have taken hold.

That reminds me...



... This cartoon is from 1919...

What would US membership in the League of Nations even do to change things? Nothing, just like everyone else did. Japan invaded Manchuria and got condemned and they just gave everybody the middle finger and walked out. The Germans remilitarized and took back what they considered part of the German Empire, they did noting. The Italians invaded Ethiopia, they did nothing. There is a coup attempt in Spain, they make it into a massive bloody proxy war. Nobody had the appetite for war against the Axis powers in the 30s during the Great Depression, even when Britain and France declared war on Germany they didn't know what to do and we all knew what came next for France. Americans had no interest getting into another European war, too bad they lied into the first one Wilson. Without Wilson the war would of been much shorter some fairer negotiated peace as UK/France/Germany all faced possible insurrection if they kept fighting.