Achievements

1.  Good intentions:

“No one,” wrote PJ Larkin in his 1965 textbook, “could criticise the aims of the peacemakers or the good intentions of the principles they tried to follow”, and he acknowledged “the number of nations involved, the complexity of a settlement which was truly worldwide, the highly emotional atmosphere in which they had to work, the shortage of time” as making their task all-but-impossible. 

2.  Restrictions on Germany:

The Treaties represented a genuine effort to prevent Germany ever launching another European war.  Germany’s armed forces were dismantled; large areas of territory were given away (including all its overseas empire) and the Germans were required to pay reparations for the next 60 years.  Germany’s allies – Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire – were dismembered into multiple states.  Meanwhile, the Treaty of Versailles not only returned Alsace-Lorraine to France, but gave France a buffer in the form of a demilitarised Rhineland. 

3.  League of Nations:

One achievement which cannot get enough credit is the setting up of the League of Nations.  There had been congresses of nations in the past, but never one for every nation on earth.  The concept of a ‘parliament of the nations’ was world-changing, and still affects international relations today in the form of the League’s successor organisation, the United Nations.  Not only the organisation itself, moreover, but some of the ‘Commissions’ it set up, continue to benefit the world today – eg International Labour Organization (ILO); the Permanent Court of International Justice (became today’s International Court of Justice); the Health Organization (→ World Health Organization); and the Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (→ UNESCO). 

4.  Self-Determination:

The other world-changing principle was 'self-determination', leading to the creation of new states and the destruction of the old European dynastic empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey.  By implication, the Treaty took away sovereignty from royalty, and handed it over to the peoples. 

5.  Article 19:

...  of the Treaty of Versailles/League of Nations identified a mechanism to change its (and other treaties’) terms “whose continuance might endanger the peace of the world”. 

Defects

1.  It was a Diktat:

The conference was not initially intended to be the conference which determined the peace – it was originally conceived as a pre-meeting at which the victors could meet to agree what they would collectively demand of Germany at a peace conference which was meant to follow.  “It was a mistake”, wrote PJ Larkin, “to give the ex-enemy nations no chance to sit around the peace table”.  The absence of Germany and Russia from the negotiations, and subsequently of the USA from the League, blighted the Treaty’s chances of making a permanent peace. 

2.  Minorities:

It was always going to be impossible to draw boundaries which gave every member of every ethnic minority self-determination.  Moreover, it was not applied to Germans, who consequently found themselves living in Poland and Czechoslovakia.  This led to resentments (especially as the League of Nations’ Minorities Commission was not good at protecting minorities from discrimination), and gave Hitler an opportunity. 

3.  Empires:

Moreover, self-determination was only for Europe, and the empires of France and Britain were actually extended when they were given former German colonies to govern as Mandates.  Wrote Margaret Macmillan in 2003: "By their offhand treatment of the non-European world they stirred up resentments for which the West is still paying today.  In Africa they carried on the old practice of handing out territory to suit the imperialist powers.  In the Middle East they threw together peoples, in Iraq most notably, who still have not managed to cohere into a civil society”. 

4.  Enforccement:

The Treaty had no mechanisms to enforce its terms; it was up to the Allies to enforce it.  Britain and France invaded when the Germans failed to pay reparations in 1921, and the French invaded again in 1923 … but that was the last time. 

5.  Resentment:

As we have seen, the Treaty failed to satisfy even the Big Three who wrote it.  Instead, it created huge resentment in Germany, leading to the Dolchstosslegende, Kapp Putsch, and Hitler’s Munich Putsch.  Conversely, the feeling that reparations were too harsh shamed many politicians in Britain and France into appeasing Germany when Hitler began attacking the Treaty’s terms in the 1930s. 

6.  Self-determination:

As we have seen, the Treaty created a power vacuum/weakness in central Europe, which proved too weak to resist a resurgent Germany in the 1930s. 

This American cartoon from the Dayton News shows War having plastered the nations of the world with &_billions debt, affxed by blood. 

7.  Economic failure:

Although the League of Nations had an Economic and Financial Commission, it did nothing on the scale necessary to revitalise the European economy (eg compared to the Marshall Plan in 1947).  Indeed, reparations created economic instability in the early 1920s.  So the European economy limped on, and poverty created anger. 

Perversely – although in 1924 the USA stepped in to help Germany financially, reduced the scale of reparations and advanced huge loans – it insisted that France & Britain pay back their huge debts on time … thus making sure that, when Hitler started on the road to war, Britain and France were financially weak and their armed forces neglected. 

8.  The USA:

When Wilson went back to the USA, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty.  Wilson literally killed himself trying (and failing) to persuade the country to agree to it.  The Republicans won the next three Presidential elections, and the USA: (1) retreated into isolationism and refused to support either the Treaty or the League; and (2) ran a laissez faire business economy which collapsed in 1929, leading to a worldwide Depression which pushed Hitler into power.