The Treaty of Versailles –
‘Unfair and dangerous to Future World Peace’
The Treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty that officially ended World War I between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany. It was signed on June 28, 1919, exactly 5 years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, one of the events that triggered the start of the war. Although the armistice signed on November 11, 1918 put an end to the actual fighting, it took six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude a peace treaty. But was this a positive thing?
Many people would argue and say that this treaty was definitely a negative thing. The first problem resulting from the treaty was the isolation of Russia from the League of Nations because it had turned communist. This may have resulted in Russia going against the League of Nations. The second problem was that the treaty left the Germany Economy so weak that people became bitter toward the Weimar Republic and left the door open for a dictator. This was bad because people gave sympathy to Germany and may have turned against the League of Nations. But the biggest problem was that it led to the rise of Hitler and World War 2. Germany did not agree with the peace treaty so Hitler took charge and commenced war against the League of Nations. This resulted in just less than six years of solid war and approximately 64 million deaths, many of them coming from Russia, who still fought with The Allies.
However in some ways this treaty was obviously a good thing; it ended World War 1 which was catastrophic. World War 1 killed approximately 8,500,000 people and wounded 19,536,000, not as much as World War 2 but it is still a significant number of casualties. It was also good that the fighting ended six months before the actual treaty was signed. It was good for The Allies that the treaty was signed at this time because Germany was in the worst state they had ever been in the First World War. There...