Download World War I

World
History
Honors
World War I
Mrs. Orzoff-Baranyk
Remember to answer the questions in gray
thoughtfully
World History
Please explain the author’s intent in the political cartoon on the cover of
this packet.
The Chain Reaction that Started the War:
June 28, 1914: Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
July 28, 1914: Austria declares War on Serbia
o Russia felt itself the big brother of Serbia and moved troops to the
Russian-Austrian border & the German border
 Would take about 6 weeks to complete
August 1, 1914: Germany declared war on Russia
August 3, 1914: Germany declared war on France *due to their alliance with Russia*
August 4, 1914: Britain declared war on Germany. *due to their alliance with Russia & France*
What should have been a war between Serbia & Austria Hungary now involved six countries.
The War Begins
Germany
Facing a two front war (France to the West, Russia to the
East)
The Schlieffen Plan
o Germany’s military plan named after it’s designer,
General Alfred Graf von Schlieffen
 Remember, before WWI generals were
creating mobilization plans just in case war
ever took place! This existed long before war
was declared.
o If 2 front war: attack France, then Russia
 Russia was less industrialized and would take
more time to mobilize troops and supplies.
(They had less railroads)
 Speed was key
o There were French troops along German border –
breaking through would be slow, and time was of the
essence.
o The border between France and Belgium was
unprotected because Belgium was a neutral country.
 Belgium: Neutral undefended border (treaties
of 1839 & 1870).
o
o
Germany demanded that its troops be allowed to pass through Belgium on their way to
France.
 Belgium as a recognized neutral country refused.
 Germany invaded Belgium which brought Great Britain into the conflict.
Great Britain enters the war – had a treaty with Belgium to protect them should they ever
be invaded.
British Propaganda about the invasion of Belgium
“Towns were sacked and burned, homes were pillaged; in many places portions of the population, men, women, and children,
were massed in public squares and mowed down by mitrailleuses, and there were countless individual instances of an
amazing and shameless brutality.”
“Many women and young girls, it is said, were raped by the German soldiers. Upon one
occasion seventy-eight men were taken outside the town and were made to pass before
German gendarmes who struck them with the butts of their revolvers. Of these seventyeight men only three escaped death.”
In most propaganda German’s are called “The Hun.”
Due to a speech given to German soldiers during the Boxer Rebellion in
China from Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Told them to act like the Mongol Huns and wreak havoc
“let the Germans strike fear into the hearts, so he'll be feared like the
Hun”
In allied propaganda of WWI it made people believe that Germans were
capable of the worst.
The British also cut the trans-Atlantic telegraph line between Germany & the
United States. The only information the United States heard about the War
came from Britain.
What impact do you think the communications about the Germans had
on the American public’s opinion of the war?
Countries Mobilize for War
Soldiers Mobilized
14
12
Millions
10
8
6
4
2
0
France
Germany
Russia
French Recruits
A young Australian Recruit
German Soldiers on their Way to Paris
Austro-Hungarian Recruits
Why is there a recruit from Australia? How did they get involved in WWI?
Describe the mood or attitude of the young recruits in all these pictures.
Britain
False Hopes
Soldiers were told the war would be short; most believed they would be home by Christmas
Few understood what was coming
o “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them again in our lifetime.”
– Britain’s Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey.
Britain’s Sir Edward Grey seemed to understand that this would not be a short war.
Explain what he meant in the quote above.
The Western Front: “A War of Attrition”
End of August 1914: Germans entered France
September 3, 1914: Germans on the edge of Paris
o Seems they are about to win
o French get intelligence stating Germany’s next
move
September 5, 1914: Battle of the Marne
End of the Summer 1914: Stalemate
The Battle of the Marne, September 6-12, 1914
German army had reached within 30 miles of Paris by the
Marne River.
September 7: 6,000 French reserve infantry troops moved
from Paris to the Marne River in streams of taxi cabs, 600 in
all.
September 8: French launch a surprise attack against the
German Second Army
September 9: the German armies began a retreat
o pursued by the French and British
(Below: The day of the Battle of the Marne River. Notice that
troops are lined up as if this were still the Napoleonic Wars!
They had no idea what was coming)
o German armies ceased their withdrawal after 40 miles & dug in, preparing trenches for
protection that were to last for several years.
Ended German hopes of carrying out the Schlieffen plan
Casualties: French - 250,000 losses, Germans – no official record, - 12,733 casualties.
What was the importance of the Battle of the Marne?
Above: Early Trench Warfare before both sides really began to
“dig in.” Left – Germans. Right – French.
The miles of Trenches carved into the earth 
Trench Warfare
Early 1915: miles of trenches
Huge losses/ very small gains
o Hard to advance and take territory when fighting from
a trench.
o “The men slept in mud, washed in mud, ate mud, and
dreamed mud” – a soldier
 Swarmed with rats, no fresh food, hard to
sleep
No Man’s Land & Going Over the Top
o The only way to advance was to “go over the top,” or
to climb out of the trench and run from your trench to
the trench of the enemy. The goal was
to jump into the enemy’s trench and take
it over forcing them to retreat. No Man’s
Land, the area between the trenches,
was filled with barbed wire (put out at
night), and frequently the bodies of
fallen soldiers. The enemy shot artillery
& guns into No Man’s land to kill as many
advancing soldiers as they could.
 “The trenches disappeared, filled
with earth…the air was
unbreatheable. Our blinded,
wounded, crawling, and shouting
soldiers kept falling on top of us
and died splashing us with blood.
It was living hell.” – a French
Soldier
Soldiers on the front line also had to worry about enemy snipers
(Left). Snipers were trained marksmen carrying rifles with
telescopic sights. They would find a tree in no
man's land, climb it, and wait. They wore
camouflage clothing, and when an enemy
soldier walked by, the sniper would shoot him
in the head.
Interview with a British Soldier, Walter Hare
Q: Did the training you got prepare you for trench warfare?
Hare: It wasn't a scrap of good. I was trained at West Hartlepool, I learnt how to salute officers, which
seemed to be the main thing in the army, I learnt to slope arms and present arms, which you can't do in a
muddy trench. I fired five rounds before I went out to France, I never saw a grenade...I never saw a machine
gun, so I was a rookie when I went to France, but I think the fault was that the chaps who trained us were
regular soldiers, there was a corporal and a sergeant, and all they knew was rote marching and drilling. If
we'd had somebody who'd been out of France, say wounded in the trenches, [who] could have told us
something, about trench life, what it was like, [that] would have [been] a lot more use to us, but they couldn't
tell us anything, because they didn't know.
Trenches flooded and caused feet to rot
...I was told to take a -- a message...to find the commander of the battalion on our left, and I was moving down this support line having
a word with...one or two of our fellows and then I came to bays where there was nobody at all. They weren't occupied, and I thought
perhaps it weren't the battalion on our left, perhaps they were
Germans.
So I went very carefully round the next bend and I saw one of our
battalion lads laid out on the ground on top of the parapet with his legs
up in the air. And I said, "What -- what are you trying on?" He said, "Well
I'm trying to get a wound if I can in my legs." He said, "There's quite a
bit of machine gunning going on and a few rifle fires." He said, "I thought
I might get a bullet through my leg and get home to Blighty," which of
course meant to get home to England. I said, "Get down, old lad, and
forget about it, and I'll forget about it and your name will never...pass
my lips -- we all feel exactly like you." He said, "No, you don't feel like
me." I says, "Oh yes, we do, every one of us, but as we have a job to do,
we're going to do it." So I said, "You go back and get to your mates,"
which he did. And we were very big friends after that
because we had a secret that nobody else knew.
Q: ...Tell me about that attack on Rossinel wood, how
you disobeyed the officer...
Hare: ...We were told that we were going to make an
attack on, on the wood in front of us. That was all the
information we got about it and...we'd go over at
three minutes past seven, cock-eyed time, but I
remember we -- I -- we climbed...out of our trench
Going over the top
and through the barbed wire, which was supposed to have been cut, but it hadn't. We had very little
artillery bombardment before we went over.
...Some of our chaps were dropping down at the side of me, but I kept going. I got to the German
barbed wire, I got through that all right, and jumped into a German trench.....I jumped on to a dead
German laid in the front line trench.....
Well I kept going, I got to the German support line, there would be about twenty of us left...and there
was one officer. And after we'd been there some time [the officer] says, "...you can prepare -- we're
going to attack the wood," but by that time there was a corporal from a different regiment he'd got
mixed up with...he said, "We're not going up there, sir." [The officer] said, "This is an order." [The
corporal] said, "I don't care, sir." He said, "I'm not going up there." [The officer] says, "When you get
out, I'll report you to be court martialled." [The corporal] says, "None of us will get out if we go there."
[The officer] said, "...well fix your bayonets."
And this corporal said -- "You can't -- you can't fight machine guns with with bayonets." He said, "I'm
stopping here." I said, "Well I'm stopping with you," and the officer said, "This is an order, follow me,"
but nobody followed him. He went off on his own, and I never saw him again.
Artillery used to bomb No Man’s Land
...This corporal suggested we get behind the trench because the Germans would soon be firing down it or lobbing bomb[s] over, which
they did of course. He said, "Get behind and lay down behind the trench and...make a little bit of a parapet if you can with your
trenching tools," which we did. But it was muddy so we laid there all that day and kept firing a
few shots to let them know we were still here, expecting them to make a counter attack, which
they never did.
We stayed there all that day and that following night. No food, no water, getting short on
ammunition.... On the third day the corporal said, "Well, I don't know what we're going to
do...we're just short of ammunition, we've no food," he says, "we, we can't do any more
attacking on our own, we'll just have to stay here and see what happens."
But during the morning, one of our chaps from headquarters came forward to us and he said,
"I'm bringing orders for you. You've got to retire to the trenches you left, as best you can. Get
back as best you can." So we did, one at a time, we dodged off back and got through this wire
and back to our trench.
Tanks were created to get over trenches
So I finished up there, where I left. I think there were two hundred and thirty odd casualties, and we never gained a yard of ground. and
we never gained the wood of course, and the stupid part was, we could have taken that wood later on, the Germans left it, we could
have got it without firing a shot.
I lost a lot of me pals that we -- we needn't have done...Well I thought, how stupid it was.
The trouble was that the people who gave these orders -- for the attacks -- were in a chateau ten miles behind the line. They'd never
been to the trenches, they didn't know...what the conditions were like.
...I've always said, if some of these generals had spent one day in the front line with us, they wouldn't have been so keen on looking at a
map and saying, "Oh there's a wood here -- we'll attack this."
Explain why Walter Hare claimed his training wasn’t “a scrap of good” for dealing with
trench warfare?
Why do you think the soldier that Hare encountered in the Trenches was trying to get
shot?
What evidence do you see of mismanagement or confusion in how the battles of WWI
were run?
The Battle of Verdun: The Peak of the
Slaughter
longest battle (February 21, 1916 –
December 1916)
German push to win the western front, so
they could move on to starve the British
using submarine warfare.
Verdun: More important symbolically than
strategically; psychologically important
o Last town to fall in the FrancoPrussian War (when the Germans
Verdun before the 10 month long battle.
won).
o Fortress since Roman times
o To have it fall again would be devastating to the French.
one million German troops against 200,000 allies
o
o
1,400 guns along 8 mile front
100,000 shells poured into Verdun every hour
 That’s about 1,667 shells per minute.
 From a poem written by a WWI veteran who survived Verdun about his wounded
countrymen: “Verdun, the name of thunder, is written in their flesh.”
End of the First day, Feb. 21: German forces captured French front line trench
o Feb. 24: German troops took French second line of trenches, 8 kilometres from Verdun
French General Petain came up with a plan to save Verdun: perpetrate maximum damage to the
Germans & hold the supply route to Verdun.
March 6: Germany: fresh artillery supplies – new attack
March – April: attacks against the French
o French army: 259 of 330 infantry regiments fought
at Verdun
June 7: A Fort close to Verdun that had held out fell (Fort
Vaux).
o chemical warfare begins : phosgene gas first used by
Germany.
July 1: The British begin the Battle of the Somme to relieve
some of the pressure on Verdun (see below)
December 15-18: French captured 11,000 prisoners and 115
Ariel photo of the remains of Fort Vaux
heavy guns.
o German attacks stop
French casualties: 550,000
German losses: 434,000, half of the total being fatalities.
o real effect of the battle: damage to armies. No advantage had been gained by either side.
Verdun After the 10 month long battle
The Battle of the Somme, July 1-November 18, 1916
British Offensive
Goal: Drain German forces, divert forces away from Verdun, gain land
June 24: Early bombardment of German Lines.
o Failed to destroy barbed wire and concrete bunkers (where Germans hid)
o British munitions – many duds, badly built – still dug up today “iron harvest”
 Fun Fact: In May 2006 a British French Fry factory had to evacuated after bomb
parts turned up in a shipment of potatoes from France & Belgium where parts
of WWI had been fought. A bomb squad had to be called in. They found an
entire hand grenade, as well, that had to be diffused.
o Gave Germans warning of what was coming.
Day 1: 58,000 British troops killed (1/3), little to no progress in July
o Effective German machine guns force British back to trenches
British first use of tanks
o Gained less than a kilometer of ground
o 50 tanks reduced to 24 due to mechanical failure
o Freaked out the Germans, but were unreliable.
o Germans lit forests on fire to stop the tanks.
Somme ended in November due to snow.
Results: British and French gain 5 miles of ground
o 420,000 British casualties
o 200,000 French casualties
o 500,000 German casualties
Review your notes on the Battle of the Marne, the Battle of Verdun, and the Battle of the
Somme. If you were a soldier fighting in WWI, how would you feel after fighting these
kinds of battles for a few months or a few years? Please explain your answer.
War is Hell
An early trench filled with fallen soldiers
A soldier missing a hand and most of
his face
The remains of a fallen
soldier in No Man’s Land,
stuck on the barbed wire.
Sacrifices in War
WWI soldiers, most of whom have lost a leg, in rehabilitation
WWI Soldiers who have lost both legs, or most of both of their legs. They
were still better off than those who survived after losing both legs and
arms. They were referred to as “basket cases” due to how they had to be
transported.
Read the captions to the photos above. What does it mean if you say someone is a
“basket case” today? How might this be related to the WWI terminology?
The Eastern Front
• Battlefield along the German and Russian border
• Russians & Serbs vs. Germans, Austrians, Turks.
• More mobile, but there were still stalemates.
The Battle of Tannenberg, Aug. 23 – Aug. 28, 1914
• Eastern Prussia (Today – N. Poland)
• Most spectacular German victory of WWI
– Germany intercepted Russian intelligence
reports about their plans of attack.
– Germans surrounded the Russian troops
• already short of supplies, communication was down
– Russian army was scattered/ many ran directly
into the German forces, dropping their weapons.
– Russian counter attacks were weak & insufficient
•
95,000 Russian troops captured; 30,000 killed or
wounded. Only 10,000 escaped out of the original
150,000 troops.
– Germans had less than 20,000 casualties &
captured 500 guns
– 60 trains needed to transport captured equipment
to Germany
– The Russian General, Samsonov, committed
suicide due to the terrible losses.
–
Russia was stopped from invading Prussia
The Surrender of Russian Soldiers
The Impact of WWI on Russia
• By 1916 Russia’s war efforts were near collapse
– Not yet fully industrialized
– Continually short on food, guns, ammo,
clothes, boots, blankets
– Allies couldn’t ship supplies to Russia’s
ports
• German naval fleet blocked the
Baltic Sea
• Ottomans controlled the straits
from Mediterranean to Black Sea
• Russia’s only strength: huge population
– Tied up hundreds of thousands of German
troops in the east for three years
The Gallipoli Disaster, 1915
• February 1915 – January 1916
• Attempt to take the Dardanelle straights
– Access to Turkish capital Istanbul & Turkish
Industry center
– Lane to Black Sea & supply route for Russia
– Could eliminate Turkey from the war & turn
Greece and Bulgaria against central powers
• Heavily defended (by natural geography)
– Fortresses on cliff-tops overlooked shipping
lanes
• Feb. 1915: 1st attempt with battleships, sea planes, &
submarines
– Failure: Good Turkish defense/poor allied
gunning
• March 1915: 2nd attempt
– Failure: unsuspected Turkish mine field
– 1 month pause for ground troops to land
– 18,000 French colonial troops + 75,000
ANZAC (Australia/New Zealand)
Female Russian Soldiers in WWI. This was unheard of in the
west.
•
•
•
•
April 1915: landing of troops done poorly, but weak Turkish response.
April – November: Several failed attacks.
December 1915- January 1916: Withdrawal
– Recommended in October
– Blizzards = difficulty
– Successful withdrawl brought cheers from British radio audiences who had to be
reminded that withdrawl was not success.
Casualties:
– Turkey: 86,692
– Allies (Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, India, Newfoundland): 43,870
From a European War to a World War
Lawrence of Arabia
o SW Asia: British helped Arab nationalities rise up against the Turks
o T.E. Lawrence helped lead guerrilla raids against the Turks
o With the help of Arabs, Allied armies took control of Baghdad, Jerusalem, and
Damascus
English troops also attacked Germany’s four African posessions, taking control of
three of them.
British & French armies recruited soldiers from the colonies in Asia & Africa
o Troops & laborer from India, South Africa, Senegal, Egypt, Algeria, &
Indochina.
o Mohandas Ghandi supported Indian participation in the war hoping it the
British would pay India back with Independence.
British Nigerian Brigade in Africa
Turkish forces in Palestine
Sikh British Soldiers
WWI tents set up in the Shadow of Egypt’s great pyramids
French Colonial Marine Infantry from Cochin, China in Greece, 1916
America Joins the War
• American commerce with the Allies increased from $825 million in
1914 to over $3.2 billion in 1916
• In 1917 Britain and France owed the United States over $2 billion in
loans taken out by these countries to fight the war.
From these statistics alone, why did the United States join the
war on the side of the Allies?
Submarine Warfare
• May 7, 1915: German U-boat (Submarine) sank the British passenger
ship Lusitania
– 1,198 dead (128 US citizens)
• To the right is an advertisement for the
Lusitania. Did Americans know that they
were entering into a war zone?
–
–
•
•
Ship was secretly carrying ammo
To keep the US out of the war, Germany ends unrestricted
submarine warfare.
1917: failed crops & British naval blockade = severe food shortages in
Germany
January 1917
– Germany starts a naval blockade against Britain to starve
Britain into surrender before the U.S. could get involved.
– Germany announces unrestricted submarine warfare.
– 3 American ships were sunk
February 1917, The Zimmerman Telegram was intercepted by the British
The British immediately published this telegram in every American Newspaper. What was
being offered in this telegram? How do you think Americans felt about this? Why do you
think the British make this information public?
April 2, 1917: President Wilson appeared before a joint session of Congress (both the Senate & House
were present) and spoke these words:
“It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself
seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always
carried nearest our hearts – for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments,
for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such concern of free people as shall bring peace and
safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.”
According to Wilson, why was the United States joining WWI?
Total War
• Countries dedicate all resources to the war effort
• Government controlled economy
– Factories told what to produce
– Every able-bodied citizen put to work (including women)
– Unemployment virtually disappeared
– Civilians deported from German-occupied Belgium and
France to work in German farms & factories
• Rationing (butter to shoe leather)
• USA Prohibition on Alcohol
– Made of fermented grains; grain was needed to feed the
soldiers over seas more than people needed alcohol.
• The US government also started a fierce propaganda campaign
– One sided information to keep morale up.
The Spanish Flu (a form of the H1N1 virus)
• Fall 1918, peace on the horizon
• At first, the flu seemed as benign as the
common cold, and it was flu season
• A fifth of the world's population was
infected.
• Most deadly for people ages 20 to
40.
• Flu is usually a killer of the
elderly and young children
• It infected 28% of all Americans
• Estimated 675,000 Americans died of
influenza during the pandemic, ten times as
many as in the world war.
• Of the U.S. soldiers who died in Europe, half of them fell to the influenza virus
• Does this help explain the panic about the H1N1 virus that broke out in 2009?
The End of WWI
• Russia drops out of the War due to the Russian Revolution 1917
– Signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
– Russia gives Finland, Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to Germany
• German troop move to the Western Front
– 6,000 German cannons – largest artillery attack ever
– May 1918: Germans reached Marne River AGAIN (40 miles outside Paris this time)
• Military was weak from years of fighting
• 140,000 fresh American troops (inexperienced but brave)
• Counterattack
• July 1918: Second Battle of the Marne
– 350 allied tanks
– 2 million more American troops
• Central powers crumbled
– Bulgaria & Ottoman Empire surrender
– October 1918: Revolution in Austria-Hungary ended the
empire
– Germany: soldiers mutinied & public turned on the
Kaiser.
• Declared itself a Republic.
• November 11, 1918: Armistice finally signed.
Impact of the War
9,000,000 dead
116,516 Americans Died
The Signing of the Treaty of Versailles
When the Great War (WWI) finally ended in 1918, the leaders of the victorious allies gathered in Paris to
arrange the peace. The final treaty was signed at Versailles, the former home of French royalty, just
outside of Paris, thus it is called the Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles adjusted the boundaries of several nations in western Europe, disarmed
Germany and forced the Germans to pay for the cost of the war. It also established an international
organization, the League of Nations, to help keep the peace in the future. Three related treaties with
German allies in Eastern Europe also created a number of new nations in what had been the AustroHungarian Empire.
In creating new states and adjusting national boundaries, the leaders had several things in mind. Their
main intent was to allow self-determination for every national group in Europe. They also wanted to
draw boundaries that would ensure each nation’s security. With the exception of Woodrow Wilson,
most of the leaders hoped to create a new “balance of power” like the one that had kept Europe at
peace after the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
Despite their hopes, the peace established at Versailles fell apart in just twenty years. Within fifteen
years both Germany & Italy were led by fascist dictators bent on aggression. In 1939 another Great War
(WWII) broke out. Why had the peace failed? Did the agreements reached at Versailles help pave the
way to WWII?
Below you will examine the goals that each nation sought to achieve at Versailles. You will be asked to
compare these goals with the actual terms of the Treaty. Finally, you will be asked to judge whether or
not the Treaty of Versailles led to WWII.
The Goals of the Diplomats
France. The war on the Western Front had been fought mainly on French soil and much of the eastern
part of that nation had been destroyed. France wanted to insure that it would never again be attacked
by Germany. She wanted a territory called Alsace-Lorraine that Germany had taken after the FrancoPrussian War in 1870returned to her control.
Great Britain. British Prime Minister Lloyd George said that Germany should pay for the war. He said,
“We shall squeeze the orange until the pips (pits) squeak.” Britain also wanted to ensure its control of
the seas and its status as a global, not just European power. After the peace conference, when he asked
how it had gone he famously stated, “Not badly, considering I was sitting between Jesus Christ and
Napoleon.” He had been seated between France and the United States. Consider what he meant by
that.
The United States. Woodrow Wilson was an idealist who believed that WWI could be the “war to end all
wars.” In his Fourteen Points, a plan he created to maintain world peace, he called for a system of world
security and the creation of new nations formed according to the wills of their people. Generally, he
favored a lenient peace settlement for Germany and wanted no land or reparations (payment for war)
from that country.
Germany. Germany had no voice in the Writing of the Versailles Treaty, but was still a party to it. The
German government hoped for a fair peace settlement. They did not want to lose large amounts of
territory. More than anything else, they wanted to keep their national “self-respect.” Most Germans
did not think they alone were responsible for starting the war.
The Terms of the Treaty
Territorial Provisions. In all, Germany lost more than ten percent of the land on the continent of Europe
that she held before the war. Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France. German territory in the east,
such as Danzig, was given to the new nation of Poland. In addition, Britain took control of all German
colonies overseas.
Military Provisions. Germany was essentially disarmed. Its army was limited to 100,000 men. It was not
allowed to have military airplanes, tanks, or artillery. The navy was destroyed. In the future the German
navy was limited to no more than 12 warships and no submarines. The Rhineland, an area between the
Rhine River and France, was demilitarized and made into a neutral buffer zone. No German
fortifications were permitted there.
Political Provisions. Article 231 said that Germany and her allies were aggressors in the war and must
accept “responsibility…for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allies…and their nationals have
been subjected as consequences of the war.” The Treaty also called for the establishment of a League
of Nations through which the nations of the world might work together to provide for their collective
security in the future.
Economic Provisions. Germany was forced to pay war reparations to the Allies amounting to about five
billion dollars over the next few years. In additions, France was given control of the Saar for fifteen
years. The Saar is a region rich in coal and iron. Its resources helped the French rebuild their economy.
Similarly, large portions of the German merchant and fishing fleets were turned over to the Allies along
with large numbers of railway locomotives and freight cars. Germany also had to deliver coal to France
and Belgium and pay for French troops protecting the demilitarized Rhineland.
Related Treaties Cover Eastern Europe. In a related set of treaties with Germany’s allies, the AustroHungarian Empire and Bulgaria, a number of new nations were formed in Eastern Europe. The treaty
makers tried to include each national group in Eastern Europe in its own nation, but that proved
impossible. Still, the leaders tried to form nations with firm boundaries based as much as possible on a
common language, ethnic identity and religion.
Directions: In the chart below, on the left record the goals that each country hoped to achieve with
the Treaty of Versailles. On the right of each goal, record the treaty provisions for items that helped
achieve the goals, or that went against that goal. Then answer the questions that follow.
COUNTRY
GOALS
a.
France
b.
c.
a.
Britain
b.
c.
TREATY PROVISIONS
a.
United States
b.
c.
Germany
a.
b.
c.
Did every country get what they wanted from the Treaty of Versailles? Explain your answer.
Do you think Germany was treated fairly, or as they deserved?
Why do you think many Germans thought they were not to blame?
Why do you think historians commonly say that the Treaty of Versailles was the greatest
cause of World War II?