On June 28th 1919 the “Big Three”, Georges Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson, and David Lloyd George had formulated a peace treaty called the Versailles Treaty to end the First World War. From the Treaty came a whole series of treaties, “The Versailles System”. The intention of the System was to rebalance the powers of the world so that the victor countries such as France, Britain and the United States would remain powerful. The losing countries, such as Germany Austria, and Hungary, would decline in power, but only so much as not to pose a threat to the victors keeping the delicate balance of power in tact. To do this the Versailles treaty needed to solve problems such as the size and placement of each country after the war, how much each victor country was owed for reparations, and a way to prevent another gruesome war. The Versailles System failed to immediately solve the acceptance of the placements new borders between countries, the amount of reparations the losing powers had to pay, and completely fai

Additionally to losing a great deal of land, the countries that lost the war needed to pay for reparations. Reparation costs were a post war tradition, which ensured that the destruction of the victor countries is restored. Since World War One was the greatest war the world had ever seen, Germany had to pay huge reparations to France since the war was mainly fought on French land. By Article 231 and 232 of the Versailles treaty Germany and her allies were responsible for the war and they should “make compensation for all the damage done to the civilian population of the allied and associated powers and to their property”. Germany, although they did not accept the responsibility for the war, was willing to pay for damage of the allied countries, but was incapable to do so any time soon. This problem of payment was ultimately solved by the Dawes plan, which let Germany pay off the war debt in a number of years, and pay certain things such as telephone poles in kind. However Germany still had problems paying this huge amount, which led to more problems such as the occupation of the Ruhr in 1923 by French Prime minister, Poincare. The Germans had not met their payments in kind, so Poincare took the liberty of occupying the main industrial area, the Ruhr. This was necessary since the allies of France were not assisting her in accomplishing the terms of the Versailles, leaving France isolated. This caused opposition of France not only in Germany, but by the allied countries who felt France was violating German rights, although they should have been assisting France. It also aided the rise of fascism in Germany. The inability of Germans to immediately pay off her debts to France also made it impossible for France to pay her debts to the United States. The Versailles treaty fa

Some topics in this essay:
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