By Shamsher Bhangal
The 1919 Treaty of Versailles is arguably the single most significant document of the twentieth century. It was the peace treaty which marked the conclusion of the First World War and cemented a series of ultimately contentious territorial and political changes in Europe.
The Treaty of Versailles has become a staple of the GCSE and A-Level history syllabus and enjoys a surprising amount of recognition in the popular consciousness in Britain today. It is commonly believed that the dictates outlined in the treaty were too harsh on Germany. The territorial amputations and harsh financial indemnity [fines] Germany was forced to pay to the Allied powers contributed, it is thought, to the later rise of Nazism and outbreak of the Second World War.
The stipulates agreed at Versailles without a doubt humiliated Germany, a country that was one of the world’s strongest military and economic powers. Indeed, it was perhaps the single strongest military power on the earth before 1914. Article 231 of the treaty –infamously known as the ‘war guilt paragraph’ – assigned, it is thought, responsibility for the outbreak of the First World War to Germany. This is something an overwhelming majority of the German public would have found outrageous at the time, particularly since they believed the war was provoked by an Anglo-French-Russian ‘encirclement’ against Germany. It is unsurprising, then, that one of the primary consequences of Versailles was to inflame an anti-west European nationalism in Germany. But how far can we really say that the treaty was ‘too harsh’? Did the Treaty of Versailles really cause the Second World War?
Not according to Jürgen Tampke. His 2017 A Perfidious Distortion of History: the Versailles Peace Treaty and the success of the Nazis puts forward the revisionist argument that the treaty did not itself provoke the outbreak of hostilities in 1939. He shows how the idea of an overly harsh Versailles was actually a ‘distortion of history’, instituted primarily by the Nazis and other nationalist groups to garner popular support for their movements. According to Tampke, the idea that Germany had lost 13% of its territory and 10% of its population is ‘based on phony statistics’; moreover, he claims that Article 231 does not actually assign guilt to Germany at all.
Tampke’s argument is controversial. Whether one agrees or disagrees with his revisionist interpretation, it is evident that the idea of an unfair, unjust, or unreasonable Treaty of Versailles vis-à-vis Germany was a popular narrative that the Nazis adopted and contributed to. But whereas those like the economist John Maynard Keynes thought that the harshness of the treaty threatened the long-term peace in Europe, the Nazis sought to use it as a reason to legitimise their annexations and invasions of the 1930s. This interpretation of the treaty became a tool of Nazi policy. The history of Versailles is an excellent example of how historical narratives can be adopted by political groups for political ends. The truth becomes hidden behind passion. The Nazis ultimately did not want facts to get in the way of an emotive story.
Doing History in Public 