‘The loss of territory was the main reason why Germans hated the Treaty of Versailles.’  How far do you agree with this statement? 

There is no doubt that the loss of territory was a major reason why the Germans hated the ToV.  France reclaimed Alsace-Lorraine and was given the Saar for 15 years.  Belgium acquired Eupen & Malmedy; Denmark took North Schleswig; and Poland was given a corridor to the sea including Posen plus (after a plebiscite) a large portion of Upper Silesia.  The League of Nations administered Danzig as a ‘free city’ and was supposed to administer Memel too … but when Lithuania invaded it, the Conference of Ambassadors gave Memel to Lithuania.  Historians in the 1920s worked out that this equated to 13% of Germany’s territory.  In addition, Germany lost all its colonial empire, and the Rhineland was declared a demilitarised zone. 

Why did the Germans hate this loss of territory? 

Perhaps the main reason was the economic impact of losses.  The Saar and Upper Silesia contained rich coal fields (remember that coal was the main fuel of the industrial revolution in those days).  Alsace was a rich wine-growing region and Lorraine had the largest deposits of iron-ore in Europe.  Posen was an area of rich farmland.  The Polish Corridor split the county in two and damaged internal trade.  Moreover, in the days of empire, colonies were seen as a vital part the national economy, assuring a supply of raw materials cheaply which the nations’ industries could make into modern products.  Historians in the 1920s worked out that the ToV took a seventh of Germany’s economy – in Hitler words in Mein Kampf: “an unprecedented plundering of our People”. 

There was also a strategic impact.  Loss of territory deprived Germany of wealth to fund its defences and manpower for its armies.  The Rhineland DMZ lay Germany open to invasion by its greatest enemy, France (which happened in 1920, 1921 and 1923-24).  The Polish Corridor, particularly, also, left Germany divided and with no obviously defendable frontier. 

The loss of population was also a major aggravation.  The Treaty forced Germans to live in other countries.  Germans were also angry that they could not unite ('Anschluss') with the Germans in Austria.  All this was seen as hypocrisy – the very opposite of Wilson’s principle of self-determination – that Germans should be deprived of national unity when so many other ethnic groups in central Europe were being given a national homeland.  One German postcard showed a map of the ‘Lost but not forgotten lands’ and promised: “What we have lost – Will be regained!” Another said simply: “Hands off German Homeland”.  Historians in the 1920s worked out that Germany lost 10% of its population. 

Finally, and perhaps most of all, in those days when ‘greatness’ was measured in square miles, the loss of territory was a psychological blow to German pride.  The conquest of Schleswig in the 1860s had been an achievement of German nationalism, and Alsace Lorraine had been acquired in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 which had created Germany.  These were emotionally-significant places for German patriots.  Meanwhile, the dismemberment of Prussia destroyed the very State which had been at the centre of German unification and government.  It was to these feelings that Hitler appealed when he labelled the ToV: “a shame and a disgrace ”which needed rectifying. 

But was the loss of territory the MAIN reason Germans hated the Treaty of Versailles?  There were other aspects of the ToV which Germans hated.  How does the loss of territory measure up against them as a cause of German hatred? 

Reparations were one such cause of hatred; they said that they were unpayable, would ruin the German economy, and that the Treaty was trying to starve their children to death.  At first they refused to pay, only started paying after France and Britain invaded, and continued to challenge reparations through Dawes (1924), Young (1929), Lausanne (1932) and right up to when Hitler broke the ToV and stopped paying them. 

Another cause of German hatred was their tiny Army.  They said it left them helpless against other countries.  At first they refused to reduce the army, and the sailors scuttled (sank) the fleet rather than hand it over.  The Dolchstosslegende grew up in Germany that the German Army had not been defeated, but had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by the politicians … a belief so strong it lay behind the assassinations of Scheidemann and Erzberger and the Kapp Putsch of 1920 and Black Reichswehr rebellion of 1923. 

Most of all, perhaps, the Germans hated Clause 231; they said they were not to Blame for the war.  The soldier sent to sign the Treaty refused to sign it for that reason – ‘To say such a thing would be a lie,’ he said.  Clause 231 did not physically harm Germany, but it hurt Germany's pride – and it has been argued that it was this, as much as anything else, that made them want to overturn the treaty. 

In contrast, as for Territory, the historian Robert Boyce (2009) has recently shown that Germany did NOT lose, as is often claimed, 13% of the land, 10% of its population, and 13.5% of its economy: “actual losses were barely 9.5% of the territory and less than 2% of the German population”.  He pointed out that most of the areas lost had either been newly acquired and/or was French (Alsace-Lorraine), Walloon (Malmedy), Danish (Schleswig), or Polish (Silesia and Posen).  The peacemakers refused France’s attempt to make the demilitarised Rhineland a separate state, and left it as part of Germany, and the Saar voted to return to Germany in 1935.  Meanwhile, helped by American loans, the ‘ruined’ German economy boomed in the late 1920s, whilst it was the economies of Britain and France (paying back huge war-debts) which struggled. 

So, how far might we agree that loss of territory was the main reason Germans hated the ToV?  We have seen that Germans were certainly furious about it, but that the damage was not as bad as German propaganda cracked it up to be, and – particularly – that there were other powerful reasons for Germans to be angry. 

HOWEVER, the different aspects – blame, reparations, army and territory – did not operate in isolation, but were linked together in German people’s minds.  And it is when we look at those links that we can see how important was the loss of territory. 

The huge unfairness of a settlement which by Diktat placed huge numbers of Germans under foreign nations, in contradiction to the principle of self-determination, was closely linked to the Germans’ fury at the War Guilt clause, which they saw as the Allies’ justification for the injustice. 

The Allies’ intentional strategic damage of the loss of territory lay behind the German protests about their tiny and army and inability to defend themselves. 

And – most of all – the economic damage inflicted by the Allies through the loss of territory was intrinsically linked to German outrage at reparations, and the clear attempt to permanently weaken and impoverish Germany into the future. 

Thus we can say that, although it was not the ONLY cause, and maybe not even the MAIN cause, loss of territory was clearly a PERVASIVE factor in Germans’ hatred of the ToV.