Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles
The article did not use the word guilt but it served as a legal basis under which Germany was to pay reparations for damages caused during the war.
The article, with the signatory's name changed, was also included in the treaties signed by Germany's allies who did not view the clause with the same disdain as the Germans did.
On 28 June 1914, Bosnian Serb youngster Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo.
The assassination was part of a plot conceived by the Pan-Slavic nationalist organization Young Bosnia and supported by the Black Hand, a secret society founded by senior Serbian military and intelligence officials.
[8][9][10] The German government attempted to obtain a peace settlement based on the Fourteen Points, and maintained it was on this basis that Germany surrendered.
Following negotiations, the Allied Powers and Germany signed an armistice, which came into effect on 11 November while German forces were still positioned in France and Belgium.
Georges Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France, thought it appropriate that any just peace required Germany to pay reparations for the damage they had caused.
This conclusion was duly incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles,[32] led by Clemenceau and Lloyd George who were both insistent on the inclusion of an unequivocal statement of Germany's total liability.
The actual wording of the article was chosen by American diplomats Norman Davis, and Secretary of State Robert Lansing's nephew, John Foster Dulles.
[43] On 18 June, having disregarded the repeated explicit decisions of the government, Brockdorff-Rantzau declared that Article 231 would have Germany accept full responsibility for the war by force.
[47] After being advised by Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg that Germany was in no condition to resume the war, President Friedrich Ebert and the new Chancellor, Gustav Bauer, recommended that the Weimar National Assembly ratify the treaty.
[53] Georges Clemenceau rebuffed Brockdorff-Rantzau's allegations, arguing that "the legal interpretation [of the article] was the correct one" and not a matter of political question.
[57] Historian William Keylor commented that initially both United States diplomats believed that they had "devised a brilliant solution to the reparation dilemma"; appeasing both the British and French, as well as Allied public opinion irrespective of the fact that Allied leaders were aware of concerns surrounding German willingness to pay reparations and the disappointment that could follow.
"[60] Compensation demanded from the defeated party was a common feature of peace treaties both before and after Versailles,[61][62] and was explicitly permitted under the 1907 Hague Convention.
[36] German revisionist historians who subsequently attempted to ignore the validity of the clause found a ready audience among 'revisionist' writers in France, Britain, and the United States.
[73] The objective of both the politicians and historians was to prove that Germany was not solely guilty for causing the war; if that guilt could be disproved the legal requirement to pay reparations would disappear.
[75] United States Senator Henrik Shipstead argued that the failure to revise the article became a factor in Hitler's rise to power,[76][77] a view held by some historians, such as Tony Rea and John Wright, who wrote that "the harshness of the War Guilt Clause and the reparations demands made it easier for Hitler to gain power in Germany.
"[81] In 1926, Robert C. Binkley and A. C. Mahr of Stanford University, wrote that German accusations of the article assigning war guilt were "ill-founded" and "mistaken".
[83] In 1937, E. H. Carr commented that "in the passion of the moment" the Allied Powers had "failed to realize that this extorted admission of guilt could prove nothing, and must excite bitter resentment in German minds."
He concluded "German men of learning set to work to demonstrate the guiltlessness of their country, fondly believing that, if this could be established, the whole fabric of the treaty would collapse.
He wrote that the German inter-war argument "rested on her responsibility for the out-break of the war" and if that guilt could be disproved then the legal requirement to pay reparations would disappear.
[89] In 1978, Marks re-examined the reparation clauses of the treaty and wrote that "the much-criticized 'war guilt clause', Article 231, which was designed to lay a legal basis for reparations, in fact makes no mention of war guilt" but only specified that Germany was to pay for the damages caused by the war they imposed upon the allies and "that Germany committed an act of aggression against Belgium is beyond dispute".
Marks also wrote that "the same clause, mutatis mutandis" was incorporated "in the treaties with Austria and Hungary, neither of whom interpreted it as declaration of war guilt.
[90] Manfred Boemeke, Gerald Feldman, and Elisabeth Glaser wrote that "pragmatic requirements characteristically influenced the shaping of the much misunderstood Article 231.
That paragraph reflected the presumed legal necessity to define German responsibility for the war in order to specify and limit the Reich's obligations".
"[32] Louise Slavicek wrote that while "the article was an honest reflection of the treaty-writers' beliefs, including such a clause in the peace settlement was undiplomatic, to say the least.
"[92] Diane Kunz wrote that "rather than being seen as an American lawyer's clever attempt to limit actual German financial responsibility by buying off French politicians and their public with the sop of a piece of paper" Article 231 "became an easily exploitable open sore".
[93] Ian Kershaw wrote that the "national disgrace" felt over the territorial concession under the Versailles treaty and the "war guilt" article and "defeat, revolution, and the establishment of democracy", had "fostered a climate in which a counter-revolutionary set of ideas could gain wide currency" and "enhanced the creation of a mood in which" extreme nationalist ideas could gain a wider audience and take hold.
[94] Elazar Barkan argues that by "forcing an admission of war guilt at Versailles, rather than healing, the victors instigated resentment that contributed to the rise of Fascism.
By "refusing to acknowledge Germany's 'war guilt' the new German government implicitly exonerated the old monarchial order" and more importantly failed "to dissociate itself from the old regime."
