These included the German evacuation of German-occupied France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Alsace-Lorraine, and the left bank of the Rhine (all of which were to be administered by the Allies under the armistice agreement), the surrender of a large quantity of war materiel, and the agreed payment of "reparation for damage done".

[18] By late 1918, Allied troops had entered Germany and began the occupation of the Rhineland under the agreement, in the process establishing bridgeheads across the Rhine in case of renewed fighting at Cologne, Koblenz, and Mainz.

[32] In the UK, Labour Party member and anti-war activist Robert Smillie issued a statement in June 1919 condemning continuation of the blockade, claiming 100,000 German civilians had died as a result.

[33][34] Talks between the Allies to establish a common negotiating position started on 18 January 1919, in the Salle de l'Horloge (Clock Room) at the French Foreign Ministry on the Quai d'Orsay in Paris.

[62] On the subject of war crimes, the Americans differed to the British and French in that Wilson's proposal was that any trial of the Kaiser should be solely a political and moral affair, and not one of criminal responsibility, meaning that the death penalty would be precluded.

[66] Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and his foreign minister Sidney Sonnino, an Anglican of British origins, worked primarily to secure the partition of the Habsburg Empire and their attitude towards Germany was not as hostile.

Within the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles, Orlando obtained certain results such as the permanent membership of Italy in the security council of the League of Nations and a promised transfer of British Jubaland and French Aozou strip to the Italian colonies of Somalia and Libya respectively.

[1] The treaty had clauses ranging from war crimes, the prohibition on the merging of the Republic of German Austria with Germany without the consent of the League of Nations, freedom of navigation on major European rivers, to the returning of a Quran to the king of Hedjaz.[n.

[94] Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, following the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland in 1936, stated that he was "pleased" that the treaty was "vanishing", expressing his hope that the French had been taught a "severe lesson".

On 7 May, when faced with the conditions dictated by the victors, including the so-called "War Guilt Clause", von Brockdorff-Rantzau replied to Clemenceau, Wilson and Lloyd George: "We can sense the full force of hatred that confronts us here. ...

"[viii] Because Germany was not allowed to take part in the negotiations, the German government issued a protest against what it considered to be unfair demands, and a "violation of honour", soon afterwards withdrawing from the proceedings of the peace conference.

Upon receiving Hindenburg's answer, the Bauer government recommended signing the treaty with the proviso that the "war-guilt" clause and the articles that required the extradition of war criminals and of the former Emperor be excluded.

[120] The disenfranchised and often colonized "non-white" world held high expectations that a new order would open up an unheralded opportunity to have a principle of racial equality recognized by the leading global powers.

[122] Confidence in their growing industrial strength, and conquest of Germany's Far East possessions, together with their proven fidelity to the Entente would, it was thought, allow them finally to take their rightful place among the victorious Great Powers.

[122] Japan's attempt, buttressed by the Chinese emissary Wellington Koo among others, to incorporate a Racial Equality Proposal in the treaty, had broad support, but was effectively declined when it was rejected by the United States, Great Britain and Australia,[122] despite a powerfully persuasive speech delivered by Makino.

American policy experts, unaware of these secret agreements, nonetheless suggested that Japan had adopted a Prussian model that would imperil China's own search for autonomy, and these considerations influenced Wilson.

[124][125] In order to meet this sum, Germany could pay in cash or kind: coal, timber, chemical dyes, pharmaceuticals, livestock, agricultural machines, construction materials, and factory machinery.

The total number of troops committed to the occupation rapidly dwindled as veteran soldiers were demobilized, and were replaced by inexperienced men who had finished basic training following the cessation of hostilities.

[157] In 1920, the head of the Reichswehr Hans von Seeckt clandestinely re-established the General Staff, by expanding the Truppenamt (Troop Office); purportedly a human resources section of the army.

[168] In December 1931, the Reichswehr finalized a second rearmament plan that called for 480 million Reichsmarks to be spent over the following five years: this program sought to provide Germany the capability of creating and supplying a defensive force of 21 divisions supported by aircraft, artillery, and tanks.

[169] On 7 November 1932, the Reich Minister of Defense Kurt von Schleicher authorized the illegal Umbau Plan for a standing army of 21 divisions based on 147,000 professional soldiers and a large militia.

In March 1935, Germany reintroduced conscription followed by an open rearmament programme and the official unveiling of the Luftwaffe (air force), and signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement that allowed a surface fleet 35% of the size of the Royal Navy.

The Bismarckian Reich was maintained as a political unit instead of being broken up, and Germany largely escaped post-war military occupation (in contrast to the situation following World War II).

[189] The British military historian Correlli Barnett argued that the Treaty of Versailles was "extremely lenient in comparison with the peace terms that Germany herself, when she was expecting to win the war, had had in mind to impose on the Allies".

[195] Resentment caused by the treaty sowed fertile psychological ground for the eventual rise of the Nazi Party,[196] but the German-born Australian historian Jürgen Tampke argued that it was "a perfidious distortion of history" to argue that the terms prevented the growth of democracy in Germany and aided the growth of the Nazi Party; saying that its terms were not as punitive as often held and that German hyper-inflation in the 1920s was partly a deliberate policy to minimise the cost of reparations.

[198] French historian Raymond Cartier states that millions of ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland and in Posen-West Prussia were placed under foreign rule in a hostile environment, where harassment and violation of rights by authorities are documented.

"[202] In regard to the East Prussia plebiscite, historian Richard Blanke wrote that "no other contested ethnic group has ever, under un-coerced conditions, issued so one-sided a statement of its national preference".

[132] Prince Eustachy Sapieha, the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, alleged that Soviet Russia "appeared to be intentionally delaying negotiations" to end the Polish-Soviet War "with the object of influencing the Upper Silesian plebiscite".

[204] Bernadotte Everly Schmitt wrote that "there is no reason to believe that the Allied governments were insincere when they stated at the beginning of Part V of the Treaty ... that in order to facilitate a general reduction of the armament of all nations, Germany was to be required to disarm first."

Hitler promised to reverse the depredations of the Allied powers and recover Germany's lost territory and pride, which has led to the treaty being cited as a cause of World War II.