Karla Reiner, age 15, of Helena, Mt., for her question:
WHAT WAS THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES?
The Treaty of Versailles officially ended World War I. Thirty two allied countries took part in negotiating and drawinq up the treaty.
President Woodrow Wilson of the United States, Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Great Britain and Premier Georges Clemenceau of France were known as the "Big Three" because they almost completely controlled the course of negotiations.
But the United States never ratified the Versailles Treaty. The Senate refused to give its consent. Instead, the United States made a separate treaty of peace with Germany in 1921. This treaty reserved for the U.S. all the advantages it might have had under the Versailles Treaty, but accepted none of the obligations.
World War I ended when Germany accepted the Armistice on November 11, 1918 but the war did not officially end until the Treaty of Versailles went into effect on January 10, 1920. the treaty was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles, near Paris.
It was difficult to work out the terms of the treaty. Several of the Allies, it was later learned, had entered into secret agreements during the war which affected boundaries, the distribution of territory and many other matters.
President Wilson was so eager to see a League of Nations established that he yielded many of the other points in order to protect this one. As a result, most of the provisions of the treaty were compromises that came nearer the desires of France and Great Britain than those of Wilson.
The four outstanding provisions of the treaty revised boundaries, set reparations, disarmed Germany and established the League of Nations.
The first German representatives sent to sign the peace treaty resigned when they found out what was in it.
The Germans did not like the provisions in the treaty. The Allies made a few slight changes and also threatened to take over more German territory if the German government refused to sign.
A second German delegation signed the treaty and after hot debate, the German Reichstag approved it.
All the great Allied powers except for the United States ratified the Treaty of Versailles.
Efforts to collect the reparations failed. The Dawes Plan in 1924 and the Young Plan in 1929 also failed to solve this problem. In 1932, the Lausanne Agreement brought reparations payments to an end.
The League of Nations, which the United States never joined, had some success in ending conflicts between small nations. But when a powerful nation was involved, the League was ineffective.
The League was dissolved in April, 1946, and the United Nations took its place.