The Successes and Failures of the Treaty of Versailles in Addressing the Causes of Conflict and Restoring Peace and Normality

The Successes and Failures of the Treaty of Versailles in Addressing the Causes of Conflict and Restoring Peace and Normality

To evaluate the successes and failures of the Treaty of Versailles, we

need to address the terms of the Treaty as well as to inspect the

consequences. The First World War had exposed Germany as a strong and

aggressive power, and was viewed as a threat to peace by the

victorious powers, so the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which was

designed to address the causes of conflict as well as restoring peace

and normality, although including other peace measures, focused on

harnessing and restricting Germany’s power so that they would never

again be strong enough to become a threat. The disarmament of Germany

proved to be short term as well as provocative, like the stripping of

the colonies and the war reparations forced upon her. Germany was

forced to admit to war guilt, which angered her and guaranteed a

backlash which would eventually take the form of World War II. The

aforementioned terms of the Treaty also created an extreme social,

political and economic atmosphere in which another war was possible.

The League of Nations was also formed and it enjoyed limited success,

but, like all the other terms of the Treaty, it ultimately failed in

addressing the causes of conflict and restoring peace and normality

because in the end, there was another world war.

The League of Nations, which was written into the Treaty of

Versailles, had an aim of addressing the causes of conflict and

restoring and maintaining peace and normality by an unprecedented

level of international co-operation although had some initial success,

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against them provoked her to seek vengeance and therefore causing

peace and normality to be impossible to achieve. The Treaty of

Versailles created an economic, political and social extreme, allowing

Germany to adopt aggressive policies as they felt they had nothing

else to lose. These terms of the treaty was merely a short term

solution to alleviate the fears of the allies and the problem of

Germany was not dealt with sufficiently, so the treaty had failed to

address the causes of conflict. The League of Nations although had

enjoyed limited success, was a failure because of the selfishness

displayed by the European powers. The Treaty of Versailles lacked

practicality and ultimately failed at ‘addressing the causes of

conflict and restoring peace and normality’, because there was a World

War II.