Treaty of Versailles Quotes

Germany was beaten after World War I, but it didn't take long for it to rise again as a much more malignant threat. The end of World War II was not to be a compromise; it was to come about from the total annihilation of the enemies' ability and will to make war.

I was born in 1923 into a middle class Jewish family in Vienna, a few years after the end of World War I, which was disastrous from the Austrian point of view.

After 15 years of work I have achieved, as a common German soldier and merely with my fanatical willpower, the unity of the German nation, and have freed it from the death sentence of Versailles.

I obtained the occupation of the Rhineland for fifteen years, with partial evacuation after five years. If Germany does not fulfill the treaty, there will be no evacuation either partial or definitive. At last I am no longer anxious. I have obtained almost everything I wanted.

Personally, I would have dealt with the Soviets as the de facto Government of Russia. So would President Wilson. But we both agreed that we could not carry to that extent our colleagues at the Congress [Versailles], nor the public opinion of our countries which was frightened by Bolshevik violence and feared its spread.

When the armistice was declared American forces had fought their way to Sedan.

Peace with England, and war with the world

When the war was in progress, England and France agreed wholeheartedly with the Fourteen Points. As soon as the war was won, England, France, and Italy tried to frustrate Wilson's program because it was in conflict with their imperialist policies. As a consequence, the Peace Treaty was one of the most unequal treaties ever negotiated in history.

I now seriously ask whether an English victory would not be more desirable for our future than a German victory.

The War That Will End War.

Today we know that World War II began not in 1939 or 1941 but in the 1920's and 1930's when those who should have known better persuaded themselves that they were not their brother's keeper.

There can be no peace until this German spirit of Militarism is crushed.

The Revolution's most important result was Napoleon, whose most important result (as France learned in 1871, and again in 1914, and again in 1940) was the invention of Germany

Although not ratified by the United States, the Peace of Versailles has been termed an American peace. It was based on propositions laid down in advance by the United States and in the main adhered to. This is particularly true of the geographical provisions where the doctrine of self-determination, which was one of President Wilson's cardinal tenets and which roughly corresponded with that of nationalities, was accepted as the guiding principle.

Germany suffered most as a consequence of this Peace Treaty and the general insecurity which was bound to arise from it. The unemployment figure rose to a third of the number usually employed in the nation, which means, however, that by counting the families of the unemployed as well there were 26 million people in Germany out of a population of 65 millions faced by an absolutely hopeless future.

With Germany herself falling, it is not strange that the nations leagued with her also went down to defeat.

If in the past, after every lost war, the unlucky vanquished were divested forever of their honor and their equality of rights, the League of Nations would even now have to be satisfied with a whole series of non-equal and thus ultimately dishonorable and inferior nations.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

The first World War in so many ways shaped the 20th century and really remade our world for the worse.

The First World War not only destroyed European civilisation and the empires at its heart; its aftermath led to a second conflagration, the Second World War, which divided the continent until the end of the century.

I wish we could see understanding the First World War as a European issue, or even a global one, and not a nationalistic one.

Then down came the lid--the day was lost, for art, at Sarajevo. World-politics stepped in, and a war was started which has not ended yet: a "war to end war." But it merely ended art. It did not end war.

I feel that an understanding could be reached with Germany which would result in a lasting peace with Europe and believe that a German victory is preferable to a British and Soviet victory.

In 1918, Germany suffered the ghastly consequences of defeat; France suffered those of victory, the price of which was to divide and embitter French politics and culture and lead to its defeat in 1940.

My attitude toward the war [WWI] was that it must be won at all costs.