Versailles Treaty Quotes

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.

The more I think about the President’s declaration as to the right of ‘self-determination’, the more convinced I am of the danger of putting such ideas into the minds of certain races. It is bound to be the basis of impossible demands on the Peace Conference and create trouble in many lands. What effect will it have on the Irish, the Indians, the Egyptians, and the nationalists among the Boers? Will it not breed discontent, disorder and rebellion? Will not the Mohammedans of Syria and Palestine and possibly Morocco and Tripoli rely on it?

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.

Why should this war in the West be fought for the restoration of Poland? The Poland of the Versailles Treaty will never rise again.

The Second World War took place not so much because no one won the First, but because the Versailles Treaty did not acknowledge this truth.

I was particularly awkwardly placed, without instructions and not even in close political alliance with the actual British Government.

After the Versailles treaty, the U.S. could have chosen to become a global economic loan shark, but we didn't, and let a lot of the tab slide. So not all lending and borrowing is bad.

I would point out that Japan's proposal at the Versailles Peace Conference on the principle of racial equality was rejected by delegates such as those from Britain and the United States.

It was my dream, and probably the dream of every one of us, to bring about a revision of the Versailles Treaty by peaceful means, which was provided for in that very treaty.