VERSAILLES WINNERS & LOSERS

“ARTICLE 231 OF THE TREATY – KNOWN INFORMALLY AS THE WAR GUILT CAUSE – IS ONE OF THE MOST WIDELY-DISCUSSED AND CONTROVERSIAL COMPONENTS OF THE AGREEMENT”

When The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919 the world was still spinning in a postwar stupor. It had taken over half a year of Allied negotiations for the settlement to be fulfilled, entering completion some seven months after the gunfire had ceased on the Western Front. Poignantly, it was also exactly five years to the day since Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne had been assassinated.

Signed in the gleaming Hall of Mirrors in Paris’ Palace of Versailles, the treaty – which is also known as the Treaty of Peace – was inscribed by representatives of the Allied forces along with two German politicians, Johannes Bell and Hermann Müller, and marked the accredited end of the First World War. Consisting of 15 sections