The harsh terms of the peace treaty ultimately did not contribute to the settlement of the international disputes that had triggered the First World War. On the contrary, the treaty stood in the way of intra-European cooperation and exacerbated the underlying problems that had caused the war in the first place. Portugal entered the war on the side of the Allies in 1916, mainly to ensure the security of its African colonies, threatened with conquest by Britain and Germany. In this regard, it has managed to achieve its war objectives. The treaty recognized Portuguese sovereignty over these territories and gave it small parts of the adjacent German overseas colonies. Otherwise, Portugal won little at the peace conference. Her promised share of German reparations never materialized, and a coveted seat on the Executive Council of the new League of Nations went to Spain, which had remained neutral during the war. In the end, Portugal ratified the treaty, but had little to gain from the war, which claimed the lives of more than 8,000 Portuguese soldiers and up to 100,000 of its African colonial subjects. [82] When the treaty was drafted, the British wanted Germany to abolish conscription but maintain a volunteer army. The French wanted Germany to maintain a conscription army of up to 200,000 men to justify its own maintenance of a similar force. Thus, the contractual allocation of 100,000 volunteers was a compromise between the British and French posts. Germany, on the other hand, regarded the conditions as defenseless against any potential enemy.

[173] Bernadotte Everly Schmitt wrote that “there is no reason to believe that Allied governments were dishonest when they declared at the beginning of Part V of the Treaty. that in order to allow a general reduction in the armament of all nations, Germany should be obliged to disarm first. The lack of American ratification of the treaty or accession to the League of Nations did not disarm France, leading to a German desire for rearmament. [73] Schmitt argued: “If the four Allies had remained united, they could really have forced Germany to disarm, and Germany`s willingness and ability to oppose other provisions of the Treaty would have diminished accordingly.” [174] However, the Republican Party, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, controlled the U.S. Senate after the 1918 election, and senators were divided into several positions on the Versailles question. It proved possible to form a majority coalition, but it was impossible to build a two-thirds coalition needed to pass a treaty. [83] The resentment caused by the treaty sowed fertile psychological ground for the subsequent rise of the Nazi Party,[165] but German-born Australian historian Jürgen Tampke argued that it was “a perfidious distortion of history” to claim that the terms prevented the growth of democracy in Germany and supported the growth of the Nazi Party; He said his conditions were not as punitive as has often been claimed, and that German hyperinflation in the 1920s was in part a deliberate policy to minimize the cost of repatriations. As an example of the arguments against the Versailles diktat, he cites Elisabeth Wiskemann, who heard two widows of officers in Wiesbaden complain that “with exhausted linen supplies, they had to have their clothes washed once every two weeks (every two weeks) instead of once a month!” [166] After Scheidemann`s resignation, a new coalition government was formed under Gustav Bauer. Federal President Friedrich Ebert knew that Germany was in an impossible situation. Although he shared the disgust of his compatriots about the treaty, he was sober enough to consider the possibility that the government could not reject it. He believed that if Germany refused to sign the treaty, the Allies would invade Germany from the West – and there was no guarantee that the army would be able to take a stand in the event of an invasion.

In this spirit, he asked Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg whether the army would be capable of significant resistance if the Allies resumed war. If there was any chance that the army could hold out, Ebert intended not to recommend ratification of the treaty. Hindenburg came to the conclusion – after being pressed by his chief of staff Wilhelm Groener – that the army could not resume war, even to a limited extent. However, instead of informing Ebert himself, he asked Gröner to inform the government that the army would be in an untenable position if hostilities resumed. Upon receipt, the new government recommended the signing of the treaty. The National Assembly voted by 237 votes in favour, 138 against and five abstentions (a total of 421 delegates) to sign the treaty. This result was sent to Clemenceau just a few hours before the deadline. Foreign Minister Hermann Müller and Colonial Minister Johannes Bell travelled to Versailles to sign the treaty on behalf of Germany. The treaty was signed on 28 June 1919 and ratified by the National Assembly on 9 July by 209 votes to 116. [97] Many in China felt betrayed when German territory in China was handed over to Japan. Wellington Koo refused to sign the treaty, and the Chinese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference was the only nation not to sign the Treaty of Versailles at the signing ceremony. The sense of betrayal has led to large protests in China such as the May 4 movement.

There was immense discontent with the government of Duan Qirui, which had secretly negotiated with the Japanese to obtain loans to finance their military campaigns against the South. On the 12th. In June 1919, the Chinese cabinet was forced to resign and the government ordered its delegation at Versailles not to sign the treaty. [91] [92] As a result, relations with the West have deteriorated. [93] The last treaty of the Paris Peace Conference, the Treaty of Sèvres, was signed in August 1920 between the Allies and the former Ottoman Empire. Although it was accepted by Sultan Mehmed VI, it was rejected by Mustafa Kemal, a Turkish nationalist who was waging a war of independence at the time. Negotiations between Kemal`s representatives and the Allies eventually culminated in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which recognized the new nation of Turkey. This turned out to be the oldest of all the Paris Treaties, which testifies to equal negotiations between the participants and the acceptance of compromises. The Senate`s opposition to the Treaty of Versailles invokes Article 10 of the Treaty, which deals with collective security and the League of Nations. This article, the opponents argued, ceded the war powers of the United States.

Government in the Council of the League. The opposition came from two groups: the “Irreconcilables,” who refused to join the League of Nations in all circumstances, and the “Reservists,” led by the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Henry Cabot Lodge, who were willing to ratify the treaty with amendments. While Lodge was defeated in his attempt to pass treaty changes in September, he managed to make 14 “reservations” on the matter in November. In a final vote on March 19, 1920, the Treaty of Versailles was not ratified by seven votes. As a result, the U.S. government signed the Treaty of Berlin on August 25, 1921. It was a separate peace treaty with Germany that stipulated that the United States would enjoy all “rights, privileges, compensation, reparations, or benefits” conferred upon it by the Treaty of Versailles, but omitted any mention of the League of Nations, to which the United States never adhered. .