Treaty of Versailles Conditions

The main terms of the Versailles Treaty were:

(1) the surrender of all German colonies as League of Nations mandates;

(2) the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France;

(3) cession of Eupen-Malmedy to Belgium, Memel to Lithuania, the Hultschin district to Czechoslovakia,

(4) Poznania, parts of East Prussia and Upper Silesia to Poland;

(5) Danzig to become a free city;

(6) plebiscites to be held in northern Schleswig to settle the Danish-German frontier;

(7) occupation and special status for the Saar under French control; (8) demilitarization and a fifteen-year occupation of the Rhineland;

(How do 6 & 7 show a loss of control???)

(9) German reparations of £6,600 million; $1,782,255,617,429.94.

(10) a ban on the union of Germany and Austria;

(11) an acceptance of Germany's guilt in causing the war;

(11) provision for the trial of the former Kaiser and other war leaders;

(12) limitation of Germany's army to 100,000 men from around 13,000,000: with no conscription, no tanks, no heavy artillery, no poison-gas supplies, no aircraft and no airships;

(13) the limitation of the German Navy to vessels under 100,000 tons, with no submarines;

Reparations Paid By Germany

Caption: "I can give him another injection. In the state he's in, he won't notice anything at all “

Explanation: The patient, representing Germany, is dripping blood into a pail titled "reparations," with various casts and bandages representing the treaties and international agreements allegedly responsible for Germany's misery.

In the chemical industry war and peace products are often almost identical. Nitrates, ammonia, etc., are well-known examples. After the First World War the Germans held on to their plants successfully. By 1926 Germany made a third of all nitrates in the world. Hydrogenation of coal, synthetic rubber, etc., were all started because of military needs.

An explosion in a chemical factory in Hamburg in 1928, causing the death of eleven persons, proved that poison gas had been produced—for use by the army.

The use of neutral facilities was in addition to the large scale collaboration with Russia (USSR). It extended beyond manufacturing to the secret training of army personnel.

Starting their collaboration with the Rapallo Treaty (1921), the contracting powers, the Russian government and the German Army, had different aims. The Russians wanted to profit from German industrial technology and were keen on getting an armament industry of their own to be built by the Germans. The German Army had an interest in producing weapons and munitions which could not be controlled by the power of Versailles.

This connection led to the construction of an air force. The Junkers airplane factory in Dessau built airplane factories in Russia. The costs were, of course, to be provided by the army. Other airplane factories were built near Moscow, and in Samara (Kuibyshev) and Saratow.

Military air personnel got their instruction in Russia. To this end, German officers dismissed from the army went to Russia as civilians and, after a period of training there, returned to the army with a higher rank. In addition to

airplanes, the army built a poison gas factory. Krupp had a factory in Russia which produced heavy artillery, especially howitzers .

In 1922, Krupp established Suderius AG in the Netherlands, as a front company for shipbuilding, and sold submarine designs to neutrals including the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, Finland, and Japan. German Chancellor Wirth arranged for Krupp to secretly continue designing artillery and tanks.

Return to the NetherlandsIn 1919, Fokker, owing large sums in back taxes (including 14,250,000 marks of income-tax),[5] returned to the Netherlands and founded a new company near Amsterdam with the support of Steenkolen Handels Vereniging (now known as SHV Holdings). It was called Nederlandse Vliegtuigenfabriek (Dutch Aircraft Factory), carefully concealing the Fokker name because of his WWI involvement. Despite the strict disarmament conditions in the Treaty of Versailles, Fokker did not return home empty-handed: he managed to arrange an export permit for a shipment of aircraft parts and complete aircraft, among them 117 Fokker C.I's and 180 other types, such as D.VII and D.VIII. In 1919 six entire trains were taken across the German-Dutch border. This initial stock enabled him to quickly set-up shop.After his company's relocation, vast amounts of Fokker C.I and C.IV military air-planes were delivered to Russia, Romania and the still clandestine German air-force. Success came on the commercial market too, with the development of the Fokker F.VII, a smart high-winged aircraft capable of taking on various types of engines. Fokker would continue to design and build military aircraft and was delivering aircraft to the Dutch air force. Among foreign military customers, there was Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Hungary, and Italy. All these countries bought substantial numbers of the Fokker C.V reconnaissance aircraft, which became Fokker's main success in the latter part of the 1920s and early 1930s.

The official army (Reichswehr) consisted of 4,000 officers, 20,000 noncommissioned officers, 38,000 Gefreite, and 38,000 soldiers. Of course the army took advantage of any loophole that existed or could be constructed in the Versailles disarmament rules (14). Each company continued the tradition of an imperial regiment and got the corresponding numbers and colors. Since four companies make up a battalion, the battalion corresponded to a division and the regiment to an army corps. Thus, the Reichswehr threw a shadow, and the shadow was the larger of the two. The meaning of this shadow was the image of the Imperial Army.

The officers in the Reichswehr served longer in the same ranks, sometimes up to two and a half times the length of service in the Imperial Army. Thus, the average officer was actually a higher-ranking officer in the shadow army. Reserve officers were illegally trained and advanced in a legally nonexisting reserve. Fifty-eight thousand noncoms were able to train a much larger army which existed, partly on paper, in the patriotic organizations forming an illegal reservoir, and in illegal parallel military formations. The instructions in official manuals were based on the strength of arms and munitions of a great modern military power and not on the legal 100,000-man army. Since the soldier had to sign up for twelve years, 8,000 could leave after each twelve years and 8,000 new soldiers could then be enrolled. In reality, various devices such as unforeseen illnesses were used to justify large, premature dismissals and new entrants. New soldiers were introduced under the identification of legal soldiers, so that the formal number remained constant.

The legal army maintained close liaison with various groups which trained men in arms, and had a variety of "cover" identities to shield them from view as military groups. The Stahlhelm, for example, was a nationalistic, middle-class organization which advocated the merit of military life and agitated publicly for restoration of the German military machine. Unlike the Nazis, the Stahlhelm was not a terroristic body. The Nazis started as a movement of the outcasts of society, the Lumpenproletariat—long-standing unemployed. This movement, originating with desperate men who had little to lose, took on a politically fanatic and terroristic character. Here, military methods were important for use in the party's struggle for political supremacy.

Finally, the illegal military groups included an array of fanatic terroristic organizations, small in size, but important for their work of political assassination in eliminating first the leaders of the Revolution, then prominent Republicans, and finally the enemies of the illegal rearmament.