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In 1970 I found a history book written in 1919. The last chapter was on the Great War. I remember this for one reason. The author stated that if the Treaty arrangements didn't solve all the problems after the war, a new war was certain.
Neville Chamberlain, Nagy-Britannia miniszterelnöke 1938-ban kijelentette, hogy: „A Trianoni Szerződés eredménye Európában nem a béke, hanem egy új háború félelme”.
While true that statement is also meaningless. Europe is the most blood soaked ground on the Earth. The Europeans nations barely needed a reason to start a war.
I find it rather funny how Ferdinand Foch's comments about how the Versailles Treaty was just a 20 year armistice is often seen as a comment on how harsh the Versailles Treaty was, when Foch though that it was too lenient on the germans.
@@darthplagueis13 But he wanted a further dismantling of the german army et cetera. So using it as an argument that the Versailles treaty was too harsh is taking the quote out of context.
It was too lenient to stop Germany from rising as great power and too harsh to calm people's minds. Failure because it was a compromise between two extremes.
@@vksasdgaming9472no the treaty had nothing to do with Germany rearming the allies were not willing to fight when Germany was breaking the treaty had they gotten involved when Germany was still weak they would of lost so much the allies disunity and inability to fight when at the start is what lead to another war
@@criscabrera9098 The humiliation was a breeding ground for national socialists to spread their ideology and hate Especially the behavior of the French Rhineland occupation and the causing Hyper inflation pushed people into the arms of Hitler
Foch thought the treaty was too lenient on Germany and likely would have agreed with teh French president Poincaré that Germany should have been re-divided into smaller nations.
Yiutunes algorithms and terms of service have a hard time deciphering when something is being used for educational purposes and sometimes finds that videos containing "controversial material" (which remains as yet undefined to a large degree) are targetable for demonetization. Basically the Algorithm finds things that can be perceived as controversial, regardless of what manner they are being discussed, and demonetizes the channels that sponsor them. There is more on this from some smaller History channels such as the Armchair Historian and if you go back a few months here on the Great War, they discuss this in greater depth. I believe you can find it under something like "+100 videos demonetized" or something to that effect
History is a strong message. The whole quote "History is written by the victor" applies more now then it ever did in society and politics because they dont want you too think that they do anything wrong. You say something people dont quite understand and next thing you know your being called a racist lol
The only country that paid its debt without discounts or offsets in full from WWI was Australia. The debt was huge at 50% of GDP and took until 1936 to be paid. Interestingly, at the London Conference in 1953 the allied nations singled out Australia to receive nothing in German reparations, so it didn’t sign, which means that technically, Australia still has a claim on Germany from Versailles.
In the past, wars had to be funded from the king's limited coffers, but advanced financing (up to borrowing from unborn generations through inflation) meant that bankruptcy was no longer the immediate limitation it used to be.
@Harry Paul France? Austria-Hungary? The USA? Italy? Not related to queen Victoria (pretty much every minor power was though, except Serbia and Montenegro)
@@Testimony_Of_JTFwe've indeed known that keynes was wrong since étienne Mantoux's 1952 rebbutal of keynes book, the first serious critic of it. Modern historiography dismisses keynes points, today it is believed the bulk of the damage done by the treaty were pychological not economical. Versailles served as the scapegoat of every german politicians of the next 20 years, the actual economical impact was much lesser than is often propagated. William Keylor published a book in 2014 called "the demonization of versailles" if this is of any interest to you
I would like to express my gratitude to the supporters of the channel who make it all financially possible. Living on SSDI leaves me no disposable income and thus it is only through their patronage I enjoy TGW videos. A very sincere thank you to you all. Because of you I now realize WW1 didn't end in 1918 but only the Western front ceased fighting. Central and Eastern Europe would continue fighting for years to come. What a mess the Allies inherited! I'm no fan of Wilson but his role in the League of Nations was vital in giving the principle of self-determination to a continent in crisis. As bad as it was things could have turned out worse.
What a great episode, brilliantly researched! I’ve been watching this channel since 1914-2014 and enjoyed every bit of it. The more I learn the more I understand just how catastrophic this war was. It irreparably broke the back of European-Western culture. It destroyed these great and cultured nations not just in terms of blood and treasure but it also destroyed the moral credibility of the West. What a shame!
Their moral credibility? What are you talking about? The western powers were self-serving, war-mongering bigots (not to mention colossal asshats and idiots), even those who called themselves democracies. If anything, it showed their moral decay and how much of their so-called civilization was just a facade. I'm not sad they vanished. Not a 100% psyched about what replaced them, but I would not want to live in a world with a pre-WWI mindset.
I don't agree. Most of them were uncaring colonial nations and quite undemocratic. Belgiums treatment of the Congo. Man-made famine in ireland caused by Britain killing millions.
Great episode as always! I recommend taking a look at Kissinger's book "Diplomacy", he explains very well why Versailles was too lenient to give France safety and too severe to prevent resentment. Versailles is a difficult mix of classic European balance of power ideas and American idealism, which in the end pleased nobody.
The entire reparations issue was an add-on to the treaty in the first place, Britain was prepared to waive the debts she was owed from the war (having ended it a net creditor) but was herself in debt to the US, who was not prepared to waive the debts owed to her, so that meant someone had to pay, and the defeated nations that had also started the war were the inevitable choice for who to make pay.
@Teddles Peddles - No, Germany declared war on France and Russia. Britain was the only nation to declare war on Germany and did so because Germany refused to halt her sion of Belgium.
You guys should make an episode about the "sister work" to this, "The political consequences of the peace" by historian Jacques Bainville. It was published in 1920, and fights Keynes on many groups. It wisely foresaw the dismantling of new eastern European states that succumbed to German or Soviet influence, etc... Bainville was mostly anti-German but it doesn't make his insight any less valid.
@@TheGreatWar Would be great if you did! It doesn't receive as much attention as Keynes' work but it foresaw the annexation of Austria by a resurgent Germany, the Sudetenland crisis and a German-Soviet pact against Poland. Absolutely visionary since he was writing this in 1920. Bainville's outlook on the Versailles treaty was this: "it is too soft for what it has harsh, and too harsh for what it has soft".
@@TheGreatWar If you decide to continue this into the recovery of the Weimar Republic, 1924-28 "the Golden Age" as it's commonly referred to through the initial 1924 Dawes Plan, see "The Myths of Reparations" by Sally Marks and "American 'Reparations' to Germany, 1919-1933" by Stephen A. Schuker (the most comprehensive on this topic). Keynes is largely responsible for all the misconceptions of the treaty's outcome into their reparations.
@@randomcommenter100 As stated by German historian Peter Fritzsche, the alleged "harshness" narrative is a "false memory" that the Germans only came to believe in after 1933, it being one of their most lasting achievements in propaganda.
Studying the Treaty of Versailles, I would argue that it was pretty standard for the time. It was actually generous to Germany in some ways. It didn't split them into multiple states like Austria-Hungary, or deprive them of millions of people and massive amounts of land like Brest-Litovsk.
90% of government expenditures towards war debt? Considering how devastated the other major European economies were as well, Germany would have had to discover and capture ElDorado to come out even.
@@GlidusFlowers - Given they paid pretty much nothing from 1919 - 1990 the debt is not as bad as imagined. They only restarted payments after Germany reunified, and had tried to default on the debt from the outset.
@@GlidusFlowers The smaller West Germany payed till 2010, while also paying WW I reparations. And all that while quite quickly recovering its own economy. And did El Dorado have coal and telephone poles? Cause France wanted a lot of those as reparations, so that they can actually repair the war damage.
@Fabian Kirchgessner - How about the deliberate desolation left behind the German armies as they retreated? Pure malice. If the terms did not suit, Germany had the option of continuing the war to a conclusion.
@Fabian Kirchgessner - Yes, and at Brest-Litovsk the Germans insisted Russia pay them, as well as stripping away about 33% of industrial Russia to form German puppet states. Versailles was no different. People are still fighting, we probably always will be for one reason or another, we are imperfect creatures.
Count Albert Apponyi said when the great powers pronounced the death sentence of Hungary in 1920: "You dug the grave of Hungary but Hungary will be there at the funeral of all the countries who dug this grave to my country." Here we are ...
Sad that so few people know "The Political Consequences of Peace" of Jacques Bainville. He predicted at the time the rise of a Germany relatively spared from the war and full of revenge against an exhausted France which with 40 million inhabitants is not in a position to make up against the 60 million inhabitants besides the Rhine. The Anschluss, the Sudetenland crisis, the German-Soviet pact against Poland, he had already said everything in 1920.
Another great in-depth video. You cover a lot of ground in a short time, but I don't think you skirt over anything. I learned a bit about John Maynard Keynes. Now I am slightly wiser. Hat's off!
Thank you. I just discovered this channel. So much information in such a compact style. So much 'fascist' criticism and other slams are being thrown around, by people of all persuasions, that we have forgotten what The Great War was all about. Lots of parallels and so many differences. Your channel is a gift that deserves to be supported by many.
10:04 Keynes nailed it.... That and the fact that article 231 was victors justice and simply a means to hang their debt on someone else to make up for their part in starting and prolonging the war.
"The real aggressor is not he who first employs force, but he who renders the employment of force necessary". -- Birinyi, Trianon, p. 9, from Greacy, p. 150, quoted in W. E. Hall's "A Treatise on International Law", p. 110.
Read the book 1927 by Bill Bryson. By 1927 the US had to deflate the interest rate we were loaning money to Germany so they could pay their debts. This started a run on money which did not end until the crash in 1929.
It’s France more than any other country that made the Great Depression very much worse, they hoarded gold and refused to service their debts to Britain and America. Those loans are now in the trillions thanks to not having had a penny payed on them since 1931.
@CommandoDude One needs to look no further than Jacques Bainville to see that it's possible to foresee the events of the next decade with just as much insight (and arguably, an even more accute one) while still having a completely different take on WHY it would happen. "A treaty too harsh in its mild features, too mild in its harsh aspects" indeed.
Of course he did. Who better to predict the results than the author of the sanctions. John Maynard Keynes wrote the section of the Versailles treaty containing the sanctions on Germany. He designed the sanctions to cripple the German economy indefinitely.
I read Keynes book...what floored me at the time as a uni student studying economics was the ending....”...Our Sons will pay the price of this mistake”...or to that affect, I read it some 20 years ago (I couldn’t tell you the edition though)
What would happen if the Treaty of Versailles was not agreed and signed? How would the countries who were at war that time responded and took action? If you were to rewrite the Treaty, how would you consider things? Any thoughts?
I think the allies decreed that if the German delegates didn't sign the treaty, they threatened another war. Germany had no choice but to accept the treaty
France was invaded and completely devastated and economically ruined, Germany would seek revenge no matter what, should Germany suffer no penalties while France suffered?
Alexis Escudero . But keep in mind there was quite a while in between when Germany didn’t pay its reparations. They weren’t non-stop paying out the nose ever since 1919.
@@rebecca4680 Probably the main reason why they are now done with it. Had they kept up payments throughout the century, who knows if they ever could've gotten their economy back on track.
it wasnt that bad. it was made that bad by right wing parties, for their own uprising. Do you know which peace was really bad? Than google for "the peace of brest-litowsk"....
I feel like it should be pointed out that the Prussians had imposed the The Treaty of Versailles (1871) with crippling indemnities intended to remove France as a military power and threat to German ascension. But since France's economy expanded rapidly, the indemnities no longer matter that much to France's military strength and thus was able to win the next great war: WWI.
@@Edax_Royeaux the USA sold food and ammunition to the Eu and lent money to them too... And got payed with that money for more supplies.. USA got an hugh economic boost and could establish them as superpower.. Yeah you suffered heavily, poor guys :D
@@Edax_Royeaux but you now how much European died yes? And how less American soldiers died? The hole continent was traumatized.. I don't care about 400k us soldiers
Question about 4:50, how could the American relief Administration working in Russia in 1920 if it was under the Bolsheviks at the time? I just find it unlikely that Lenin would have allowed foreign Interlopers of any kind, even a humanitarian one, as it sounds slightly counter-revolutionary. Did the organization only operate in the areas under the firm control of the white Russians then?
Ha! That intro: "Hi. I'm Jesse Alexander, welcome to the great war." Would the captain have received the new batch of cannon fodder in the trenches with similar words?
I wish I could support you on Patreon, I really do. But I'm strapped for cash at the moment, sorry. Please keep pumping out this great content though! It's important to preserve history.
The French - undertandably - dictated the severity of the terms, but the terms of Versailles were comparatively lenient when compared to Brest-Litovsk. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
"Others were worse" is a faint praise -- actually, no praise at all. Yes, Germany was imperialistic; they lost, so that imperialism is dealt with. The French and British, in the treaty, sowed punishment and vengeance, and then reaped it. (And the Americans backed down and let them do it, so are also culpable.)
@@adm0iii Yes, the winners dictate the peace. Germany lost and Versailles was too much of a compromise to do anything effectively. Considering the damage of years of war, a defensive war at that, on entente soil the vengeance makes total sense. The French and British people would've accepted no less.
@@adm0iii It's also important to remember that the Western front was almost exclusively in Belgium and France, and the destruction along the line was near-total. Germany, on the other hand, had seen almost no destruction at all. Even without nationalistic vengeance, it was impossible to sell the French and Belgians that Germany should not pay for reconstruction in some form.
@@adm0iii Not vengeance makes sense, but letting the guys who are responsible for the total destruction of large parts of your country pay for at elast parts of the reconstruction is not vengeance.
Legalese can be so devious... take the text quoted around 6:55, for instance. It emphasizes a promise to provide "compensation for all damage done to the civilian population". That is intentionally vague, inherently absurd and entirely impossible to fulfill or even to delimit. I have to assume that the true intent here was to offer reassuring verbiage that could encourage a perception that the so-called losing side would somehow make all the grief and loss less real at some point. Even if we restrain ourselves to purely financial considerations, that just can't happen to any meaningful extent. Damage to civilians as a direct consequence of World War I includes loss of family providers, of business and job training opportunities, of whole market niches even. Besides, with both sides overextending their own economic sustenance to such extremes, recovery can't help but be compromised as well. Governments can receive money, but civilians can't turn back the clock. That wording is a literal promise of the impossible, presumably to blunt and soften the blow of dealing with many years of wound licking and rebuilding after promises of glory and pride.
J.M. Keynes wrote a lot about the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles. His writing about it are recommended to everyone who is interested in the history of WWI.
I think the treaty of Versailles was overreaching and was a guaranteed path towards another conflict as you pointed out many foresaw a future conflict. It was a perfect backbone for a new party to build on and use as a just cause for new war on every nation that pushed the treaty on them. If you put yourself in a German shoes the idea of payback for such unfair demands was a perfect rallying call for war. Hitler took advantage of that and the strong history that Germany had that the allies very much wanted to erase like frederick the great.
Honestly Keynes is one of the best economists to ever exist so his fears coming true not only proved him right for the first time in the public it also wouldn't be his last time, even after death. Even today, in my social sciences class we talk about Keynes and how his ideas helped save Europe from a deep crisis in 1967.
@@turkishbigdaddy3334 sometimes people's ideas and knowledge about how the situation really is dont go unheard even though it is heard 50 years later and finally appreciated. It's like Edison and Tesla history paints a very different picture of what really happened to Tesla because of Edison.
The Germans were perfectly happy to inflict punative treaties on enemy nations, Frankfurt 1878, Bucharest 1917, Brest-Litovsk 1918 etc, so why should they have been exempt? A future was was pretty much inevitable anyhow, it is a long term European tradition to attempt a rematch as soon as you recovered from a lost war. The mistake was not enforcing the terms from the outset, if that had been done there would have been no German army to start another war.
On the other hand, much of the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles for German politics were not the fault of the Allies. The German reaction to the defeat was based on illusions about the military situation at the end of the War that had very little to do with reality. Large parts of the old political and military establishment in Germany, together with dissatisfied citizens and political extremists, were all too happy to blame the defeat and the economic catastrophe on the new Republic - when in reality, it was these imperial military and political leaders who had been responsible for the War in the first place. And therefore, opposition to the Treaty was intentionally fueled and radicalised by esp. right-wing media hoping to abolish the new democracy, and never allowed to die down, because it was too useful in Germany's internal conflicts. As the "Golden Twenties" and Stresemann's efforts at starting a process of reconciliation show, the cause was not totally lost, and Germany may have come to terms with the Treaty at some point, and move on - like they did after the much more devastating losses after 1945. But that was very much torpedoed, with great effort, by the political right to damage the Republic. The role of the Treaty of Versailles in the lead-up to The Sequel was not just a result of its content but also very much a result of German domestic politics.
After all the Great War didn’t give any nation a sustaining success, none of the empires survived. At last only France was able to hold on to Alsace and Lorraine. But all successors of 1918 lost their colonial empires during the next 60 years and the UK even lost Ireland. To my opinion even the USA and Russia didn’t become relatively powerful by succeeding in WW II. The Treaty of Versailles was just an Illusion and it’s not the question if it was too harsh, but if it reached the aims of the Successors. I fear it didn’t.
The Treaty, like the war, was a complete mess. It helped no one and only did harm to a plethora of countries and empires. The Great War is a fitting name for WWI, as it was the greatest mistake in modern history.
I think that the problem of starvation in Germany was not so much due to the blockade of foodstuffs directly but more of the use of phosphates in the explosives industry rather than as fertiliser. Of course many of those extra phosphates needed could have been made up of imports from Chile amongst other countries. I have parts of the Economic Consequences of the Peace and because of what happened later, one tends to assume that Keynes was correct. However I would argue that given the presentation of Versailles by the nationalist right as a 'diktat' (as was Brest Litovsk or the 1871 Versailles Treaty) had more to do with it and it was the subject of the lost territory which fuelled the right more.
The REAL tragedy is the Allies were too lenient. Germany had been the greatest disturber of European for the past fifty years and should have been completely broken and occupied it was after the SECOND world war it started.
As I recall, Niall Ferguson said that Keynes doesn't just predict or analyze the results of Versailles, (in The Pity of War..?), but helped cause the German response. Evidently, Germans read his book, and when paying reparations became difficult, took the easy way out of missing payments and inflating their economy so as to pay as little as possible in real terms. As Ferguson also points out, the Great Inflation of the early '20s was over before the Great Depression made all the economic repayments by one country to another impossible.
Why have described Keynes as an economist in the description and then said he was a mathematician in the script? Yes, Keynes started out as a mathematician but his most famous work is in economics, i.e. Keynesian economics.
Attach a Lame Guilt clause to that reparations demand. Force them to acknowledge their algorithms and other shenanigans have caused TH-cam to become exponentially lamer than it was five years ago.
Two main elements need to be known in order to understand the French political stance whili negociating the treaty of Versailles: -The war was fought on French soil, and the most industrialised regions of France were occupied and then destroyed by the Germans. -The Germans were twice as many as French people: there were 40 millions French people and almost 80 millions Germans. France lost the biggest proportion of its population. The French stance was to break Germany appart: meaning undoing what the 1870 war and Bismark had done: this would have prevented Germany to become a military power ever again. However, the British and USA did not want to understand that because it is impossible to conquer Britain or the USA from continental Europe. More than an hundred years after the British and Americans still refuse to see their mistakes, while Germany still uses the supposedly too harsh Versailles treaty (with the largest part of debt never paid by Germany by the way) as an excuse for nazism. More than a hundred years later, it is clear that the French politicians were right, the Versailles treaty should have been less harsh economically, but much harsher politicaly by reestablishing what Germany had always been, a bunsh of squabbling tiny states: Hitler would have never been able to rise to power or threaten France or the UK if Germany had been broken appart.
@@harshbansal7982 it's a complete lie. it did. and germany had always wanted to be be a nation state for the most part. what we have here is a german-hating radicalist.
For as hard a the treaty was for Germany, at least their would be a Germany. Austria-Hungery was shattered to bits and those bits were absorbed by its nieghbors. Turkey lost a 1/3 of its territory but won no payment in reparations through war. Finally Bulgaria, they lost critical access to the sea and had to pay reparations too. All in all Germany didnt have it too bad compared to the others.
The Treaty of Versailles was a failure from the victors. But if the Central Powers would have won the war, they would have done a similar failure towards the defeated. It was just in the thinking of the nations of that time.
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Socialism
Yeeeee
@@francoise4308 Ah yes, a mega-corporation and monopoly is a perfect example of socialism.
When will supporter podcast #9 be posted here on TH-cam for those of us who don't use Patreon but support the channel through TH-cam?
You guys should branch out and create a Bitchute channel
You should try joining watchnebula with other educational youtubers.
Anyone else notice how the belt things from his pants or something that go over his shoulder line up almost perfectly with the wall?
I can't unsee it now
I do now.
Oh no. It looks like he's strapped to the wall.
First thing I noticed.
"belt things from his pants or something that go over his shoulder"
Really?
Do you mean suspenders?
In 1970 I found a history book written in 1919. The last chapter was on the Great War. I remember this for one reason. The author stated that if the Treaty arrangements didn't solve all the problems after the war, a new war was certain.
Neville Chamberlain, Nagy-Britannia miniszterelnöke 1938-ban kijelentette, hogy: „A Trianoni Szerződés eredménye Európában nem a béke, hanem egy új háború félelme”.
While true that statement is also meaningless. Europe is the most blood soaked ground on the Earth. The Europeans nations barely needed a reason to start a war.
Singularity one of the most easily understood and explained presentations on the Treaty of Versailles and its broader ramifications.
I find it rather funny how Ferdinand Foch's comments about how the Versailles Treaty was just a 20 year armistice is often seen as a comment on how harsh the Versailles Treaty was, when Foch though that it was too lenient on the germans.
Maybe. Nevertheless he was also aware that the treaty could not warrant permanent peace because in itself it was a delayed declaration of war.
@@darthplagueis13 But he wanted a further dismantling of the german army et cetera. So using it as an argument that the Versailles treaty was too harsh is taking the quote out of context.
It was too lenient to stop Germany from rising as great power and too harsh to calm people's minds. Failure because it was a compromise between two extremes.
@@vksasdgaming9472no the treaty had nothing to do with Germany rearming the allies were not willing to fight when Germany was breaking the treaty had they gotten involved when Germany was still weak they would of lost so much the allies disunity and inability to fight when at the start is what lead to another war
@@criscabrera9098
The humiliation was a breeding ground for national socialists to spread their ideology and hate
Especially the behavior of the French Rhineland occupation and the causing Hyper inflation pushed people into the arms of Hitler
“This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years”
-French Marshal Ferdinand Foch on the Treaty of Versailles
ive seen this qoute everywhere for years. Crazy how he was exactly correct
Fun fact Foch thought the treaty was too lenient and that it won't stop Germany from waging another bloody war.
@BHuang92 - Marshal Foch made one of the most accurate summaries of the Treaty of Versailles. Thanks for posting it!
A storm was slowly building, in my opinion, the second the ink dried on that treaty
Foch thought the treaty was too lenient on Germany and likely would have agreed with teh French president Poincaré that Germany should have been re-divided into smaller nations.
Why does TH-cam demonetize history channels wtf
Because they don't want us to learn what really happened. They want simple narratives not in depth explanations and huminizing mainly Germans.
@@BoostedPastime Cool story, but not true.
Yiutunes algorithms and terms of service have a hard time deciphering when something is being used for educational purposes and sometimes finds that videos containing "controversial material" (which remains as yet undefined to a large degree) are targetable for demonetization. Basically the Algorithm finds things that can be perceived as controversial, regardless of what manner they are being discussed, and demonetizes the channels that sponsor them. There is more on this from some smaller History channels such as the Armchair Historian and if you go back a few months here on the Great War, they discuss this in greater depth. I believe you can find it under something like "+100 videos demonetized" or something to that effect
History is a strong message. The whole quote "History is written by the victor" applies more now then it ever did in society and politics because they dont want you too think that they do anything wrong. You say something people dont quite understand and next thing you know your being called a racist lol
@@eurosensazion well no cuz it attacks ALL history channels
The only country that paid its debt without discounts or offsets in full from WWI was Australia. The debt was huge at 50% of GDP and took until 1936 to be paid.
Interestingly, at the London Conference in 1953 the allied nations singled out Australia to receive nothing in German reparations, so it didn’t sign, which means that technically, Australia still has a claim on Germany from Versailles.
"This war will be over by christmas" makes sense, at least economically.
In the past, wars had to be funded from the king's limited coffers, but advanced financing (up to borrowing from unborn generations through inflation) meant that bankruptcy was no longer the immediate limitation it used to be.
Dhe Repar8ions R 2 Damn High
Keynes book about the versaille treaty is really intersting. He calls the great war the "european civil war" which is actually more fitting.
@Harry Paul France? Austria-Hungary? The USA? Italy? Not related to queen Victoria (pretty much every minor power was though, except Serbia and Montenegro)
I think if Asquith had gone to Versaile instead of Lloyd George, we might have got a better result.
Keynes was wrong on this tbh
@@Testimony_Of_JTFwe've indeed known that keynes was wrong since étienne Mantoux's 1952 rebbutal of keynes book, the first serious critic of it.
Modern historiography dismisses keynes points, today it is believed the bulk of the damage done by the treaty were pychological not economical. Versailles served as the scapegoat of every german politicians of the next 20 years, the actual economical impact was much lesser than is often propagated.
William Keylor published a book in 2014 called "the demonization of versailles" if this is of any interest to you
I would like to express my gratitude to the supporters of the channel who make it all financially possible. Living on SSDI leaves me no disposable income and thus it is only through their patronage I enjoy TGW videos. A very sincere thank you to you all. Because of you I now realize WW1 didn't end in 1918 but only the Western front ceased fighting. Central and Eastern Europe would continue fighting for years to come. What a mess the Allies inherited! I'm no fan of Wilson but his role in the League of Nations was vital in giving the principle of self-determination to a continent in crisis. As bad as it was things could have turned out worse.
Merry Christmas
What a great episode, brilliantly researched! I’ve been watching this channel since 1914-2014 and enjoyed every bit of it. The more I learn the more I understand just how catastrophic this war was. It irreparably broke the back of European-Western culture. It destroyed these great and cultured nations not just in terms of blood and treasure but it also destroyed the moral credibility of the West. What a shame!
Brilliant episode and perfect reply!
Their moral credibility? What are you talking about? The western powers were self-serving, war-mongering bigots (not to mention colossal asshats and idiots), even those who called themselves democracies. If anything, it showed their moral decay and how much of their so-called civilization was just a facade.
I'm not sad they vanished. Not a 100% psyched about what replaced them, but I would not want to live in a world with a pre-WWI mindset.
I don't agree. Most of them were uncaring colonial nations and quite undemocratic. Belgiums treatment of the Congo. Man-made famine in ireland caused by Britain killing millions.
Am I the only one who likes to see these old black and white videos so much?
Great episode as always! I recommend taking a look at Kissinger's book "Diplomacy", he explains very well why Versailles was too lenient to give France safety and too severe to prevent resentment. Versailles is a difficult mix of classic European balance of power ideas and American idealism, which in the end pleased nobody.
The entire reparations issue was an add-on to the treaty in the first place, Britain was prepared to waive the debts she was owed from the war (having ended it a net creditor) but was herself in debt to the US, who was not prepared to waive the debts owed to her, so that meant someone had to pay, and the defeated nations that had also started the war were the inevitable choice for who to make pay.
@Teddles Peddles - No, Germany declared war on France and Russia. Britain was the only nation to declare war on Germany and did so because Germany refused to halt her sion of Belgium.
Dhe Repar8ions R 2 Damn High
You guys should make an episode about the "sister work" to this, "The political consequences of the peace" by historian Jacques Bainville. It was published in 1920, and fights Keynes on many groups.
It wisely foresaw the dismantling of new eastern European states that succumbed to German or Soviet influence, etc... Bainville was mostly anti-German but it doesn't make his insight any less valid.
Interesting, will have a look at that book.
@@TheGreatWar Would be great if you did! It doesn't receive as much attention as Keynes' work but it foresaw the annexation of Austria by a resurgent Germany, the Sudetenland crisis and a German-Soviet pact against Poland.
Absolutely visionary since he was writing this in 1920. Bainville's outlook on the Versailles treaty was this: "it is too soft for what it has harsh, and too harsh for what it has soft".
@@TheGreatWar If you decide to continue this into the recovery of the Weimar Republic, 1924-28 "the Golden Age" as it's commonly referred to through the initial 1924 Dawes Plan, see "The Myths of Reparations" by Sally Marks and "American 'Reparations' to Germany, 1919-1933" by Stephen A. Schuker (the most comprehensive on this topic). Keynes is largely responsible for all the misconceptions of the treaty's outcome into their reparations.
@@randomcommenter100 As stated by German historian Peter Fritzsche, the alleged "harshness" narrative is a "false memory" that the Germans only came to believe in after 1933, it being one of their most lasting achievements in propaganda.
@@AgendaFiles Interesting, in which book did he write about this?
Studying the Treaty of Versailles, I would argue that it was pretty standard for the time. It was actually generous to Germany in some ways. It didn't split them into multiple states like Austria-Hungary, or deprive them of millions of people and massive amounts of land like Brest-Litovsk.
90% of government expenditures towards war debt? Considering how devastated the other major European economies were as well, Germany would have had to discover and capture ElDorado to come out even.
Brian O'Neil
IIRC correctly, Germany finished paying the WWI debt in 2010, so yeah, pretty much needed an El Dorado
@@GlidusFlowers - Given they paid pretty much nothing from 1919 - 1990 the debt is not as bad as imagined. They only restarted payments after Germany reunified, and had tried to default on the debt from the outset.
@@GlidusFlowers The smaller West Germany payed till 2010, while also paying WW I reparations. And all that while quite quickly recovering its own economy.
And did El Dorado have coal and telephone poles? Cause France wanted a lot of those as reparations, so that they can actually repair the war damage.
@Fabian Kirchgessner - How about the deliberate desolation left behind the German armies as they retreated? Pure malice. If the terms did not suit, Germany had the option of continuing the war to a conclusion.
@Fabian Kirchgessner - Yes, and at Brest-Litovsk the Germans insisted Russia pay them, as well as stripping away about 33% of industrial Russia to form German puppet states. Versailles was no different.
People are still fighting, we probably always will be for one reason or another, we are imperfect creatures.
wow another video only 2 days after the last one! thanks guys :)
Count Albert Apponyi said when the great powers pronounced the death sentence of Hungary in 1920:
"You dug the grave of Hungary but Hungary will be there at the funeral of all the countries who dug this grave to my country."
Here we are ...
And what happened?
@@DerDop The colonial empires collapsed, and now migration crisis , and so on...
Sad that so few people know "The Political Consequences of Peace" of Jacques Bainville. He predicted at the time the rise of a Germany relatively spared from the war and full of revenge against an exhausted France which with 40 million inhabitants is not in a position to make up against the 60 million inhabitants besides the Rhine. The Anschluss, the Sudetenland crisis, the German-Soviet pact against Poland, he had already said everything in 1920.
Love the channel, I’ve been following it since 2016! Keep doing great work
Another great in-depth video. You cover a lot of ground in a short time, but I don't think you skirt over anything. I learned a bit about John Maynard Keynes. Now I am slightly wiser.
Hat's off!
Thank you for all the content. These are great. The last one about the early days of the NSDAP was your best in my opinion.
All hail the commission for reparations from youtube!
Hear! Hear!
I second this motion!
Gott strafe TH-cam!
Thank you. I just discovered this channel. So much information in such a compact style. So much 'fascist' criticism and other slams are being thrown around, by people of all persuasions, that we have forgotten what The Great War was all about. Lots of parallels and so many differences. Your channel is a gift that deserves to be supported by many.
Fascinated by how your suspenders and the background line up.
10:04 Keynes nailed it.... That and the fact that article 231 was victors justice and simply a means to hang their debt on someone else to make up for their part in starting and prolonging the war.
The entente didn't start the war and the central powers prolonged the war when it was clear they would lose once the Schlieffen plan failed
very interesting and concise explication of the issues, events, and consequences of the T of V. Excellent narration.
"The real aggressor is not he who first employs force, but he who renders the employment of force necessary".
-- Birinyi, Trianon, p. 9, from Greacy, p. 150, quoted in W. E. Hall's "A Treatise on International Law", p. 110.
I love you guys! Thank you for what you do in spite of the stupidity youtube insists on imposing on history! You all do God's work! Thank you again!
This page is awesome !!! Much love brother
I've always enjoyed history, of all of the history TH-cam channels this is my favourite
Happy New Year! Thank for all your hard work...
Read the book 1927 by Bill Bryson. By 1927 the US had to deflate the interest rate we were loaning money to Germany so they could pay their debts. This started a run on money which did not end until the crash in 1929.
It’s France more than any other country that made the Great Depression very much worse, they hoarded gold and refused to service their debts to Britain and America. Those loans are now in the trillions thanks to not having had a penny payed on them since 1931.
Keynes was a smart man and he was right about many things. Great episode as always keep it up Jesse!
@CommandoDude One needs to look no further than Jacques Bainville to see that it's possible to foresee the events of the next decade with just as much insight (and arguably, an even more accute one) while still having a completely different take on WHY it would happen. "A treaty too harsh in its mild features, too mild in its harsh aspects" indeed.
Greatest closing line yet!
If y'all would've made this video during my Junior year in high school, I would've aced my history final. Thank you nonetheless.
Better late than never ;)
Can I say the year has been amazing and learning about 1919 is very interesting! Looking forward to 2020 and 1920!
Congratulations for reaching over 1 million subscribers!
TH-cam's garbage algorithms have ruined this platform. There needs to be a better alternative out there. Great video.
Bit shoot my dude
Reparations from TH-cam!
Reparations have been demonitzed
This was a good video, it gave me something to think about.
TH-cam should monetize good quality
michael JewTube does not want us to see the truth
Keynes sure called that one right.
How so? We never observed a world with his treaty. Might have been worse.
Taxtro
Fair point, a massive what if.... but very unlikely to have been worse
Of course he did. Who better to predict the results than the author of the sanctions. John Maynard Keynes wrote the section of the Versailles treaty containing the sanctions on Germany. He designed the sanctions to cripple the German economy indefinitely.
Shame he was wrong about the Great Depression ....
@@CountArtha even more shame that neither he nor most economists since have learned from his mistakes.
I read Keynes book...what floored me at the time as a uni student studying economics was the ending....”...Our Sons will pay the price of this mistake”...or to that affect, I read it some 20 years ago (I couldn’t tell you the edition though)
The great war who started a bigger war, and the end of Europe as a force.
That economic tactic reminds me of the phrase "neither a lender nor a borrower be".
What would happen if the Treaty of Versailles was not agreed and signed? How would the countries who were at war that time responded and took action?
If you were to rewrite the Treaty, how would you consider things? Any thoughts?
I think the allies decreed that if the German delegates didn't sign the treaty, they threatened another war. Germany had no choice but to accept the treaty
They would have kept starving Germany with the blockade
They should've found a way to add 7 seconds of content and make this a 19:19 long video.
Jesse parachuted in for this one, didn't even bother to unstrap from his chute.
The braces episode.!
With constant demonetisation should I watch ads or not, I often put myself through them for the sake of the content creators.
Quality video!
All countries who ganged up on the Germans were dishonorable. Seriously.
France was invaded and completely devastated and economically ruined, Germany would seek revenge no matter what, should Germany suffer no penalties while France suffered?
in 2010 Germany finished paying the reparations, after so many years
Alexis Escudero . But keep in mind there was quite a while in between when Germany didn’t pay its reparations. They weren’t non-stop paying out the nose ever since 1919.
@@rebecca4680 That's still quite a long time.
@@rebecca4680 Probably the main reason why they are now done with it. Had they kept up payments throughout the century, who knows if they ever could've gotten their economy back on track.
Gee I wonder what happened between those time frames....🤔
Would have finished earlier if they didn't cause another world war.
hold up 2 episodes in a week? Lets GO
Courtesy of TH-cam's unintuitive scheduling tool.
16:20 Isn’t that what he said? That people wanted vengeance and they were letting that control them?
Germany: this is the worst peace treaty in the history of peace treaties, maybe ever
Laughs in Yalta... no, seriously, it gets worse every time:(
Trianon was worse
Laughs in treaty of saint germain
it wasnt that bad. it was made that bad by right wing parties, for their own uprising. Do you know which peace was really bad? Than google for "the peace of brest-litowsk"....
I feel like it should be pointed out that the Prussians had imposed the The Treaty of Versailles (1871) with crippling indemnities intended to remove France as a military power and threat to German ascension. But since France's economy expanded rapidly, the indemnities no longer matter that much to France's military strength and thus was able to win the next great war: WWI.
Did I just heared a salty Frenchmen crying in the woods?
@@EngelinZivilBO More like a salty American, irritating that the nonsense of Europe dragged us into a war without purpose.
@@Edax_Royeaux the USA sold food and ammunition to the Eu and lent money to them too... And got payed with that money for more supplies.. USA got an hugh economic boost and could establish them as superpower.. Yeah you suffered heavily, poor guys :D
@@EngelinZivilBO Yes, loans the Europeans never paid. And our veterans ended up destitute after the war. And the dead died for nothing.
@@Edax_Royeaux but you now how much European died yes? And how less American soldiers died? The hole continent was traumatized.. I don't care about 400k us soldiers
Question about 4:50, how could the American relief Administration working in Russia in 1920 if it was under the Bolsheviks at the time? I just find it unlikely that Lenin would have allowed foreign Interlopers of any kind, even a humanitarian one, as it sounds slightly counter-revolutionary. Did the organization only operate in the areas under the firm control of the white Russians then?
Ha! That intro: "Hi. I'm Jesse Alexander, welcome to the great war." Would the captain have received the new batch of cannon fodder in the trenches with similar words?
Couldn't you make the video 6 seconds longer?
7
@@adm0iii I beleive you know that for some people the timer on the video is +/-1 second longer.
There is one time to rule them all!
I wish I could support you on Patreon, I really do. But I'm strapped for cash at the moment, sorry.
Please keep pumping out this great content though! It's important to preserve history.
I do, so when you get rich, get it on.
Get rich or die trying!
The reparations demanded from TH-cam should make those demanded of Germany in the Treaty of Versailles seem mild by comparison.
The French - undertandably - dictated the severity of the terms, but the terms of Versailles were comparatively lenient when compared to Brest-Litovsk. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
"Others were worse" is a faint praise -- actually, no praise at all. Yes, Germany was imperialistic; they lost, so that imperialism is dealt with. The French and British, in the treaty, sowed punishment and vengeance, and then reaped it. (And the Americans backed down and let them do it, so are also culpable.)
@@adm0iii Yes, the winners dictate the peace. Germany lost and Versailles was too much of a compromise to do anything effectively. Considering the damage of years of war, a defensive war at that, on entente soil the vengeance makes total sense. The French and British people would've accepted no less.
@@adm0iii It's also important to remember that the Western front was almost exclusively in Belgium and France, and the destruction along the line was near-total. Germany, on the other hand, had seen almost no destruction at all. Even without nationalistic vengeance, it was impossible to sell the French and Belgians that Germany should not pay for reconstruction in some form.
So, vengeance makes sense? Seriously? Is that the way we should all live our lives?
@@adm0iii Not vengeance makes sense, but letting the guys who are responsible for the total destruction of large parts of your country pay for at elast parts of the reconstruction is not vengeance.
@thegreatwar
Can you do a video about Boulanger(ism)?
Legalese can be so devious... take the text quoted around 6:55, for instance.
It emphasizes a promise to provide "compensation for all damage done to the civilian population". That is intentionally vague, inherently absurd and entirely impossible to fulfill or even to delimit.
I have to assume that the true intent here was to offer reassuring verbiage that could encourage a perception that the so-called losing side would somehow make all the grief and loss less real at some point.
Even if we restrain ourselves to purely financial considerations, that just can't happen to any meaningful extent. Damage to civilians as a direct consequence of World War I includes loss of family providers, of business and job training opportunities, of whole market niches even. Besides, with both sides overextending their own economic sustenance to such extremes, recovery can't help but be compromised as well.
Governments can receive money, but civilians can't turn back the clock. That wording is a literal promise of the impossible, presumably to blunt and soften the blow of dealing with many years of wound licking and rebuilding after promises of glory and pride.
J.M. Keynes wrote a lot about the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles. His writing about it are recommended to everyone who is interested in the history of WWI.
I have a feeling you won't have an episode dedicated to Treaty of Trianon.
I think the treaty of Versailles was overreaching and was a guaranteed path towards another conflict as you pointed out many foresaw a future conflict. It was a perfect backbone for a new party to build on and use as a just cause for new war on every nation that pushed the treaty on them. If you put yourself in a German shoes the idea of payback for such unfair demands was a perfect rallying call for war. Hitler took advantage of that and the strong history that Germany had that the allies very much wanted to erase like frederick the great.
Honestly Keynes is one of the best economists to ever exist so his fears coming true not only proved him right for the first time in the public it also wouldn't be his last time, even after death. Even today, in my social sciences class we talk about Keynes and how his ideas helped save Europe from a deep crisis in 1967.
@@turkishbigdaddy3334 sometimes people's ideas and knowledge about how the situation really is dont go unheard even though it is heard 50 years later and finally appreciated. It's like Edison and Tesla history paints a very different picture of what really happened to Tesla because of Edison.
The Germans were perfectly happy to inflict punative treaties on enemy nations, Frankfurt 1878, Bucharest 1917, Brest-Litovsk 1918 etc, so why should they have been exempt? A future was was pretty much inevitable anyhow, it is a long term European tradition to attempt a rematch as soon as you recovered from a lost war. The mistake was not enforcing the terms from the outset, if that had been done there would have been no German army to start another war.
@Fabian Kirchgessner - So the settlement in 1945 was somehow less punitive than Versailles? We have had no war since have we.
On the other hand, much of the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles for German politics were not the fault of the Allies.
The German reaction to the defeat was based on illusions about the military situation at the end of the War that had very little to do with reality.
Large parts of the old political and military establishment in Germany, together with dissatisfied citizens and political extremists, were all too happy to blame the defeat and the economic catastrophe on the new Republic - when in reality, it was these imperial military and political leaders who had been responsible for the War in the first place.
And therefore, opposition to the Treaty was intentionally fueled and radicalised by esp. right-wing media hoping to abolish the new democracy, and never allowed to die down, because it was too useful in Germany's internal conflicts. As the "Golden Twenties" and Stresemann's efforts at starting a process of reconciliation show, the cause was not totally lost, and Germany may have come to terms with the Treaty at some point, and move on - like they did after the much more devastating losses after 1945. But that was very much torpedoed, with great effort, by the political right to damage the Republic.
The role of the Treaty of Versailles in the lead-up to The Sequel was not just a result of its content but also very much a result of German domestic politics.
After all the Great War didn’t give any nation a sustaining success, none of the empires survived. At last only France was able to hold on to Alsace and Lorraine. But all successors of 1918 lost their colonial empires during the next 60 years and the UK even lost Ireland. To my opinion even the USA and Russia didn’t become relatively powerful by succeeding in WW II. The Treaty of Versailles was just an Illusion and it’s not the question if it was too harsh, but if it reached the aims of the Successors. I fear it didn’t.
The Treaty, like the war, was a complete mess. It helped no one and only did harm to a plethora of countries and empires.
The Great War is a fitting name for WWI, as it was the greatest mistake in modern history.
I think that the problem of starvation in Germany was not so much due to the blockade of foodstuffs directly but more of the use of phosphates in the explosives industry rather than as fertiliser. Of course many of those extra phosphates needed could have been made up of imports from Chile amongst other countries.
I have parts of the Economic Consequences of the Peace and because of what happened later, one tends to assume that Keynes was correct. However I would argue that given the presentation of Versailles by the nationalist right as a 'diktat' (as was Brest Litovsk or the 1871 Versailles Treaty) had more to do with it and it was the subject of the lost territory which fuelled the right more.
The REAL tragedy is the Allies were too lenient. Germany had been the greatest disturber of European for the past fifty years and should have been completely broken and occupied it was after the SECOND world war it started.
I'm glad this comment didn't get much attention so far. Proud to be human for once.
This man is strapped to the wall
Indeed he is. 😁
As I recall, Niall Ferguson said that Keynes doesn't just predict or analyze the results of Versailles, (in The Pity of War..?), but helped cause the German response. Evidently, Germans read his book, and when paying reparations became difficult, took the easy way out of missing payments and inflating their economy so as to pay as little as possible in real terms. As Ferguson also points out, the Great Inflation of the early '20s was over before the Great Depression made all the economic repayments by one country to another impossible.
excellent... sorry tto hear of TH-cam's attitude to hiistpry surely one of the most important areas of study
I haven't watched a video in a while, what happened to Indy?
I know I miss him its not the same
I prefer Jesse.
"In a while"?!
Now that's an understatement if there ever was one!
Did anyone realize how the guy's suspenders ally perfectly with the wall frame?
Why have described Keynes as an economist in the description and then said he was a mathematician in the script? Yes, Keynes started out as a mathematician but his most famous work is in economics, i.e. Keynesian economics.
Maybe because he hadn't yet developed his economic theories
Keynes (in this case) is pronounced "canes" not "keens".
Odd that Keynes criticised Versailles as too harsh on Germany given that he was the architect of the economic sanctions in the treaty.
Man, Keynes was on to something.
Wait when is the ottoman treaty coming!
Sevres, August 1920.
@@jessealexander2695 well, i guess he means the comparison in face of what Turkey needed to endure, financially and in regards to territory.
Allied musical chairs before the war followed by economic ones, post. Nice.
Attach a Lame Guilt clause to that reparations demand. Force them to acknowledge their algorithms and other shenanigans have caused TH-cam to become exponentially lamer than it was five years ago.
Also add a clause demanding Filthy Frank back! 😀
Thrusta07 my Leg is Lame right now ,it hurtz to walk too much . But I do agree bring back Filthy Frank ( whoever he was ).
Every episode is accurate...wow
Two main elements need to be known in order to understand the French political stance whili negociating the treaty of Versailles:
-The war was fought on French soil, and the most industrialised regions of France were occupied and then destroyed by the Germans.
-The Germans were twice as many as French people: there were 40 millions French people and almost 80 millions Germans. France lost the biggest proportion of its population.
The French stance was to break Germany appart: meaning undoing what the 1870 war and Bismark had done: this would have prevented Germany to become a military power ever again.
However, the British and USA did not want to understand that because it is impossible to conquer Britain or the USA from continental Europe.
More than an hundred years after the British and Americans still refuse to see their mistakes, while Germany still uses the supposedly too harsh Versailles treaty (with the largest part of debt never paid by Germany by the way) as an excuse for nazism.
More than a hundred years later, it is clear that the French politicians were right, the Versailles treaty should have been less harsh economically, but much harsher politicaly by reestablishing what Germany had always been, a bunsh of squabbling tiny states: Hitler would have never been able to rise to power or threaten France or the UK if Germany had been broken appart.
Can you explain the largest part of the debt never paid part ?
@@harshbansal7982 it's a complete lie. it did. and germany had always wanted to be be a nation state for the most part. what we have here is a german-hating radicalist.
Heads up, your video did not come up on my sub feed. I only saw this because of the bell. I just triple checked.
Please make an episode of the short lived Banat Republic
For as hard a the treaty was for Germany, at least their would be a Germany. Austria-Hungery was shattered to bits and those bits were absorbed by its nieghbors. Turkey lost a 1/3 of its territory but won no payment in reparations through war. Finally Bulgaria, they lost critical access to the sea and had to pay reparations too. All in all Germany didnt have it too bad compared to the others.
Article 231 War Guilt Clause
Fake
The Treaty of Versailles was a failure from the victors. But if the Central Powers would have won the war, they would have done a similar failure towards the defeated. It was just in the thinking of the nations of that time.
Just wanted to not that his braces perfectly align with the background
No, no! Thank YOU! 💖😎
Will post-war South America and China/Japan be covered?
Your braces (suspenders) line up exactly with the object hanging on the wall behind you :-)
Does anyone know the name of the intro?
He mentiones "in light of youtube's moves against history channels this year"... what was that about??
The Great War > The Rise of Skywalker
duh
@@victorbruant389
Billie Eilish?
@@TheCimbrianBull who?
Do a video on the list of countries who did participate in WW1, but didn’t sign the Treaty of Versailles.
I think the Treaty of Versailles was dedicated to Germany only