Treaty of Versailles Signed
The Treaty of Versailles formally ended World War I and imposed harsh conditions on Germany
June 28, 1919
The War to End All Wars Comes to a Close
On June 28, 1919, representatives of Germany and the Allied powers signed the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, outside Paris. The treaty officially ended World War I, which had killed an estimated 20 million people over four years of brutal fighting. The signing took place almost exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the event that had triggered the war. The ceremony was meant to signal a new era of peace and international cooperation, but the terms of the treaty would plant the seeds of the next global conflict.
Harsh Terms for Germany
The treaty placed full blame for the war on Germany through the infamous "war guilt clause." Germany was forced to pay enormous reparations — eventually set at 132 billion gold marks — surrender large chunks of its territory, give up its overseas colonies, and drastically reduce the size of its military. The German economy was already devastated by the war, and the reparations made recovery nearly impossible. Many Germans felt humiliated and betrayed by the settlement. The resentment that followed created fertile ground for radical political movements, including the one led by Adolf Hitler, who exploited this national anger to rise to power in 1933.
A Peace That Didn't Hold
Historian John Maynard Keynes famously predicted that the harsh terms of Versailles would lead to another war. He was right. The economic hardship and national humiliation suffered by Germany in the 1920s and 1930s contributed directly to the conditions that made World War II possible. The treaty also redrew the map of Europe and the Middle East in ways that created new tensions and conflicts. The League of Nations, created alongside the treaty to prevent future wars, proved too weak to stop the aggression that followed. Versailles is now widely seen as a flawed peace that made the next war almost inevitable.