Lesson video

Hello, welcome back.

It's your Oak Academy history lesson with me with Miss Goult looking into the enquiry question, what kind of peace was made in 1919? Now, today, we're looking at, was the Treaty of Versailles, "a peace of revenge"? And in order to understand that you need to have done the lesson before this, looking at why it was difficult to decide what to do with Germany at the end of the First World War.

So if you haven't, pause this video now and go back and do lesson one so that you know what we're getting at in this lesson.

If you have done it great, and let's crack on.

So for this lesson, you will need a pen, a pencil and a ruler.

And what I suggest you do is go and get those if you don't have them already.

pause the video and write today's title, "Was the Treaty of Versailles, a "peace of revenge"? We're going to start our lesson by having a look at this image.

Now, this image was made in Germany in July, 1919, just one month after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

And this is what's called a political cartoon.

So it was published in a German newspaper, and it was designed to comment on what was happening at the time.

So to make a German comment on what was happening in terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

So have a good look at the image and write a list of what you can see in this image.

I'm going to get you to pause the video now and write down a list of what you can see.

Now you may have unpaused your video now, you might want to pause again, because this is the same image, but what I've done is zoomed in a little bit so you can see things a little bit closer.

Now it might be that you've labelled things, but you're not exactly sure what they are.

So I'm going to just screw this, and if you want to, you can add to your list as we go along.

So, first of all, we've got what we can see here is someone sucking on the arm of a lady and we'll come back to that lady in a moment.

Now, at least you might have recognised is George Clemenceau, the prime minister of France at the time.

And he's referred to in this cartoon as the vampire.

Now, I didn't tell you before what the name of this cartoon was, because I thought it would give too much away, but this cartoon is called Clemenceau, "the vampire".

Sucking the blood out of this woman, lying on the bed.

And who do you think this woman could be? If you guess Germany, you were right.

Now we know from last lesson that France wanted to take very harsh revenge on Germany.

And this is a German cartoon, so it's showing Germany as an innocent woman, having the blood sucked out of her by France.

Okay, next then you can see at the side of Germany, there's a shield and a helmet.

Now we know it's the end of the first world war.

So Germany has laid down her protection, no shield and no helmet.

And in this image, Germany is vulnerable.

She is unprotected.

Now this zoomed in image here, I took out the top of it and you can see that on the left hand side of the screen.

And we've got two bats flying around outside.

I wonder if you worked out who they were.

So one of these bats, the closer one is David Lloyd George, the prime minister of Britain.

And he's a bit bigger because he's a bit closer than Woodrow Wilson.

Who's the president of the USA.

So we have this image and this was made by Germany after the Treaty of Versailles has been signed.

So already, we can see that Germany feels like they have been abused by France and to a lesser extent Britain and the USA, but they really feel that France is taking the life from Germany.

Right and to add onto this, we're going to look at what a British historian wrote.

Not that long after the treaty was signed.

Now, British historian wrote that the Treaty of Versailles was a peace of revenge.

It sowed a thousand seeds from which new wars might spring, it was as though the devil had sat beside Clemenceau, and whispered madness into the ear of Wilson and grinned across the table at Lloyd George.

So that was written in 1929, 10 years after the Treaty of Versailles resigned, when actually things had started to become on ruffles or sorbet.

So this lesson we're going to look at, was it actually a peace of revenge? Let's have a look again, our three decision makers.

And remember, we've got David Lloyd George from Britain, we've got George Clemenceau from France and we've got Woodrow Wilson of the USA.

Each of these men in deciding what was going to happen to Germany had different aims at the Treaty of Versailles.

And that was because of their different experiences of war and their different views for the future.

If you remember, Clemenceau who had France bordering Germany, and most of the fighting has happened in France and they'd lost the most men, was worried about future invasion and wanted lots of compensation for the war.

Whereas Woodrow Wilson from the USA arrived at the Paris peace conference, wanting a just or a fair peace and wanting to ensure that Germany was not looking for revenge.

And that there would be lasting peace in Europe.

And he brought his 14 point plan if you remember.

That was this idea of how Europe should be governed, moving forwards.

So we can already see from that quite that some people disagreed with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, but was it a peace of revenge? I mean looking at peace, we need to consider three things when we're thinking about what kind of peace was made in 1919.

Was it a self interested peace? Was it a peace that benefited or betrayed? Was it a vengeful peace? So was it a peace of revenge as the historian has said, or is it a peace that was made out of the attempts to do the right thing? So bearing that in mind, what kind of peace was it? So why might the historians call the Treaty of Versailles a peace of revenge? Well, there's three big reasons.

One, is that it damaged Germany economically.

That meant that money was taken from Germany.

And it was very difficult for Germany to recover economically.

It damaged Germany militarily.

And we'll go into the details of that.

But anything to do with the word militarily is to do with the army or the armed forces.

And it damaged Germany's pride.

Germany was a relatively new country and it had only formed, much more recently than Britain and France.

So therefore had been building herself up before the first world war.

So having come to this massive failure of losing the war, Germany then had to accept all sorts of other terms, which damaged her pride.

So let's go on to look at the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and we'll decide whether we think it was a peace of revenge.

So the easiest way to remember the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, is simply to gargle.

That was the sound of somebody gargling.

And the acronym gargle is a really good way to help you to remember the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

Now gargle is G-A-R-G-L-E.

And those are the terms and we'll go through them one at a time.

I'm just going to run through them with you now so you can see how this works.

So G, is the guilt for the war, A, is for armed forces reduced, R, is for reparations, G, is for Germany lost land, L, is for league of nations and E is for extra terms. I'm going to take you through those one at a time.

Then I'm going to come back and give you a bit of a test on them and see if you can remember them.

These aren't all the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

They're just the most important ones that we need to know about at the moment.

So first of all, G is for guilt for the war.

Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles said that Germany had to accept full guilt for the war.

Now Germany felt this was very unfair because they felt they weren't the only ones to blame for the war.

This massively affected Germany's pride.

They didn't feel it was just them to blame, they thought that it was really unfair.

Additionally, the people of Germany, when the armistice was signed, didn't realise that Germany had lost the war.

They actually thought that it was an agreement for everyone to stop fighting.

So this was very surprising for the German public.

A is for armed forces reduced.

For Germany was only allowed a hundred thousand men in her army, six battleships and no air force.

This meant Germany was really vulnerable.

If another country decided to attack Germany, it will be very, very difficult for Germany to defend herself.

The German Navy was so upset about the small number of battleships that they were allowed that they actually deliberately sunk lots of their battleships.

Instead of handing them over to the Big Three.

This term obviously damaged Germany's military.

It also damaged her pride because part of what it meant to be a strong country in 1919 was having a strong army and lots of battleships, their strong Navy as well.

It also would have damaged her economically as well, because it meant that lots of people who had been employed in the army no longer had a job.

R is for reparations.

Now, I remember this because reparations sounds a little bit like repack and reparations was 6.

6 billion pounds that Germany had to pay back to the winning countries in order to make up for the damage that they had caused in the first world war.

This was an absolutely monumentally huge amounts of money that they were paying back over a period of time.

And they were expected to make those payments on time.

Now, the majority of this was going to France because of the damage that had been caused to France.

Some of it was going to Britain and this massively damaged Germany, economically it meant that it was really, really, really difficult for Germany to rebuild herself after the first world war.

It also damaged her pride as well.

And it massively links in with the war guilt that Germany had to accept as well, because they didn't feel that they were the only ones who were to blame for this yet they were paying the most money.

G is for Germany lost land.

All of their colonies in Africa were taken away and given to Britain and France.

And also this area here called Alsace-Lorraine, was returned to France.

And that was an area that France and Germany, they had been arguing over for a period of time, as you can see it's right on the border.

So Germany had to return that to France.

Now we'll go more into this next lesson when we look at the limits of self determination and we'll look at the fact that Germany lost her colonies, but this was a massive economic loss for Germany because colonies brought him lots of money.

And it was also damage to Germany's pride as well because Britain and France hadn't lost their colonies, but Germany had to give hers up.

L is for League of Nations.

Now this is part of Woodrow Wilson's 14 point plan that he wanted countries to solve their problems through talking and through diplomacy, not through war.

So he introduced this League of Nations and again, this is something we'll go into more detail in a later lesson.

Germany was not included in the League of Nations.

So Germany was not allowed to take part in those discussions to try and solve problem.

E is for extra terms. One of which was that Germany was not allowed to have any secret treaties or agreements with other countries.

And the other one was that they were not allowed to unite with Austria.

So that's Germany that's Austria.

They were not allowed to unite.

Most of people in Austria were German speaking and may well want to have united with Austria, but this was expressly for Britain.

And the union of Germany with Austria was called Anschluss.

So they weren't allowed to do that.

Hello, I'm back again, to see how much you've taken in from gargle or the main tens of the Treaty of Versailles.

So what will happen is a few clues will come up on the screen.

What I'd like you to do is pause your video and write down what you can remember about each of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

I'll talk you through as we go along that this is a good way just to test your knowledge on it and see what you can remember.

Okay, here we go.

Okay so the first term that we went for was G and we can see that when being pointed, someone hanging their head down and article 231.

What was that? Pause if you need to, write down your answer, or if you want to, you can say your answer.

Yes G was for guilt for the war.

Germany had to accept full guilt for the war, even though they felt that it wasn't their fault.

Okay next one, A lots of clues that, what was A for? A is for armed forces reduced, say they only were allowed a hundred thousand in the army, six battleships and no air force.

Okay, R, what was R for? Remember, pause, if you need more time, your clues that on the screen.

R, is for reparations.

The money that Germany had to pay 6.

6 billion pounds to the winning countries in order to make up for the damage that they had caused.

Right next one, G what is G for? G is for Germany lost land, their colonies in Africa were taken and they had to return Alsace-Lorraine to France so Germany lost land.

L is for what? Gives you a clue it's to do with talking about your problems as a country.

And it's something that Germany was not included in.

So pause now, if you need to have a think, and that is the League of Nations, it's the League of Nations.

And finally E, there's some images to help you No secret treaties and no union with Austria or Anschluss as it's known, was extra terms. Right so we've had that review of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

Let's push this forward a bit more and have a bit more of a think about it.

What kind of peace was created in 1919? Was there a peace that was self interested? So what we think about were these terms of the Treaty of Versailles? Were are they looking at future world peace or were they to benefit the Big Three and in particular Britain and France.

Was there a peace that was vengeful? In other words, was there peace based on revenge or was there peace that came from doing the right thing? So here is what to help us think about that and think about whether this peace was self-interested, vengeful or from doing the right thing.

We're going to have a look at the different terms and trying to sort them out.

So what I'd like you to do with your pencil and your ruler is on your peace of paper or in your book draw this table that I've created here.

Now I'm going to use my mouse to point at this.

So you can see down this side, the terms of the treaty are down here.

What you need to decide is whether this term was self interested, vengeful, so coming from revenge or from doing the right thing.

Now some of these terms are more than one of these things.

So guilt for the war.

For example, if you thought it was self-interested, if you think it's self interested for Britain and France, then you'd give it a tick.

If you think it's vengeful or to do with revenge, you'd give it a tick.

If you think it came from doing the right thing, you'd give it a tick and you could put the tick in more than one box, okay? If you're not sure what you could do is put a question mark in the box and come back to it.

I'm going to go through what my thoughts are on this.

This is one of those ones where if you've got a good justification for it, you can sort of justify quite a lot of different arguments for lots of these different terms. So think really hard about where you are putting your ticks.

I'm going to disappear.

I'm going to leave the instructions up on the screen.

And I would recommend that you pause your video and take your time to do this.

If you need a bit of a refresher on what the terms of the treaty are, if you escape from full screen and click forward to have a look at the worksheet that goes with this lesson, there's similar information to what I've gone through on that, and that will help you to complete this if you're struggling to remember some of the details of the terms of the treaty.

Good luck, I'll be back in a few minutes.

Hello, everyone, welcome back.

And welcome for taking the time to think really hard about the different terms of the treaty and whether they were self-interested, vengeful or peace that came from doing the right thing.

So number one, guilt for the war.

Was it self interested? Yes.

Britain and France did not want to accept any guilt for the war happening.

They chose not to recognise that by joining in with the war, they were to some extent, guilty for it.

And they didn't recognise to the same extent that it wasn't just Germany who was guilty.

There were also lots of other countries who were guilty for the outbreak of the war.

Was it vengeful, were they taking revenge? Yes.

They wanted to blame it on Germany.

They didn't have to put the bit about war guilt in the Treaty of Versailles, but they chose to because they wanted to make it very clear that they felt that Germany was at fault.

Did it come from doing the right thing? No.

They wanted Germany to feel that their pride had been damaged because they had to accept guilt for the war.

Right, armed forces reduced.

Was it self interested? Very much to say.

Britain wanted to have the strongest Navy.

France didn't want to be invaded, this left Germany, very vulnerable to attack.

So it was vengeful.

It was full of revenge.

It did not come from doing the right thing.

Reparations, was it self interested? Yes Britain and France for gaining money from Germany, having lost the war, they could start to rebuild their countries and rebuild their economy.

It was very difficult for Germany to do that when Germany was paying out 6.

6 billion pounds to the winning countries.

So was it vengeful? Yes.

And did it come from doing the right thing in that case? No.

Germany lost land.

Was it self interested? Yes.

The colonies in Africa went to Britain and France and it meant that Germany also became less powerful.

So therefore it was vengeful.

Did it come from doing the right thing? No.

Did Britain and France stand to gain from it? Yes.

There are some arguments that giving areas of Europe who had been governed by Germany self-determination, which meant the right to govern their self did come from doing the right thing.

I'm not going to put it in this column here though, because there's a big discussion on that next lesson.

So we're going to leave that for now.

Okay, League of nations, was it self interested? I put a question mark there and a question mark on revenge and a tick in it came from doing the right thing.

And I'm going to tell you why.

Now essentially the League of Nations came from Wilson's 14 point plan, which was designed to help keep lasting peace in Europe after the end of the first world war.

So that comes from doing the right thing and this idea of solving problems through talking instead of through war, however, as Germany was not allowed to join the League of Nations and they were excluded from those discussions, that means it was self-interested.

Britain and France still wanted to get the best things that they could out of the League of Nations.

And the fact that Germany wasn't involved was vengeful.

It was full of revenge.

So extra terms. Germany was not allowed any secret treaties and they could not unite with Austria.

It was very much self interested.

It kept Germany with very little power and unable to unite with other countries.

And equally it was vengeful.

It was exercising that power to say to Germany, this is what you have to do.

And we're going to tell you how to do it.

So even just by looking at this table, we can see that there's very little, that come out of what we've looked at today that it came from doing the right thing.

But there was a lot that came out of being self-interested and being full of revenge, being vengeful.

So it's worth considering what kind of peace do we think is going to come out of an agreement that comes from self-interested motives and vengeful motives as well.

So we have our quote, it was a peace of revenge.

We have our image that we saw at the beginning of the lesson.

So what evidence do we have to say that it was a peace of revenge? Well Germany had to accept guilt for the war.

Germany's armed forces were reduced.

Germany had to pay reparations.

Germany lost land.

Germany was unable to join the League of Nations and Germany had to accept the extra terms of no secret treaties and no union with Austria.

It's very easy to see why this German artist drew this image and why it was said the peace made in 1919 was a peace of revenge.

So I'm going to ask you now, why might a historian have described the Treaty of Versailles as a peace of revenge? We went through the three big reasons right at the beginning of this lesson, and we've now added flesh and specific knowledge to them, but can you remember those three main bullet points? Pause your video here, have a think, and when you've finished it press play.

Welcome back.

So what did you get for your three reasons why historians might call the treaty of Versailles a peace of revenge? Did you get number one? It damaged Germany economically.

We know that 6.

6 billion pounds of reparations will have crippled Germany, as well as the economic impact of lots of the other terms. For example, reducing the military.

It damaged Germany militarily, we know that they were only allowed a hundred thousand men in the army and six battleships.

This meant that Germany was very weak and vulnerable.

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, because this sums up the damage caused by every term of the Treaty of Versailles, is damaged Germany's pride.

But let's have a look at the other side, is there any evidence to suggest that this was not simply a peace of revenge, but actually some of this was done for the right reasons.

Pause here see if you can get a peace of evidence to say that this was not simply a peace of revenge.

Okay welcome back.

Our big bit of evidence that it was not simply a peace of revenge is the League of Nations.

And the League of Nations was created out of Wilson's 14 point plan with the idea of talking about international issues instead of going to war.

We can always argue on the other side of that, that Germany was not initially allowed to join the League of Nations, but the idea behind the League of Nations was that of a lasting peace.

Well done for this lesson.

That's a lot to take in.

So my advice to you is pause the video, read the slides on the next page and answer the comprehension questions.

Then when you're done, come back and we'll go through those answers.

Hello and welcome back.

So here are the comprehension questions that you will have had a go at and we're going to go through some potential answers to them.

Now, the answers that I've caught up with are the answers that I have thought of based on things that have seemed important to me.

However, as historians, we pick out different bits of evidence to backup our answers and give different justifications on things, depending on where we're coming from.

So your answers do not need to be the same as mine word for word, have a look through structure, because structuring your answers in the way I've given the examples really will help you to write in a historical way.

So question one, what was signed in June 1919? An acceptable answer would be the Treaty of Versailles.

A good answer would say in June, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed.

This treaty had been decided by the main winners of the first world war, Britain, France, and the USA.

It laid out all of the terms that Germany had no choice, but to follow.

And what's really good about this answer is it really shows off the knowledge about the Treaty of Versailles.

It doesn't just say what it is, it explains who signed it and what it was in much more detail than just saying it's name.

Which term of the Treaty of Versailles damaged Germany's military the most.

So an acceptable answer is reduction in the armed forces.

A better answer would look like this, which says the term, which damaged Germany's military the most was the reduction in armed forces.

Germany was only allowed a hundred thousand men in the army, six battleships and no air force.

This made her much weaker militarily than Britain and France.

The reason why this answer is much better is because it gives specific evidence, particularly that figure of a hundred thousand men in the army and six battleships shows that we really understand what the terms were in terms of the military.

Number three, in what way was the Treaty of Versailles an example of the Big Three trying to do the right thing.

So an acceptable answer would be, the League of Nations was to solve problems by talking instead of war.

A good answer says that, one example of where the Treaty of Versailles showed the Big Three trying to do the right thing was through the creation of the League of Nations.

This was a group of European countries who would talk about issues and use diplomacy to solve problems instead of war.

This was to try and keep peace in Europe in the future.

This is a much better answer because it explains in much more detail what the League of Nations was and how it would help Europe to do the right thing in the future.

Number four, with which terms of the Treaty of Versailles would France be the most satisfied? So you could have actually chosen any of the terms that we've looked at today.

And as long as you give a justification that's.

So I go reparations.

Okay? And my reason for that is France wanted a harsh punishment for Germany, so would be pleased that Germany had lots of reparations, 6.

6 million pounds to pay.

This would mean that France could start to rebuild their economy and could make sure that they were more powerful than Germany.

So this sounds good because I've explained why France would be particularly happy with that term.

And also explain the specific detail of the term, which is the amount of reparations that Germany had to pay.

Now, number five, to what extent was the Treaty of Versailles, a peace of revenge? In answering this question, you will need to weigh up both sides of the argument and come to a conclusion.

Now, we actually have thought of ways this will put in the lesson when we looked at our table that we completed, we looked at why historians might think the treaty of Versailles was a peace of revenge and some things that were actually good about the Treaty of Versailles.

So that information is what will help you to answer this question.

So I've given you some sentence starters here.

So your first sentence might start with, the treaty of Versailles was a peace of revenge to some extent, because.

and then you explain why it was a peace of revenge using specific evidence, and then explaining how that shows the Treaty of Versailles was a peace of revenge.

And then you could, on the other hand say, however, it was not only designed to get revenge.

There is also evidence it was an example of the Big Three trying to do the right thing.

Then you can give your evidence there.

And then your conclusion, which weighs up both sides of the argument and comes to a final judgement could finish with, it is clear that.

There's some key words there, revenge, reparations, armed forces, self-interest, colonies, which you could use to help you, which would improve your answer by using terminology, which is specific to this topic.

Now I've just picked out a few key words that actually there's lots of key words that have come up in the terms so you may wish to use those.

Well done for completing your work and looking at whether the Treaty of Versailles was a peace of revenge.

Next lesson, we're going to go on to look at the limits of self determination, which was one of Woodrow Wilson's 14 points.

If you'd like to share any of your work with Oak National ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnWithOak.

Have a great rest of your day.