Article 231 of The Treaty of Versailles - Significance

Significance

The article, in which Germany was assigned the responsibility for damages caused by World War I, serves as a justification for the obligations put upon Germany in the remainder (Articles 233 through 247) of Part VIII, which was concerned with reparations. The article was written by US diplomats Norman Davis and John Foster Dulles who by writing Article 231 had created what President Woodrow Wilson's biographer Arthur Walworth called a "psychological sop".

They had France sign the war guilt clause in exchange for acknowledging that Germany could never repay the whole amount of damage it did in the war. Article 232 also stated that the Allies would only seek reparations for specific civilian damages inflicted by Germany.

The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George commented that:

The English public like the French public, thinks the Germans must above all acknowledge their obligation to compensate us for all the consequences of their aggression. When this is done we come to the question of Germany's capacity to pay; we all think she will be unable to pay more than this document requires of her.

By arguably blaming only Germany for causing the war, Article 231 has been cited as one of the causes that led to the rise of national socialism in Germany. At least one historian, Margaret MacMillan, argues that this long held notion is fundamentally erroneous. However, MacMillan states that Germany in fact never paid monetary reparations, and in that sense, it is false to state that Germany's impoverishment as a result of payment of reparations caused the rise of national socialism. That is not to say, however, that the German public's interpretation of Article 231 as unequivocally ascribing the fault for the war to Germany and her allies may not have engendered an outrage and humiliation which may have, at least in part, abetted the rise of a nationalistic socialism in the German people.

At the time, the various Allied delegations naively regarded Article 231 as not a problematic clause given that the intention was to limit German liability with regard to reparations, and were most surprised at the violent reaction it generated with the Germans when the German delegation read the peace terms in June 1919.

Sally Marks, an American historian, maintains that the claim that Article 231 implies "war guilt" was the work of various German politicians and apologists who misinterpreted Article 231 as saying that as a way of gaining international sympathy.

She argues that the clause says no such thing, and all that the clause does say is "the responsibility of Germany and her Allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies." Exactly how the quoted passage does not imply war guilt on the part of Germany is not entirely clear.

Marks also points out that the next article, Article 232 of the Versailles treaty limits German responsibility to pay only for civilian damages, and that when a conference was called in London in 1921 to determine how much Germany should pay, the Allies calculated on the basis of what Germany could pay, not on their needs.