Article 231 of The Treaty of Versailles :: World War I History

Article 231 of The Treaty of VersaillesFirstly, we must(prenominal) proceed to let off the nature of Article 231 in order to be able to read its judgement about Germanys responsibility for the warfare. after(prenominal) the war had ended, Europes, especi aloney Frances sparing was devastated. There was also a general desire for such a war never to repeat itself, as the first proof of ripe warfare proved to be ruinous. To deal with this two issues the allied powers do Germany sign the war guilt clause which made it accept all the guilt for the war and because of this, pay reparations to the affected states. In this agency Frances parsimony would theoretically recover faster spell Germany was kept economically clean so it could never attempt to cause a war again. plane though at the time most non-German historiographers went along with this, while German historians were not happy with this interpretation for obvious reasons, after a fewer years opinion began to move away from only blaming Germany and accepted that other countries should also take part of the blame. However, in 1961 a German historian called Fritz Fischer proposed the idea that after all Germany should take most of the responsibility. These two points of stack have been a cause for debate for historians and a final musical arrangement has not yet been reached. While most historians accept that the key decisions for war in July 1914 were taken in Berlin, other factors such as German foreign policy (Weltpolitik) and the hamper system remain still as the grounds of discussion. To analyse in depth Germanys guilt for the war we must first look at the most distant events and work our way up to the July crisis. To understand Germanys actions that lead to war we shall look first at its foreign policy, specifically from the point were Bismarcks policy ended in 1890. After Bismarcks dismissal the Kaiser and his advisers were convinced that the most likely wars in Europe were Germany agains t France of Austria-Hungary against Russia and in neither case could Russia and Germany be on the same side because of the alive alliances. This meant the rupture of the Russo-German friendship and the starting point were the two fronts that battled in the long War started to shape up. Another example of a failed attempt of alliance was that of with Britain. Kaiser Wilhelm inherited her mothers admiration for English liberalism and the accepted view of English pre-eminence while keeping his fathers strict Prussian military code of behaviour.