How unfavorable were the terms of Germany's “surrender” in WW1?

Question

The First World War ended when an armistice was signed between the Germans and the Allies. At that point, while Germany had no realistic hopes of winning the war, they had no enemies within their borders and still had troops in enemy territory.

I believe this apparent "victory" exacerbated the belief that Germany was betrayed by civilians at home (ie: the Dolchstoßlegende). The armistice wasn't officially a surrender, but apparently the terms were not very good for a country that wasn't really defeated.

So, how unfavorable were the terms of Germany's "surrender" in WW1?

Answer 1

Very unfavorable. While the Treaty of Versailles doesn't explicitly call it a surrender, Germany did surrender and was forced to accept all responsibility for the war (while obviously not being the only party responsible). I will refer to the text of the treaty in the following. In particular:

• Germany lost the Saar Basin to France "as compensation for the destruction of the coal-mines in the north of France and as part payment towards the total reparation due from Germany for the damage resulting from the war" (Article 45).
• Germany lost Alsace and Lorraine to France "recognising the moral obligation to redress the wrong done by Germany in 1871" (Part III, Section V). This formulation was dictated by France and was regularly criticized by Germans - Germany obviously didn't want to recognize that it did anything wrong in the Franco-Prussian War.
• Germany lost significant territories to Poland (Part III, Section VIII) which divided the country in two - the area around Königsberg was no longer connected to Germany, one had to go through Poland.
• Germany lost all its colonies (Article 119) and essentially had to drop all its interests outside Europe (Part IV).
• The German army couldn't exceed 200,000 men (Article 163), the navy could no longer have more than 6 battleships (Article 181) and the military use of airplanes was forbidden altogether (Article 198).
• Willhelm II (no longer Kaiser but still an important figure to all Germans) had to face a trial "for a supreme offence against international morality" (Article 227).
• The amount of reparations (Article 235) was extremely high and was a significant burden on German economy (which had to recover from the war in the first place) until removed.

And much more. Feel free to look through the document, you will see that to a large part its purpose was to humiliate Germany and to destroy it as a world power. This intent backfired - this treaty didn't let Germany get over its defeat, instead Germany kept seeking a way to retaliate and to circumvent the restrictions.

Answer 2

Here is an excerpt from an essay I just finished on German rearmament:

Under the Treaty of Versailles, the Reichswehr (the German military prior to the Nazi party assuming power) was severely limited in its power. The army was restricted to 100,000 men, including only 4,000 officers. Similarly, the navy was limited 15,000 men, and all members of both forces had to be volunteers. The navy was banned from possessing submarines and limited to six warships, while the use of an air force was forbidden. The types and amount of weapons the Reichswehr was permitted to possess were described in meticulous detail, with only light arms and field guns allowed; heavy guns and armour were banned. All possible measures were taken to prevent Germany from rebuilding her military with speed or secrecy; The general staff were officially dissolved; production of each munition was limited to a single factory; all but four military schools were closed and the Reichswehr was not allowed to keep soldiers’ records after they left the military, so that ex-soldiers could not be rapidly recalled at the onset of war.5

And citation 5. reads: John Gooch, Armies in Europe (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), 196; Warren Bayard Morris Jr., The Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany (Nelson-Hall, 1982), 240-241; Herbert Rosinski, The German Army (Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), 211–212, 221.

Also; it isn't entirely true that heavy guns were banned: There were a few fixed-position heavy guns allowed at Königsberg, though no where else.

Other books that discuss the Treaty of Versailles: Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (London: Allen Lane, 2006). (Limited to its economic impact and how it effected the later Nazi economy) Götz Aly, Hitler’s beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007) (Similar economic disucssion as above but with a very different interpretation.) Otto Nathan, The Nazi Economic System: Germany’s mobilization for war (Duke University Press, 1944) (Older book, most of the facts on the treaty should be right, though the interpretation of the effects may be outdated) W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany: from Defeat to Conquest: 1913–1933 (George Allen / Unwin Ltd., 1945). (Again, facts but possibly not interpretation)

Also it should be noted that I said 200,000 men in the German army above; The Reichswehr had plans to expand to 200,000 men in defiance of the treaty before Hitler took power, but couldn't get the money together, so only small expansions were made before the Nazis took over. They did do a fair bit of stuff in defiance of the treaty though.

Answer 3

Germany, was, without doubt, defeated, even though the siutation of the Armistice allowed the impression to develop that it wasn't. Germany was very much 'really defeated'. The fact that Germany continued to occupy enemy territory and had no/few enemy troops on its own doesn't alter that fact that it was defeated. The difference perhaps being that it was annihilated, as it was in the following war.

Furthermore, Germany had no realistic hopes of continuing the war, had Germany not requested the Armistice then the Hundred Days would have continued and Germany had no hope of being able to resists for more than a few months.

The Allies/Associated Powers were under considerable strains, militarily, economically and socially; but these were as nothing compared with the problems Germany faced.

Depending upon what your question actually is; the terms of the Armistice were harsh, perhaps too much so, but the over-riding concern was to prevent any possibility that Germany might be able to renew the war if it rejected the Armistice. The Allies/APs were acutely aware that restarting the war would be incredibly difficult politically.

As for the Treaty of Versailles, that's a rather complicated and nuanced question. To a large extent it was a political problem, more than any other. The reparations didn't have a significant detrimental effect on the German economy (given American loans and the behaviour of Schacht)- Germany was doing very well until the Great Depression. The military conditions allowed a new generation of thinkers and technology to emerge (and redirected resources to the civilian economy).

That Germany was required to take the whole responsibility for the war wasn't reasonable, and the loss of Alsace-Lorranine was inevitable (though Bismark never wanted the annexation in the first place, for precisely the reason that it would cause a war with France).

I would argue that the intention was more to prevent a recurrence of German European hegemony than prevent 'world domination' per se. The rise of the German Empire and its eclipse of the Hapsburgs had forced a resolution of many centuries-long issues between other European powers (the Entente Cordiale being the most significant) and Germany specifically chose to exacerbate the concerns of its rivals leading to a war that it was militarily, but not politically, able to win.