Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles

Avocourt, 1918, one of the many destroyed French villages, candidates for reconstruction funded by reparations

On 28 June 1914, Bosnian Serb youngster Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo. The assassination was part of a plot conceived by the Pan-Slavic nationalist organization Young Bosnia and supported by the Black Hand, a secret society founded by senior Serbian military and intelligence officials.[1] The assassination caused a diplomatic crisis, resulting in Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia and ultimately leading to the outbreak of the First World War.[2] For a variety of reasons, within weeks the major powers of Europe—divided into two alliances known as the Central Powers and the Triple Entente—went to war. As the conflict progressed, additional countries from around the globe became drawn into the conflict on both sides.[3]

Fighting would rage across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia for the next four years.[4] On 8 January 1918, United States President Woodrow Wilson issued a statement that became known as the Fourteen Points. In part, this speech called for the Central Powers to withdraw from the territories they had occupied, for the creation of a Polish state, the redrawing of Europe's borders along ethnic ("national") lines, and the formation of a League of Nations.[5][6] During the northern-hemisphere autumn of 1918, the Central Powers began to collapse.[7] The German military suffered a decisive defeat on the Western Front, while on the Home Front the Imperial German Navy mutinied, prompting uprisings in Germany which became known as the German Revolution.[8][9][10] The German government attempted to obtain a peace settlement based on the Fourteen Points, and maintained it was on this basis that Germany surrendered. Following negotiations, the Allied Powers and Germany signed an armistice, which came into effect on 11 November while German forces were still positioned in France and Belgium.[11][12][13]

On 18 January 1919 the Paris Peace Conference began. The conference aimed to establish peace between the war's belligerents and to establish the post-war world. The Treaty of Versailles resulting from the conference dealt solely with Germany.[14][15] This treaty, along with the others that were signed during the conference, each took their name from the suburb of Paris where the signings took place.[16] While 70 delegates from 26 nations participated in the Paris negotiations, representatives from Germany were barred from attending, nominally over fears that a German delegation would attempt to play one country off against the other and unfairly influence the proceedings.[16][17]

Norman Davis, one of the two authors of Article 231

The Americans, British and French all differed on the issue of reparations settlement. The Western Front had been fought in France, and that countryside had been heavily scarred in the fighting. France's most industrialized region in the north-east had been laid to waste during the German retreat. Hundreds of mines and factories were destroyed along with railroads, bridges and villages. Georges Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France, thought it appropriate that any just peace required Germany to pay reparations for the damage they had caused. He also saw reparations as a means to ensure that Germany could not again threaten France and as well to weaken the German ability to compete with France's industrialization.[18] Reparations would also go towards the reconstruction costs in other countries, such as Belgium, also directly affected by the war.[19] British Prime Minister David Lloyd George opposed harsh reparations in favour of a less crippling reparations settlement so that the German economy could remain a viable economic power and British trading partner. He furthermore argued that reparations should include war pensions for disabled veterans and allowances to be paid to war widows, which would reserve a larger share of the reparations for the British Empire.[20][21][22] Wilson opposed these positions, and was adamant that there be no indemnity imposed upon Germany.[23]

During the peace conference the Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on Enforcement of Penalties[lower-alpha 1] was established to examine the background of the war. The Commission reasoned that the "war was premeditated by the Central Powers ... and was the result of acts deliberately committed [by them] to make it unavoidable", concluding that Germany and Austria-Hungary had "deliberately worked to defeat all the many conciliatory proposals made by the Entente Powers and their repeated efforts to avoid war." This conclusion was duly incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles,[31] led by Clemenceau and Lloyd George who were both insistent on the inclusion of an unequivocal statement of Germany's total liability.[32] This left Wilson at odds with the other leaders of the conference. Instead, he proposed a repetition of a note sent by United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing to the German Government on 5 November 1918, stating that the "Allied Governments ... understand that compensation will be made by Germany for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allies and their property by the aggression of Germany ..."[23][32]

The actual wording of the article was chosen by American diplomats Norman Davis, and Secretary of State Robert Lansing's nephew, John Foster Dulles.[34] Davis and Dulles produced a compromise between the Anglo-French and American positions, wording Article 231 and 232 to reflect that Germany "should, morally, pay for all war costs, but, because it could not possibly afford this, would be asked only to pay for civilian damages."[23] Article 231, in which Germany accepted the responsibility of Germany and its allies for the damages resulting from the First World War, therefore served as a legal basis for the articles following it within the reparations chapter, obliging Germany to pay compensation limited to civilian damages.[35] Similar clauses, with slight modification in wording, were present in the peace treaties signed by the other members of the Central Powers.[lower-alpha 2]

John Foster Dulles, the second author of the article

In 1926, Robert C. Binkley and A. C. Mahr of Stanford University, wrote that German accusations of the article assigning war guilt were "ill-founded" and "mistaken". The article was more "an assumption of liability to pay damages than an admission of war guilt" and compared it with "a man who undertakes to pay all the cost of a motor accident than to the plea of guilty entered by an accused criminal". They wrote that "it is absurd" to charge the reparation articles of the treaty with any "political meaning" and the legal interpretation "is the only one that can stand". They concluded that German opposition "is based upon a text which has no legal validity whatsoever, and which Germany never signed at all."[77] Sidney Fay was the "most outspoken and influential critic" of the article. In 1928, he concluded that all of Europe shared the blame for the war and that Germany had no intention of launching a general European war in 1914.[78]

In 1937, E. H. Carr commented that "in the passion of the moment" the Allied Powers had "failed to realize that this extorted admission of guilt could prove nothing, and must excite bitter resentment in German minds." He concluded "German men of learning set to work to demonstrate the guiltlessness of their country, fondly believing that, if this could be established, the whole fabric of the treaty would collapse."[79] René Albrecht-Carrié wrote in May 1940, that "article 231 gave rise to an unfortunate controversy, unfortunate because it served to raise a false issue." He wrote that the German inter-war argument "rested on her responsibility for the out-break of the war" and if that guilt could be disproved then the legal requirement to pay reparations would disappear.[69]

In 1942, Luigi Albertini published The Origins of the War of 1914 and concluded that Germany was primarily responsible for the outbreak of the war.[80][81] Albertini's work, rather than spurring on new debate, was the culmination of the first research phase into the war guilt question.[82] The issue came back between 1959 and 1969, when Fritz Fischer in Germany's Aims in the First World War and War of Illusions "destroyed the consensus about shared responsibility for the First World War" and "placed the blame ... firmly on the shoulders of the Wilhelmine elite." By the 1970s, his work "had emerged as the new orthodoxy on the origins of the First World War".[83] In the 1980s, James Joll led a new wave of First World War research concluding "that the origins of the First World War were "complex and varied" although "by December 1912" Germany had decided to go to war.[84]

In 1978, Marks re-examined the reparation clauses of the treaty and wrote that "the much-criticized 'war guilt clause', Article 231, which was designed to lay a legal basis for reparations, in fact makes no mention of war guilt" but only specified that Germany was to pay for the damages caused by the war they imposed upon the allies and "that Germany committed an act of aggression against Belgium is beyond dispute". "Technically, Britain entered" the war and French troops entered Belgium "to honor" the "legal obligation" to defend Belgium under the 1839 Treaty of London and that "Germany openly acknowledged her responsibility in regard to Belgium on August 4, 1914, and May 7, 1919." Marks also wrote that "the same clause, mutatis mutandis" was incorporated "in the treaties with Austria and Hungary, neither of whom interpreted it as declaration of war guilt."[35] Wolfgang Mommsen wrote that "Austria and Hungary, understandably paid no attention to this aspect of the draft treaty".[41]

In 1986, Marks wrote that the German foreign office, supported by military and civilian notables, "focused on Article 231 ... hoping that, if one could refute German responsibility for the war, not only reparations but the entire treaty would collapse".[85] Manfred Boemeke, Gerald Feldman, and Elisabeth Glaser wrote that "pragmatic requirements characteristically influenced the shaping of the much misunderstood Article 231. That paragraph reflected the presumed legal necessity to define German responsibility for the war in order to specify and limit the Reich's obligations".[86] P.M.H. Bell wrote that despite the article not using the term 'guilt', and while "it may be that its drafters did not intend to convey a moral judgement of Germany", the article has "almost universally" became known as the war guilt clause of the treaty.[68] Margaret MacMillan wrote that the German public's interpretation of Article 231 as unequivocally ascribing the fault for the war to Germany and her allies, "came to be the object of particular loathing in Germany and the cause of uneasy consciences among the Allies." The Allies never expected such a hostile reaction, for "no one thought there would be any difficulty over the clauses themselves."[51]

Stephen Neff wrote that "the term 'war guilt' is a slightly unfortunate one, since to lawyers, the term 'guilt' primarily connotes criminal liability" while "the responsibility of Germany envisaged in the Versailles Treaty ... was civil in nature, comparable to the indemnity obligation of classical just-war theory."[31] Louise Slavicek wrote that while "the article was an honest reflection of the treaty-writers' beliefs, including such a clause in the peace settlement was undiplomatic, to say the least."[87] Diane Kunz wrote that "rather than being seen as an American lawyer's clever attempt to limit actual German financial responsibility by buying off French politicians and their public with the sop of a piece of paper" Article 231 "became an easily exploitable open sore".[88] Ian Kershaw wrote that the "national disgrace" felt over the article and "defeat, revolution, and the establishment of democracy", had "fostered a climate in which a counter-revolutionary set of ideas could gain wide currency" and "enhanced the creation of a mood in which" extreme nationalist ideas could gain a wider audience and take hold.[89]

Elazar Barkan argues that by "forcing an admission of war guilt at Versailles, rather than healing, the victors instigated resentment that contributed to the rise of Fascism."[90] Norman Davies wrote that the article invited Germany "to accept sole guilt for the preceding war".[91] Klaus Schwabe wrote that the article's influence went far beyond the discussion of war guilt. By "refusing to acknowledge Germany's 'war guilt' the new German government implicitly exonerated the old monarchial order" and more importantly failed "to dissociate itself from the old regime." In doing so "it undermined its claim that post-revolutionary Germany was a historic new democratic beginning deserving credit at the peace conference."[92]

• Reichstag inquiry into guilt for World War I, which met until the July 1932 German federal election