Research Essay UMGC WRTG 101 (WRTG112)

World War II was the most defining conflict humanity has ever faced. A peace treaty between Germany and the Allied Powers, which had disarmed and crippled former country, created horrendous consequences leading up to World War II. The Treaty of Versailles, which brought Germany to its lowest, played an important role in the start of WWII. Ludendorff's strategy of throwing everything in the Western Front faltered when the Allies delivered a stronger counterattack which forced him to beg for an armistice. Britain and France were not really keen on ending the war on good terms with Germany, especially French Prime Minister Clemenceau. Woodrow Wilson intended to create a League of Nations after the war to settle disputes in Europe. Treaty of Versailles was made from "high passions, rather than logistic sense" by Clemenceau and the other leaders of the Allies. The treaty included the infamous Article 231, a section that said Germany should "unconditionally accept all the blame for the war and pay for all the damages done" throughout the years of the war (Vollmann, 2018, p. 74). Germany soon became disarmed, its territory and colonies stripped, and its economy severely devastated. As Germany became a Weimar Republic, civil unrest as the years passed, soon escalating when the Great Depression hit. Farmer (2018) found that in January 1919, a political party called the Spartacus Party attempted an uprising in Berlin and attempted to overthrow the government to create a "Soviet-style regime".