To end World War I, the Treaty of Versailles became the last stumbling block. So ten little odd things:
1. The treaty was 240 pages....easily read in about twelve hours.
2. The treaty has nothing to do with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ended the German-Hapsburg-Ottoman-Bulgaria 'war' with the Russians (really the Bolsheviks). This was signed on 3 March 1918. Roughly a quarter of the population (overnight) went from being Russian....to being something else. Coal mines? They went to the 'winners'.
The fact that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk gave the Germans rekindled hope that they could still win the other war? It's one of those odd topics that is still debated by historians even today.
3. Mass desertions and civilian strikes in Germany (1918) did more to trigger the end of the war and the treaty action than military action itself. The four years had taken a major toll on German society and industry.
4. Because of the manpower required for the war-machine itself, and the industry around it....farming suffered a great deal. Agricultural production could not be maintained as the war went into 1915/1916. Various estimates exist over the number of Germans who starved in this period (1914-1919)....the high side is 750,000....the low side is around 424,000. Note, this has nothing to do with the war dead, or the 'pest' (the Spanish Flu).
5. What is signed in November 1918....is merely a cease-fire document....nothing else. The peace talks? They didn't start until January 1919. Seventy-odd delegates showed up to represent 27 countries. Everyone....more or less....wanted a piece of the action. This proved to be useless, and it quickly turned into a council of ten people speaking for the bulk. Oddly enough, Japan had two seats on this initial council). It took only days to realize that this council was still too big and needed to be whittled down even more (at least from the non-German side).
6. Roughly a quarter of all French men didn't return from the war. So they had a different prospective on things than everyone else.
7. The lack of Republicans on the Wilson 'peace' team? Well....yeah, this was particularly noticed and openly discussed back in DC. Wilson's chief selling point for his peace team? They were intellectuals, and knew the fine art of diplomacy.
8. There was a brief period in the summer of 1919, where the treaty was stalled and the German team was backing away from any further talks. At this moment, the British, the French and Americans basically said that the war would start up (not just hinting in a month or two) but in a matter of days. They felt with the manpower they still had on the field....they could cross the Rhine in one single day.
Militarily? For the Germans, there just wasn't any real major force existing. The bulk of their army in November/December 1918....packed up and went home. For the US AEF members? There in the mid-summer of 1919, there were still 750k in France. They wouldn't start to return home until fall period of 1919.
9. The size of the German police force? It was actually included as a topic in the treaty, and limited to the size it had before the war. Some consideration was written, if population increased in major cities. Creation of an official paramilitary situation in Germany? Forbidden. That's what made the Brown Shirts in the 1930s so unique....they weren't official.
10. While the French politicians got a lot of public applause over the signing of the treaty (28 June 1919)....within weeks, the far-right had pushed negativity over the deal to such a degree....that anything gained for political opportunities, disappeared. The right figured that a lot more compensation should have been written into the deal.
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