The 1919 Paris Peace Conference: Competing Claims on the Rhineland
A student is preparing an essay on the Treaty of Versailles and gathers four sources on the Rhineland question. Source A is a memorandum from French Marshal Foch dated January 1919 arguing the Rhine should be the western military frontier of Germany, with an independent Rhineland buffer state. Source B is a private letter from British diplomat Harold Nicolson, March 1919, warning that permanent occupation would breed resentment and that Britain would not guarantee a frontier it did not control. Source C is a German newspaper editorial from April 1919 calling the terms a 'Diktat' imposed without negotiation. Source D is a map showing the Allied occupation zones of the Rhineland agreed in the final treaty, with withdrawal in three zones over fifteen years. The student writes: 'The final Rhineland settlement was a French victory, because France got occupation and demilitarisation.'
1. Assess the student's conclusion against Sources A, B and D. What does the evidence actually support?
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The student's claim is only partly supported. Source A shows Foch wanted three things: the Rhine as Germany's military frontier, an independent buffer state, and permanent French control of the crossings. Source D shows the final treaty delivered demilitarisation and a temporary occupation withdrawn in three zones over fifteen years, and no independent Rhineland state. So France won the demilitarisation argument but lost the annexation and buffer-state arguments. Source B explains why: Britain would not underwrite a permanent occupation or a separate frontier guarantee, so French maximalism was constrained by an ally, not simply by German resistance. A stronger conclusion is that the settlement was a compromise in which French security demands were diluted by British reluctance and by the need to keep Germany a functioning state. The student has confused 'some French demands were met' with 'France won'.
2. Source C calls the treaty a 'Diktat'. How should a historian weigh this source, and what limits does it have as evidence about the fairness of the settlement?
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Source C is useful evidence of German perception and of the political climate in which the treaty was received, but it is weak evidence about whether the terms were substantively unjust. It is a newspaper editorial: it has a polemical purpose, an intended audience of German readers, and no access to the Allied negotiations. Its claim of imposition is factually accurate in one narrow sense - Germany signed under protest and without face-to-face negotiation - but 'Diktat' bundles that procedural point with a moral judgement. A historian should triangulate: compare the military terms in Source D with the war aims in Source A, and ask whether the treaty was harsher than the armistice terms Germany accepted in November 1918. The editorial also tells us nothing about whether Germany could have negotiated earlier or about the divisions among the victors shown in Source B. Use it for attitudes, not for adjudicating fairness.