Topic Four (1.4): Could the Treaty be justified at the time?

Introduction

For this last module, you are combining all your knowledge of the Treaty of Versailles in terms of reactions, criticisms and impacts to really debate and evaluate whether the treaty was truly fair, fair for the time, or awful with our hindsight.

One of the ‘specified content’ focus points is ‘Contemporary opinions about the Treaty'. Therefore, it is essential that you have a secure knowledge and skills, particularly in terms of debating the Treaty.

Tasks

Start by relistening to the conclusion on this HA podcast and begin your note taking with the key question ‘Was the Treaty fair?’

LISTEN – The Versailles Treaty (Historical Association) Links to an external site.

Read pages 18-19. Challenge yourself to complete the Source Analysis Task on Page 19. For further support on these cartoons, scroll to source C on the following link:

EXPLORE – Verdicts on the Treaty (johndclare.net) Links to an external site.

Next, we need to look at historians writing about the Treaty on pages 20 and 21. Read the interpretations carefully and highlight key quotations that support or challenge the fairness/harshness of the Treaty.
Complete the Think! Activity on page 20. Have you views changed?
Complete Focus Task 1.5 on page 21. Make sure you aim to develop this in really clear detail as this is essential to your knowledge and skills.

Watch Mr Hinds History in the following link. Is there any additional information can you add to your notes?

WATCH – Was the Treaty Fair? (YouTube) Links to an external site.

Additional Resources

The National Archives gives a nice review if you want to start with a simpler narrative.

READ – The Great War (The National Archives) Links to an external site.

**Explore and Extend for that A*/Grade 9**

As always, John D Clare is excellent in the material he produces. There are a variety of tasks you can complete on his site.

EXPLORE – Verdicts on the Treaty (johndclare.net) Links to an external site.

Lastly, how far do you agree that the Treaty was a ‘failure of management’?

READ – A Failure of Management (johndclare.net) Links to an external site.

Review

Make sure you are confident in debating whether the treaty was fair or not. You might like to now go back to the cartoon on page 4, The Reckoning’. You might now guess that the cartoonist is mocking the Germans for complaining about the Treaty being unfair. Can you think of reasons to support the view of the cartoonist?
Think about how you can use your knowledge of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk to explain why the Treaty of Versailles was indeed fair.
What reasons can you give to explain why the terms were fair?