Was the Treaty of Versailles fair?

Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 · Paper 1 Section A, Core Content Option B Syllabus: 2027 and 2028 Option B: The twentieth century: international relations since 1919 Key Question 1 of six

History is not marked the way a content-recall subject is. There is no ladder of "name a place, then add a figure". Every mark above Level 2 on this paper is bought with explanation, and the top mark on the 10 mark part is bought with a judgement you actually state. Facts are the raw material, not the product. A candidate who writes fifteen accurate terms of the Treaty and never says why any of them mattered will sit in Level 2 on a 10 mark question and score 3.

That is the single thing to understand before reading anything below. Everything in these notes is arranged so that the facts arrive attached to the argument they are used for.

1. What the syllabus actually asks

This is the wording printed in the Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028. Learn the Key Question itself, because examiners build 10 mark questions out of it directly.

Key Question 1

Was the Treaty of Versailles fair?

Focus points

• What were the motives and aims of the Big Three at Versailles?
• Why did the victors not get everything they wanted?
• What was the impact of the Treaty on Germany up to the end of 1923?
• Could the Treaty be justified at the time?

Specified content

• The roles of Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George in the peacemaking process
• The terms of the Treaty
• Social, economic and political impact of the Treaty in Germany to the end of 1923
• Contemporary opinions about the Treaty

How History is structured, and why it matters

Cambridge defines the three layers itself: key questions define the over-arching issues, focus points identify the issues that enable candidates to gain an understanding of the key question, and specified content provides guidance on what needs to be studied.

So the focus points are not four sub-topics to be memorised in turn. They are four arguments, and each one is a ready made 10 mark question. Read them again as questions you must be able to answer both ways:

Every one of those four has been set as a real 10 mark question in the past seven years, several of them repeatedly.

A note on the syllabus wording

The syllabus prints the option title two ways. The contents page and the subject content introduction both call it The twentieth century: international relations since 1919, while the header on the Option B content page reads from 1919. They mean the same thing. Use "since 1919".

2. How Paper 1 marks this Key Question

The ladders themselves are the same for every question on Paper 1, and they are set out in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes: the three parts and their marks, the assessment objective split, and the two rules Cambridge changed for the 2024 series. Read that page once. Nothing below repeats it.

What is specific to this Key Question is where it turns up and how much of the paper it can carry.

It is usually Question 5. Of the 48 Paper 1 mark schemes read for these notes, covering 2018 to 2024, 36 set Question 5 on this Key Question, which is 108 question parts. The other 12 set Question 5 on Key Question 2, the League. So Question 5 alternates between the two and is not reserved for Versailles, but no other twentieth century topic appears as often. Several examiner reports call it the most popular question in Section A.

It can be worth more than one question. For the 2027 series this Key Question is also the Paper 2 prescribed topic in two series out of three, so the same revision earns marks on two papers. Section 10 covers what Paper 2 does with it, which is not the same thing at all.

3. Where the peacemakers started

Germany asked for an armistice in November 1918 believing that peace would be built on Wilson's Fourteen Points, which the American President had set out in 1918. That belief matters more than any single term of the Treaty, because it is the root of the German sense of betrayal. Cambridge's own mark scheme for a Level 5 answer puts it exactly this way: the German people thought the settlement would be based on Wilson's ideas, and when they discovered terms such as war guilt they felt they had been betrayed.

The main aims of the Fourteen Points, as a Cambridge mark scheme lists them:

• to prevent another war
• to achieve international cooperation
• to encourage free trade
• to encourage self-determination
• disarmament

Wilson also wanted freedom of the seas and, above all, a League of Nations written into the peace treaties themselves.

The delegations met in Paris in 1919. Germany was not invited to negotiate. It was handed a draft, allowed to submit written comments, and told to sign. The Treaty was signed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles on 28 June 1919.

Why the Hall of Mirrors matters. It is where the German Empire was proclaimed in 1871, after Prussia defeated France. Choosing that room was a deliberate reversal, and German newspapers said so on the day. Use this: it is a specific contextual detail that converts a Level 3 explanation into a Level 3 five mark one.

4. Focus point: the motives and aims of the Big Three

The examiner report for one series notes that weaker candidates "wrote about what Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Wilson wanted" when the question asked something narrower. Knowing the aims is necessary and never sufficient. Learn them as motives with causes, so you can explain rather than list.

Georges Clemenceau, France

Nicknamed "the Tiger". France had been invaded by Germany twice within fifty years, in 1870 to 1871 and again in 1914, and most of the Western Front fighting took place on French soil. French industry, farmland and towns were physically destroyed. French public opinion demanded that Germany pay and be made harmless.

Clemenceau's aims, as Cambridge lists them:

• security for France above everything
• to punish Germany severely and gain revenge for French suffering
• to make Germany pay for the damage caused
• to weaken Germany by cutting its armed forces and its industrial strength
• to make a future German attack impossible

His specific territorial demands: the return of Alsace-Lorraine, taken by Germany in 1871; the Saar Basin, for its coal; and, most contentiously, the Rhineland either annexed to France or turned into an independent buffer state.

1. France invaded twice in fifty years
2. French war damage concentrated on French soil
3. Clemenceau needs a defensible frontier and a weak neighbour
4. he demands the Rhine as a border and huge reparations
5. Wilson and Lloyd George block both
6. France gets a demilitarised Rhineland instead of a French one.

Woodrow Wilson, United States

America entered the war late, in 1917, and was never invaded. Wilson was an idealist working from a set of principles rather than from damage.

His aims:

• a just and lasting peace that would prevent another war
• a League of Nations, written into every treaty
• self-determination, meaning peoples should choose the state they live in
• general disarmament, by all nations, not only the losers
• freedom of the seas and free trade
• Germany punished, but not so harshly that it seeks revenge

Cambridge is explicit that self-determination is the point candidates most often misunderstand. An examiner report records candidates interpreting it as a personal quality, as in strength of purpose. It means the right of a people or nation to decide their own form of government.

David Lloyd George, Britain

The most pragmatic of the three, and the one whose position is easiest to get wrong, because he was pulled two ways.

The British public, after four years of war, had voted in an election campaign built on making Germany pay. Lloyd George publicly needed to look tough. Privately he wanted a moderate settlement, and his reasons are the ones Cambridge rewards:

• Germany had been Britain's second largest trading partner before the war. A destroyed German economy meant no market for British goods and British jobs at risk.
• A Germany that was too weak could not act as a buffer against the westward spread of communism from Russia.
• A treaty that was too harsh would leave Germany wanting revenge, storing up a future war.

At the same time he did want Germany's navy destroyed and Germany's colonies taken, because both threatened the British Empire, and he was hostile to self-determination for exactly the same reason: applied honestly, it would dismantle Britain's empire too. He was also against freedom of the seas, which would end British naval dominance.

The three side by side

Exam trap. It is not true that Wilson and Lloyd George stood together against Clemenceau. Lloyd George sided with Clemenceau on colonies, on the German navy and against self-determination, and with Wilson on the Rhineland and on not crippling the German economy. Questions such as "Wilson and Lloyd George disagreed about how Germany should be treated" and "Who did Wilson find more difficult to deal with, Clemenceau or Lloyd George?" exist precisely to catch a two against one answer.

5. Focus point: why the victors did not get everything they wanted

This focus point is where the aims turn into a mechanism. Every major term of the Treaty is a compromise between two of the three, and the strongest answers name which two.

That last row is the sharpest fact in the whole topic. Clemenceau gave up the Rhine frontier in return for a promise, and the promise was then withdrawn. Cambridge's own mark scheme lists "Britain and the USA rejected the Anglo-American Treaty of Guarantee" as a valid reason why Clemenceau did not get what he wanted.

1. Clemenceau demands the Rhine as France's border
2. Wilson and Lloyd George refuse and offer a joint guarantee of French security instead
3. Clemenceau accepts demilitarisation plus the guarantee
4. the US Senate and Britain then reject the guarantee
5. France is left with neither the frontier nor the promise
6. Clemenceau is voted out of office in 1920.

Use the 1920 election. Cambridge's mark scheme states plainly that Clemenceau being voted out in 1920 is evidence that the French thought the Treaty was not harsh enough. That single fact turns "how satisfied were the French?" from an opinion into an argument.

The structural reasons nobody could win

Beyond the horse trading, three structural pressures shaped the outcome, and naming them lifts an answer:

• Public opinion at home. All three faced electorates that had lost sons and expected results. Clemenceau was under enormous pressure to bring back land and money.
• Different experiences of the war. Wilson could not understand why a defensible frontier mattered so much to France, because the United States had not been invaded. Cambridge's Level 5 exemplar uses exactly this point.
• Ideals against practicalities. The Fourteen Points were principles. Lloyd George and Clemenceau were answerable for national interests. Cambridge's mark scheme records this as a valid explanation in its own right.

6. The terms of the Treaty

Specified content requires "the terms of the Treaty". These are the facts that feed the 4 mark questions, and remember the post 2024 rule: four separate points, no credit for elaboration.

Territorial terms

Germany lost about 13 per cent of its territory and, on Cambridge's figures, around 7 million people who had been German subjects. Note that a Paper 2 source used by Cambridge gives the population loss as about 10 per cent rather than a headcount, so quote whichever you learn and do not try to reconcile them.

Exam trap. The Rhineland and the Saar were not taken from Germany. The Rhineland stayed German but demilitarised, with an Allied occupation for 15 years. The Saar stayed nominally German under League administration. Candidates who list them as territorial losses lose the mark and lose the argument, because the point of both is that Clemenceau was blocked.

Military terms

• Army limited to 100,000 men
• Conscription banned
• No tanks, no armoured vehicles, no heavy artillery
• No air force
• Navy limited to 36 warships, including a maximum of 6 battleships, with 12 destroyers, 6 light cruisers and 12 torpedo boats
• No submarines
• Sailors limited to 15,000
• The Rhineland demilitarised, with no German forces permitted, and occupied by Allied troops for 15 years

Germany was a country of roughly sixty million people. An army of 100,000 was smaller than several of its neighbours' forces, and that is the point Germans made: not that it was humiliating, but that it left them unable to defend themselves against France.

Financial terms

• Germany was to pay reparations for civilian damage caused in the war
• The figure was not in the Treaty. It was left to a Reparations Commission
• The Commission fixed the sum in April 1921 at £6,600 million
• Cambridge notes that this was around 2 per cent of Germany's output, payable in annual instalments
• Germany's economic productivity fell by about 13 per cent through territorial loss, including roughly 16 per cent of its coalfields

The double bind is the explanation, not the number. Germany lost the Saar coal, Alsace-Lorraine's iron and steel and Upper Silesian industry, and was then billed for the damage. Cambridge's own examiner report singles out this as the explanation that turns a Level 2 identification into a Level 3 or 4 one.

1. Germany is billed £6,600 million
2. the same Treaty removes the Saar coal, Upper Silesian industry and the colonies that earned foreign income
3. the means of paying have been taken away with the debt imposed
4. Germans call this being punished twice.

War guilt, and the clause that did the real damage

Article 231, the War Guilt Clause, required Germany to accept responsibility for causing the war and all the loss and damage that followed.

Its purpose was legal, not emotional. Cambridge's mark scheme spells out the reasoning the Allied lawyers used: if you cause damage and it is entirely your fault, you must pay compensation. Article 231 was the legal foundation on which reparations, disarmament and the seizure of the colonies all rested.

1. Article 231 establishes German responsibility in law
2. responsibility creates a legal liability for damage
3. liability justifies reparations
4. guilt also justifies restricting the army and taking the colonies
5. remove Article 231 and the rest of the Treaty loses its legal basis.

Germany rejected it on the grounds that other powers had contributed to the outbreak of war. The specific counter-argument Cambridge credits: Austria attacked Serbia first, and Russia mobilised its army before Germany acted.

The League of Nations

The Covenant of the League of Nations was written into the Treaty as its opening section, and into the other treaties too. Germany was not allowed to join. Germans regarded the exclusion as a deliberate insult, and Cambridge lists it as a valid cause of German bitterness.

7. Focus point: the impact on Germany up to the end of 1923

Read the date limit and obey it. Examiner reports flag this repeatedly: candidates write about the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, Stresemann or the rise of Hitler after 1923, and score nothing for it. The window closes at the end of 1923.

The specified content splits the impact three ways, social, economic and political, and 10 mark questions have been set on the relative importance of two of them. Sort your knowledge under those headings now.

Political impact

• The new Weimar Republic was made to sign, and was blamed for it ever after. Its politicians were branded the "November Criminals", and the myth spread that the army had been "stabbed in the back" by civilian politicians rather than defeated in the field.
• The Republic was therefore unstable from its first year, attacked from both left and right.
• The Spartacist rising, January 1919. Communists attempted to seize power in Berlin. The government put it down using the army and the Freikorps, right wing paramilitaries.
• The Kapp Putsch, March 1920. Kapp led Freikorps units into Berlin. The army refused to fire on them, and for a time it appeared the Republic might fall.
• Political assassination. Right wing terror groups murdered politicians associated with fulfilling the Treaty, including Walther Rathenau.
• The Munich Putsch, 1923. Hitler's attempt in Munich, launched directly on the back of Treaty grievance and the Ruhr crisis.
• Extremist parties on both wings grew by promising to tear the Treaty up.

1. the Weimar politicians sign the Treaty
2. they are labelled the November Criminals and accused of stabbing the army in the back
3. the Republic's legitimacy is damaged from birth
4. armed risings come from the left in 1919 and the right in 1920 and 1923
5. German democracy spends its first five years fighting for survival.

Economic impact

• Germany paid the first reparations instalment in 1921 and then could not pay again.
• In response to the German default, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr, Germany's industrial heartland, and took goods and coal directly as payment.
• German workers in the Ruhr responded with passive resistance and strikes. The government supported the strikers by printing money.
• The result was hyperinflation in 1923. Prices rose from hour to hour, savings were destroyed, and money became worthless.
• Alongside all of this, Germany had lost the Saar coal, Upper Silesian industry and its colonies, and had inherited enormous war debts from the Kaiser's government, which had funded the war by borrowing rather than by taxation. Cambridge credits this last point explicitly.

1. Germany defaults on reparations in 1922
2. France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr in 1923
3. German workers strike in passive resistance
4. the government prints money to pay the strikers
5. hyperinflation destroys the currency
6. savings and salaries become worthless.

Exam trap. "Hyperinflation was caused by the need to pay reparations" has been set as a 10 mark question. The balanced answer notes that the war debts of the Kaiser's government, the decision to fund the war by borrowing, and the choice to print money to support the Ruhr strikers were all causes too. Reparations were the trigger, not the whole cause.

Social impact

• Unemployment, poverty and homelessness, worsened by the sudden discharge of soldiers when the army was cut to 100,000.
• The humiliation of foreign troops occupying German soil in the Ruhr.
• Around 7 million former German subjects living under foreign rule, in Poland, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere, which was felt as a national loss of pride.
• The loss of the army itself, which had been central to German self image.
• Ordinary families ruined by hyperinflation: pensioners and savers wiped out, wages outrun by prices within a day.

Which mattered more?

This is a live 10 mark question. It has been set as "Up to 1923, the economic consequences of the Treaty of Versailles were more important for Germany than the political consequences", as "Political turmoil was the most serious consequence", and as "Loss of territory was the most serious consequence".

The strongest line is that the two cannot be separated: the economic crisis of 1923 is what gave the political extremists their opening, and the political blame placed on the Weimar Republic is what turned an economic crisis into a constitutional one. Say that, with an example on each side, and you are writing a Level 5 judgement.

8. Focus point: could the Treaty be justified at the time?

"At the time" is the key phrase. This is not asking whether the Treaty caused the Second World War. It asks whether, judged by the standards and knowledge of 1919, the settlement was defensible. Cambridge's specified content pairs this with contemporary opinions about the Treaty, so you need actual voices from 1919, not later verdicts.

The case that it was too harsh

• The Diktat. Germany was excluded from the negotiations, handed a draft and told to sign or face the resumption of war and the continuation of the Allied naval blockade. It was a dictated peace, not a negotiated one.
• Article 231. Germans did not accept sole responsibility, and pointed at Austria's attack on Serbia and Russia's mobilisation.
• The betrayal of expectation. Germany had sought an armistice expecting the Fourteen Points. War guilt and reparations appeared in none of them.
• The reparations figure. £6,600 million, imposed on an economy stripped of the resources needed to earn it.
• Unequal disarmament. Germany disarmed; Britain and France did not. Wilson's principle of general disarmament was applied to the losers only.
• Self-determination applied selectively. Germans in Austria and the Sudetenland were denied it, while it was granted to Poles and Czechs. The union of Austria and Germany was expressly forbidden.
• Contemporary British opinion. A significant body of British liberal opinion thought the Treaty too harsh at once. The economist John Maynard Keynes condemned it, and Cambridge reproduces his description of it as "outrageous and impossible" as a Paper 2 source.
• Contemporary German opinion. German newspapers on the day of signing, 28 June 1919, ran front pages calling the Treaty a disgrace and promising vengeance for the shame of 1919, and pointedly recalled that the German Empire had been proclaimed in that same Hall of Mirrors in 1871.

The case that it was justified

• Brest-Litovsk. This is the strongest single argument and Cambridge uses it as a Level 3 exemplar. In 1918 Germany imposed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on defeated Russia, under which Russia lost 32 per cent of its agricultural land and 54 per cent of its industry, and was fined 300 million roubles. Germany, having done that when it was winning, had limited standing to complain when it lost.
• Germany would have imposed worse. A direct extension of the point above, and one Cambridge lists.
• Germany had agreed to the armistice terms.
• The damage was real. Much of the war had been fought on French and Belgian soil. Someone had to pay for reconstruction, and the country whose armies had occupied that soil was the obvious candidate.
• Germany was not destroyed. Cambridge's own Paper 2 source material makes this argument bluntly: Germany lost only about 13 per cent of its territory, about 13 per cent of its economic productivity and about 10 per cent of its population; it was not partitioned; and with the Austrian and Russian empires collapsing around it, Germany emerged potentially stronger than in 1914, with a friendly buffer state, Poland, removing the danger of a two front war.
• Reparations were repeatedly reduced. The 1921 figure was cut again and again to ease the burden. The bill as demanded is not the bill as paid.
• Contemporary British opinion, the other way. British newspapers in May 1919 argued the Treaty was too lenient, and that public feeling was that Germany was being let off lightly.
• Contemporary French opinion. The French thought it far too soft, which is why Clemenceau lost office in 1920.
• The peacemakers' own defence. Lloyd George told Parliament in July 1919 that the Treaty had punished, disarmed and established guarantees, and would stand as a warning to any nation tempted to repeat it.

The structural point that wins the judgement. The Treaty was attacked at the time from both directions at once: too harsh for British liberals and for Keynes, too lenient for the French public and much of the British press. A settlement that satisfies nobody is not necessarily unjust, but it is unstable. That observation, stated as your judgement, is worth the tenth mark.

9. The other treaties, and why you cannot skip them

The syllabus specified content says only "the terms of the Treaty", meaning Versailles. The past papers do not behave that way. Across the 2018 to 2024 series, roughly a third of the question parts set on this Key Question were about a treaty other than Versailles, or about a country other than Germany. A student who revises Versailles alone will meet a 4 mark opener on the Treaty of Neuilly and score zero.

Real examples of (a) and (b) parts actually set: "What were the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres?", "What were the terms of the Treaty of Neuilly?", "What were the terms of the Treaty of Saint Germain?", "Describe how Hungary was treated in the peace settlement", "Describe how Bulgaria was treated in the peace settlement", "Describe the treatment of Turkey in the peace settlement", "In what ways was Austria punished by the peace settlements of 1919 to 1920?". Examiner reports record candidates confusing these treaties with each other in every single series.

Two traps the examiner reports name explicitly.

1. Sèvres had no reparations and no war guilt clause. Candidates transfer German grievances to Turkey and lose the marks. An examiner report states this outright.
2. Saint Germain dealt with Austria, Trianon with Hungary. Candidates routinely swap them, or answer a Saint Germain question about Turkey.

Sèvres is also the standard evidence for "the peace settlement was a failure": it lasted less than three years and had to be replaced.

1. Sèvres strips Turkey of Smyrna and Thrace and hands the Straits and the finances to the Allies
2. Turkish nationalists under Mustafa Kemal reject it
3. they defeat the Greeks by force
4. the Allies cannot enforce their own treaty
5. Sèvres is torn up and renegotiated as Lausanne in 1923.

10. What the papers actually ask

Across the 2018 to 2024 series, 36 of the 48 available Paper 1 mark schemes set Question 5 on this Key Question, which is about 108 individual question parts. Question 5 alternates between Key Question 1 and Key Question 2, the League of Nations. Examiner reports describe Question 5 as "the most popular question in Section A" in several series.

Question stems repeat in families. Learn the family, not the individual question. Date ranges below are written out in words, but the wording is otherwise as set.

The 4 mark families

• Terms of a named treaty: territory Germany lost; changes to Germany's western border; what happened to Germany's colonies; what happened to Germany's armed forces; terms of Sèvres, Neuilly, Saint Germain; how Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria or Turkey was treated
• Aims of a named leader: Clemenceau's aims for the peace settlement; Clemenceau's territorial demands; Clemenceau's demands at the beginning of the negotiations; Wilson's hopes on arriving in France; the benefits Lloyd George wanted for Britain; the main aims of the Fourteen Points
• Definitions: what was meant by self-determination; what plebiscites were; the purpose of the war guilt clause; what the successor states were; what President Wilson's Fourteen Points were

The 6 mark families

Always beginning Why, and always needing two explained reasons.

• Why did the Treaty cause difficulties for Germany up to 1923? Why did it have important political consequences? Why did it have important economic consequences? Why did it have a damaging political impact?
• Why were the people of Germany outraged by the terms? Why did many Germans think it was too harsh? Why could Germany's reaction be seen as unreasonable?
• Why did Lloyd George not want to punish Germany harshly? Why did Clemenceau want a harsh peace? Why did the French want Germany treated harshly? Why did the Treaty make France more secure?
• Why was Lloyd George unhappy with the Fourteen Points? Why were Lloyd George and Clemenceau suspicious of them? Why did Wilson and Clemenceau want different things?
• Why did Clemenceau not get everything he wanted? Why did negotiations present difficulties for Lloyd George? Why did the Allies exclude Germany from the negotiations? Why was Germany made to accept the war guilt clause? Why was Wilson's belief in self-determination important?

The 10 mark families

Four recognisable shapes, and each takes a different plan.

Paper 2 uses this Key Question too

Paper 2 sets one document question on a prescribed topic taken from the Core content, and the prescribed topic changes each series. For 2027 the Option B prescribed topics are "Was the Treaty of Versailles fair?" for both the March exam, India only, and the November exam. For the 2027 June exam it is Key Question 6, and for 2028 it is Key Questions 4 and 3.

So for 2027, revising this Key Question serves both papers in two of the three series. Past Paper 2 versions have carried titles such as "Was Germany treated unfairly in the Treaty of Versailles?" and "Did France get what it wanted at the Paris Peace Conference?", with sources including British newspapers from May 1919, German newspapers from June 1919, Lloyd George speaking in Parliament in July 1919 and later historians.

11. Judgement sentences for this question

The general shapes, what separates a Level 2 identification from a Level 4 explanation and how to build a part (c) that reaches the top band, are in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes. What follows is the same move made about this treaty, because a judgement has to be about something.

Never write that there are arguments on both sides. Write a position with a reason attached:

• "The Treaty was harsher in appearance than in effect, because Germany kept its territory largely intact but lost the means to pay what it owed."
• "Clemenceau's demands shaped the terms even where he did not win them, because the argument at Paris was always about how far to go in his direction."
• "The German reaction was understandable but not justified, judged against the terms Germany itself had imposed at Brest-Litovsk."
• "Wilson lost most of the arguments and still got the thing he wanted most, because the League was written into the Treaty itself."

12. What examiner reports say candidates get wrong here

The faults that apply to any question on the paper, overwriting part (a), listing instead of explaining, one-sided part (c) answers, finishing without a judgement, are in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes. These are the ones examiners name on this content in particular, and they repeat almost word for word from 2018 to 2024.

• Confusing the treaties. Saint Germain answered as though it were about Turkey or Germany. Sèvres answered as though it were about Hungary. Trianon treated as Versailles. Section 9 exists because of this.
• Importing reparations and war guilt into Sèvres, which had neither. This is the precise version of the fault above, and it is the one examiners flag most.
• Confusing the Fourteen Points with the terms of the Treaty. Different documents, different years, different purposes.
• Answering about achievements when the question asked about aims. Asked why Lloyd George was unhappy with the Fourteen Points, candidates write what all three leaders wanted. Asked about Clemenceau's aims, they write what he got.
• Overrunning the date limit. A question that says "up to 1923" is marked to 1923. The Dawes Plan, the Young Plan and the rise of Hitler are all after it and all earn nothing.
• Misunderstanding self-determination as a personal quality rather than the right of a people to choose its own government.
• Believing Czechoslovakia was taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. It was not. It was created out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

13. Quick revision

• Signed in the Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles, 28 June 1919. Germany was not allowed to negotiate: a Diktat.
• Big Three: Clemenceau wanted security and revenge; Wilson wanted a fair peace and the League; Lloyd George wanted moderation for trade, but a destroyed German navy and Germany's colonies.
• Blocked: Clemenceau on the Rhineland and the Saar; Wilson on general disarmament, freedom of the seas and universal self-determination.
• Clemenceau's trade: he gave up the Rhine frontier for an Anglo-American guarantee, which Britain and the United States then rejected. He was voted out in 1920.
• Territory: Alsace-Lorraine to France; Saar to the League for 15 years; Eupen and Malmedy to Belgium; North Schleswig to Denmark; Posen, West Prussia and the Polish Corridor to Poland; Danzig a Free City; Upper Silesia partitioned after a 1921 plebiscite; Hultschin to Czechoslovakia; all colonies as mandates. About 13 per cent of German territory.
• Military: army 100,000, no conscription, no tanks, no aircraft, no submarines, 6 battleships, 36 warships maximum, 15,000 sailors, Rhineland demilitarised and occupied for 15 years.
• Reparations: figure not in the Treaty. Fixed by the Reparations Commission in April 1921 at £6,600 million. Reduced repeatedly thereafter.
• Article 231, the War Guilt Clause, is the legal basis for reparations and disarmament, not just an insult.
• Germany excluded from the League of Nations.
• Impact to 1923, political: November Criminals, stab in the back, Spartacists 1919, Kapp Putsch March 1920, Rathenau assassinated, Munich Putsch 1923.
• Impact to 1923, economic: first instalment paid 1921, default, French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, passive resistance, money printed, hyperinflation 1923.
• Justified? Against it: Diktat, war guilt, betrayed expectation of the Fourteen Points, unequal disarmament, selective self-determination, Keynes and British liberal opinion. For it: Brest-Litovsk cost Russia 32 per cent of its farmland and 54 per cent of its industry; Germany was not partitioned and was arguably stronger in 1919 than in 1914; the French and much of the British press thought it too soft.
• Other treaties: Saint Germain, Austria, army 30,000, union with Germany forbidden. Trianon, Hungary, 70 per cent of its land gone. Neuilly, Bulgaria, army 20,000, £100 million. Sèvres, Turkey, army 50,700, no reparations, no war guilt, replaced by Lausanne 1923.
• Marks: (a) four separate points, no credit for elaboration from 2024. (b) two explained reasons for 6. (c) one explanation on each side for 7, plus a stated judgement for 10.

Where these facts come from

History notes are only as good as their sourcing, so this section is deliberately explicit.

Taken from Cambridge's own published 0470 materials, meaning the 2027 and 2028 syllabus, the 2018 to 2024 Paper 1 mark schemes, the Paper 2 question papers and the Principal Examiner reports:

the Key Question and focus point wording; the level descriptors and the 2024 changes to them; the signing in the Hall of Mirrors on 28 June 1919; every military limit for Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey; every territorial transfer listed; the £6,600 million reparations figure and its fixing in April 1921; the 13 per cent territory, 13 per cent productivity, 16 per cent of coalfields, 7 million subjects and 10 per cent of population figures; the Kapp Putsch in March 1920; the Spartacist rising of January 1919; the Ruhr occupation and hyperinflation of 1923; Clemenceau's electoral defeat in 1920; the rejection of the Anglo-American Treaty of Guarantee; the Brest-Litovsk figures of 32 per cent, 54 per cent and 300 million roubles; the Upper Silesian plebiscite of 1921; the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 and Mustafa Kemal; Keynes's verdict; and the contemporary British and German press positions.

Standard textbook facts that do not appear in the 0470 mark schemes read for these notes, and which you should therefore check against your own textbook before quoting them as precise:

• the exact date the Paris Peace Conference opened
• the exact date of the armistice
• the exact month the Ruhr occupation began, and the exact month of the Munich Putsch
• the year Rathenau was assassinated
• the names of the German signatories, and Kapp's first name
• how the Kapp Putsch was actually defeated, and the exact date of the armistice
• the exact month in 1918 when the Fourteen Points were published, and the exact date of Brest-Litovsk
• the conversion of £6,600 million into gold marks

None of those is needed for a top answer, which is why they have been left out of the body above rather than asserted.

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