The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were harsh and not for negotiation. Germany lost 13% of her territory, which meant 12% of Germans now lived in a foreign country, and Germany's colonial possessions were redistributed among the other colonial powers. The German Rhineland, on the border with France, was to be demilitarized (stripped of an armed presence) and placed under Allied control until 1935. The small but industrially important Saar region was to be governed by Britain and France for fifteen years and its coal exported to France in recompense for the French coal mines destroyed by Germany during the war. After fifteen years a plebiscite (or referendum) of the Saar population would decide its future.
hMost of the West Prussia was given to Poland. The German city of Danzig (modern-day Gdansk) was made a "free" city so that Poland could have use of a port. To give Poland access to Danzig, they were given a strip of land, the "Polish Corridor", through Prussia, thereby cutting East Prussia off from the rest of Germany.
Militarily, Germany's army was to be limited to a token 100,00 men, wand its navy to 15,000 plus a ban on conscription. She was not permitted to have an air force, nor tanks, and was prohibited from producing or importing weaponry.
The payment of reparations was for "compensation fo all damage done to the civilian population of the Allied powers and their property". It was to include raw material, such as the coal from the Saar and Ruhr regions. Two years later, in 1921, the cost of reparations was announced - £6.6 billion, which German economists calculated would take until 1988 to pay. The figure shocked and angered Germans who conveniently forgot that Germany had demanded an even greater sum from a defeated France following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 - 1871.
But it was the humiliating clause that forced Germany into accepting responsibility for the war and for the damage to the civilian populations of the Allies that rankled most with the public at home.
