THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES

Today, the 28^th June, 1919, in the Lounge of the Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles there has been signed the Agreement of Versailles, which has put end to the First World War. This agreement gives step to the peace. The  war began the 28^th June, 1914 due to the murder in Sarajevo to the archduke Francisco Fernando, inheritor of the Austro-Hungarian throne. The Austro-Hungarian Empire declared the war to Serbia and Russia. Germany is suffering the consequences of the Agreement of Versailles, which has taken territories from it and now it has a debt of war of 33 billion dollars, it also has lost almost the whole army. On the other hand, Austria has recognized the independence of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Hungary. Now it’s only a small country in the center of Europe. The German minister, Hermann Müller, is signing the Agreement of Versailles. 

At the outside of this room, we can see lots of people, all joined together.

The principal consequences of the Agreement of Versailles are:

- Alsace and Lorraine were given to Germany in the peace agreement signed in Versailles the 26th January, 1871 and the 10^th May of the same year, Frankfurt's Agreement was returned to France.
- Czechoslovakia and Poland have lost Alta Silesia's territory.
- Germany has lost Eupen and Malmedy and these, they given to Belgium.

- Western Prussia has lost Kláipeda, and has passed to form a part of France. Later, it passed to form part of Lithuania.
- Prussia also has lost Warmia and Masuria and now they are a part of Poland.

Especially, the Agreement of Versailles has restricted the number of the German army to less than 100.000 soldiers; they have prohibited the manufacture of tanks and of heavy artillery. In the German sea-coast, now only 15.000 sailors can go with only six warships, six cruises, 12 against torpedo boats and have prohibited also the manufacture of submarines. To the German mark of planes Luftwaffe they do not leave them to work.

I have seen before, in a newspaper called “The impartial one ", a letter of my friend who was suffering with me the consequences of the end of the First World War. Here you can see what he has told:

The Peace has returned to the world - A happy date in the life of the Humanity.

Yesterday, minutes after three o'clock in the afternoon, the agreement was signed in Versailles

The day with such a distress waited across of almost a period, came to the end. Yesterday he has put on the signature to the agreement of peace. Virtually, the peace remained made the day of the recognition of the armistice. Since then the humanity waited for her as an event that could be retarded, but was not altering indefinitely. The happiness of the world was not, this way and quite, it completes. Menacing clouds, pregnant with distressing omens, were muddying the great hope of the men. Promised La Paz could be late too much and have time to that the latent carbons among the embers of the fire were lifting again the ravenous bonfire. This distress has ended yesterday. From yesterday they end all the dreads, all the immediate dangers. The march of the progress, during so much time interrupted, can be resumed and can affirm perhaps the work that the yesterday event inaugurates. Eliminated the condition of abnormality that made forget the men so many things, will have come the moment of an arrested and implacable examination of conscience that maybe takes them to the deep knowledge of his mistakes, and giving the character of impossibly to the repetition of a tragedy as the one that finishes of finishing turn yesterday in the biggest and glorious of the whole human history.

WEBGRAPHY:

http://www.elhistoriador.com.ar/articulos/mundo/tratado_de_versalles_fin_de_la_primera_guerra_mundial.php

http://www.historialuniversal.com/2010/09/tratado-de-versalles.html