The Treaty of Versailles
- Grades
- Grades 9-12
- Time
- About two 50-minute class periods
- Includes
- 11 ready-to-teach files
- Format
- Word (.docx) · PowerPoint (.pptx)
- Slide deck
- Guided notes
- Guided notes teacher key
- Activity + answer key
- Quiz + answer key
- Exit ticket + answer key
- Teacher guide
- Teacher presentation notes
What students do
- Read the actual text of Article 231 to determine whether it says "guilt" or "responsibility"
- Analyze the territorial losses table to trace what Germany gave up in the Polish Corridor, the Saar, and Alsace-Lorraine
- Argue whether the treaty caused World War II using dated evidence from the closing debate
- Compare the treaty's silence on a reparations figure in 1919 to the 132 billion mark total set in 1921
What it covers
- Why Article 231 was nicknamed the War Guilt Clause even though those words never appear in it
- The territory and military limits the treaty imposed on Germany, including the Rhineland and the 100,000-man army cap
- How the reparations total was set two years after the treaty was signed, not written into the treaty itself
Learning targets
- Explain what the Treaty of Versailles required Germany to give up.
- Describe what Article 231 actually says and what it was nicknamed.
- Explain why the treaty set no reparations total in 1919.
- Use evidence to debate whether the treaty caused the next war.
Peek inside
1. Article 231 is usually called the War Guilt Clause. Using the Reference Guide, explain what the article actually assigns to Germany and why that nickname is misleading.
Why this matters
Article 231 never actually uses the word guilt, yet it became known as the War Guilt Clause the moment Germans read what responsibility was being asked to cover. The reparations figure Germany was billed, 132 billion marks, was not even part of the 1919 treaty: it was set two years later, in 1921.
A treaty this infamous is assumed to have been vindictive from the first page, so finding the exact clause and setting it against the 100,000-man army cap and the territory lost in the Polish Corridor and the Saar makes for a harder, more honest reading.
From one teacher to another
I used to teach the Treaty of Versailles as one bad decision and move on, but that wasn't fair to how complicated the decision actually was. This lesson makes students sit with the bind the peacemakers were actually in: punish the losers enough to satisfy a grieving public, but not so much that the peace collapses under its own weight. It closes out my World War I unit and hands straight into the interwar lesson on totalitarianism that follows.
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Related resources
Alliances and the Causes of WWI
America Enters the War
New Weapons of War
Rise of Totalitarianism
The Assassination at Sarajevo
The Great Depression
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