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How the Treaty of Versailles Affected the German Economy

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Submitted By andybaz
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Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to investigate and explain how the Treaty of Versailles affected the German economy. I find this subject relevant since it is a big event in European history.
During the years after the First World War Germany had a lot of debts and faced a lot of reparation costs. Even though the meaning of most of the peace treaties was to encourage the world economy, re-build cities and maintain peace, not a lot of these goals were fulfilled.

Background
The First World War was a military conflict that included a lot of countries around the world. The war started at June 28, 1914 and lasted until November 11, 1918. The war was played out between the great power countries and they were divided in to two parts, the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Empire) and the Entente (Russia, Great Britain, France and USA).
When the war ended in 1918, negations began to try to come up with solutions to all the problems and crises that had been caused by the war. All the countries involved in the war gathered in France in 1919 to start the peace negotiations. An important treaty written during these negotiations was the Treaty Of Versailles. It was signed by Germany and the Entente.1

The Demands
Germany was seen as being head responsible for the upcoming of WW1 and had caused the most damage to other countries; therefor the Treaty of Versailles included numerous demands that Germany had to obey.
France got permission to occupy the coal-mines in Saar Basin for fifteen years and they also got Alsace–Lorraine back. A big part of Prussia and a part of Silesia, which held 23% of the German output of coal, were given to Poland.2 This and some other border adjustments deprived Germany of 13 percent of its prewar territory and 10 percent of their 1910 population. These geographical losses included almost 15 percent of its arable

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