Which Treaty Ended World War I? The Treaty of Versailles

Q: Which treaty ended World War I?

The Treaty of Versailles formally ended World War I between Germany and the Allied powers. It was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles near Paris, exactly five years after the assassination that started the war. Fighting had already stopped with the armistice of November 11, 1918.

Armistice vs treaty

	Armistice	Treaty of Versailles
Date	November 11, 1918, at 11 a.m.	June 28, 1919
What it did	Stopped the fighting	Set the peace terms
Remembered as	Armistice Day / Veterans Day / Remembrance Day	The formal end of the war with Germany

The treaty took effect on January 10, 1920.

The “Big Four”

The terms were shaped mainly by:

Woodrow Wilson, United States
David Lloyd George, United Kingdom
Georges Clemenceau, France
Vittorio Orlando, Italy

Germany wasn’t allowed to negotiate; it was presented with the terms and threatened with renewed war if it refused.

Main terms

Term	Detail
War guilt	Article 231 made Germany accept responsibility for the war’s damage
Reparations	Later set at 132 billion gold marks
Territory	Germany lost about 13% of its European land, including Alsace-Lorraine to France, and all its colonies
Military	Army limited to 100,000 men; no air force; no submarines
Rhineland	Demilitarized and occupied by Allied troops
League of Nations	Created to keep future peace

Other peace treaties

World War I’s other Central Powers signed separate treaties: Saint-Germain (Austria), Trianon (Hungary), Neuilly (Bulgaria) and Sèvres (Ottoman Empire, later replaced by Lausanne in 1923).

A troubled legacy

Many Germans saw the treaty as a humiliating “dictated peace.” Economic hardship and resentment helped extremist parties, including the Nazis, gain support, contributing to World War II twenty years later. The US Senate never ratified the treaty, and the US signed a separate peace with Germany in 1921.

For how a later divided Germany reunited, see when the Berlin Wall fell.