But the meanings of Articles 429 and 430 appear to be that the Allies were only permitted to continue occupation if German conduct proved unsatisfactory. There does not seem any justi fication under the treaty for the action taken by the Allies as a whole, including Great Britain, in 1921, when areas in Germany beyond the bridgeheads were occupied. Still less would there ap pear to be any justification for the occupation of the German dis trict of the Ruhr by the French and Belgians in Jan. 1923. This was not approved of at the time by the British Government, and was subsequently declared by them to be in their opinion illegal in a note to the French Government (Aug. 1923). As a guarantee for the settlement of the eastern frontier of Germany, as fixed at the peace, Article 433 abrogated the Brest-Litovsk treaties (q.v.) between Germany and Soviet Russia and bound all German troops to evacuate territory beyond their new frontier.
The German treaty appears, when its various items are assem bled together, to have been crushing and severe to a high degree. This result was partly due to the fact that the separate parts of the treaty were worked out by the different committees, and its cumulative effect not recognized when they were assembled to gether. It was due, however, more particularly to the fact that popular pressure was very great both on President Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau not to make a lenient peace.
The "guarantees" section of the Peace treaty was carried out by the evacuation of the Rhineland area and by the tacit abandon ment of policies like the invasion and occupation of the Ruhr.
The Property section of the treaty has been, in great part, modi fied or abandoned. No other great diplomatic instrument has ever been so speedily modified, revised or altered. (H. W. V. T.; X.) The Treaty of Versailles and associated treaties remained in force up to 1938 in so far as they defined territorial frontiers, in cluding mandates. Otherwise the position was that the Peace Treaties ceased to be respected by the signatory Powers, taken as a whole. The undertaking by the victorious Powers that they would limit armaments was not fulfilled. Germany, therefore, demanded equality and she proceeded to rearm.
In 1936 Germany marched troops into the Rhineland and forti fied that demilitarized zone. All restraints on the rearming of other "enemy" powers, Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary, were ignored, and Turkey, after conference with the Powers at Montreux in Switzerland in 1936, occupied and fortified the Dardanelles with international consent. Japan encroached upon the sovereignty of China, a member of the League, by organizing a vassal Man choukuo (1932) and beginning (1937) a general offensive in China. Italy in 1935-36 destroyed the sovereignty of Abyssinia, another League member, despite the application of sanctions. The U. S. has not joined the League or the World Court. In March 1933, Japan resigned from the League, and Germany in Oct. 1933.
Strictly speaking, Adolf Hitler's first violation of geographical provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, prior to the Polish inva sion, was his seizure of Memel in March 1939; the anschluss with Austria and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia destroyed rather the provisions of the Treaty of St. Germain (q.v.). The financial clauses of the treaty were practically obsolete by 1931.