Versailles, Treaty of

For in 1927 —the year in which Hitler had made concrete plans to get back the Rhineland, which Germany had once possessed — Farben had seized interests there which neither the young combine nor its predecessors had ever owned. The pretext for the seizure was that Farben had come to redress the industrial injustices of the Treaty of Versailles. 

Treaty of Versailles. Article 171 The use of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and all analogous liquids, materials or devices being prohibited, their manufacture and importation are strictly forbidden in Germany. ... 

The threat became urgent in July. Germany ratified the Treaty of Versailles, which included a provision that compelled it to turn over accused war criminals for trial. Haber immediately sent the rest of his family—Charlotte, seventeen-year-old Hermann, and Eva, who was not quite two—to the neutral haven of Switzerland. Perhaps he acquired a new identity years later, scientists at his institute discovered a forged passport with Haber s picture. On August 1, he followed his family to the Alpine city of St.-Moritz. There he waited. He also grew a beard, evidently thinking that it might help conceal his identity. 

Following World War I, the Peace Treaty of Versailles between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany was signed on 28 June 1919 and entered into force on 10 January 1920. This included, as Article 171, the requirement ... 

While the CWS struggled to survive and keep the army ready for a chemical war, international attempts were made to prohibit chemical warfare. The Treaty of Versailles, completed in 1919, prohibited Germany from producing, storing, importing, or... 

The first military use of perchlorates as an explosive was as a filler for a German shell in World War I, when conventional explosives ran short, as a filler for gas grenades because it had a predictable rate of burn, and as pyrotechnics for communication before the age of field radios and rockets. (A paragraph in the Treaty of Versailles banned Germany from possessing rockets.) Since World War I, the military has used thousands of tons of perchlorate compounds. 

And yet the Treaty of Versailles itself contained certain provisions which posed a dangerous threat to BASF s survival. For a start, there was the matter of reparations. The chemical industry, alone, apart from the coal mines, was singled out in the treaty and required to pay reparations in kind. It was to hand over 50 per cent of its stocks of dyes, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and until 1 January 1925 it was regularly to make 25 per cent of its total production available for export at pre-war net prices. In addition, the industry was required to deliver 30,000 tons of ammonia and other chemical... 

Apart from the matter of reparations, the Treaty of Versailles also contained a far more serious passage which threatened, in particular, the very existence of the chemical industry. The text in question was contained in paragraphs 164 et seq., which restricted or prohibited the production of arms, ammunition, munitions and poison gases and... 

E.g. Neutral Luxembourg did not offer military resistance to German forces. Kautsky, ibid. E.g. France s occupation of the Ruhr in claimed application of the Treaty of Versailles, Part VIII, Annex 2, Articles 17-18 (1919) American Journal of International Law Supplement 13, pp. 151, 385 (1919). For a debate on the lawfulness of that action see AUemes and Schuster 1924. For a detailed account see Lemkin 1944. 

Occupation was originally viewed as wholly a matter of fact, and not a legal situation . As a factual situation only, there was no question of its lawfulness or otherwise, merely of its existence. This view changed somewhat once occupation was expanded to post-surrender arrangements, such as the post-World War I occupation of the Rhineland. The administration of the occupied territory could then be evaluated by reference not only to the law of occupation itself but also to the undertakings by the parties to the Treaty of Versailles. The existence of occupation nonetheless remained a matter of fact. 

Among the first political challenges to the German firms after the war were the terms of the peace. Perhaps no postwar event marked Germany s defeated status more dramatically than the economic reparations demanded by the victors. The death and destruction of four years of trench warfare left the Allies in no mood to be generous, and they imposed difficult economic demands on the German nation. The United States never ratified the Treaty of Versailles, but it participated in treaty clauses related to reparations and placed unofficial representatives on the Reparations Commission, the Allied administration established to supervise reparations. ... 

We are not following precedents.We are refusing to follow the decision of the Supreme Court in the Chemical Foundation case. We are refusing to follow the provisions of the treaty of Versailles.We are refusing to... 

February 1922. The Harding administration had several objectives in sponsoring the conference, principally naval disarmament, a disengagement of Britain from her pre-war alliance with Japan, and the resolution of outstanding Sino-Japanese disputes. Gas warfare was a comparatively minor issue, but the Harding administration still sought another international prohibition of poison gas to reaffirm international law, improve upon the Hague Declaration, and produce a statement which the American Senate could ratify (since it had failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles). 

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