By Raleigh Perry
BUFORD, Ga. | You might not know everything that is involved in a peace treaty. There are some things that will boggle your mind.
Basically, there are five separate treaties to end World War One. That is because Germany was at war with a lot of places.
Specifically, the five countries are:
- Treaty of Versailles (June 28, 1919): Signed with Germany.
- Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Sept. 10, 1919): Signed with Austria.
- Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine (Nov. 27, 1919): Signed with Bulgaria.
- Treaty of Trianon (June 4, 1920): Signed with Hungary.
- Treaty of Sèvres (Aug. 10, 1920): Signed with the Ottoman Empire, which was later superseded by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923)
Germany just got into wars with a lot of countries and each had a treaty that was different than the others.
Let us consider the Treaty of Versailles. The normal things you find when you read treaties to end a war, but there are four add-ons that you might find interesting.
The German rifle, the Mauser, perhaps the finest rifle ever made – at least that is my opinion. One of a couple of rifles used by the United States in World War One was the 1903 Springfield. It was a virtual carbon copy of the Mauser. At the time of WW1, Mauser was suing Springfield for such things as patent infringements. The treaty of Versailles included a clause that voided all the patents of that Mauser, making the Mauser action generic. The Springfield was the rifle used by the US until the mid 1930s when the M1 Garand became the standard. It was used during the most of World War Two and the Korean War.
The German company Bayer had a patent of Bayer Aspirin and that, too, was made generic by treaty so that people could use it to stop various and sundry pains and headaches. There is a clause in the treaty than voided the Bayer patent. Thus it is universally available all over the world.
Other treaties have caused more problems that you could ever imagine. The Balfour Declaration literally gave part of Palestine to the Jews. But with the second part, it specifically admonished the two dweller nations in Palestine that the Jews and the Palestinians were to live in peace.
Virtually never mentioned, the last of the four items, the Sykes-Picot agreement, an agreement between Great Britain and France tied up the populations and the country borders.
The United States has a policy that all treaties of this kind have to be approved by the Senate. The Treaty of Versailles was the only one that the US would have been a part of. However, the US would not ratify that treaty, and never has, and thus the US is not a part of the Treaty of Versailles.
This has been said by historian after historian and it is true: every war in Europe and in the Middle East has been caused by the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
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