This article appeared sixteen years after the Versailles Treaty was signed; it argued that the “War Guilt” clause (article 231) had been deliberately mistranslated by the German Foreign Minister, Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau (1869 – 1928, caricatured above).
“Brockdorff-Rantzau, coldly, haughtily, in the best German manner but with trembling legs, carried the thick [treaty] back to his hotel and he and his aides made their own translation into German… Count Brockdorff not only exercised his prerogative there; but he inserted words not synonymous with any that the Allies had written… In the famous Article 231 he added words that the Allies had taken great pains to leave out, not for reasons of conscience, but for reasons of expediency… For doing so he had reasons which he no doubt considered good. He was furious over a number of things.”
“It was many years before any doubt arose. Then musty-nosed historians began digging about in the archives, stenographic notes, minutes, scraps of memoranda and all the paper leftovers of the Conference that had been shipped out of the old Chateau of Vicennes, east of Paris, for storage. The history professors found surprising things, and published thin, dull-looking little brochures, read by fewer persons than read the treaties. But they dragged out the truth, little by little, and there it is.”
– from Amazon:
