May 12, 1919. The draft Versailles Treaty is discussed in the German National Assembly, workers and Michigan Parks.

On this Monday, May 12, 1919, the German National Assembly met in horrified protest over the treaty that German delegates has been presented in Paris and indicated that they would not sign it.  Indeed, the Chancellor, Philipp Scheidemann indicated that the hand that would sign it would "wither".

Things didn't seem to be going well in Paris, now that that the German delegates were there.

Scheidemann had been the German politician who actually declared Germany to be a republic in November 1919, seeking to get in front of the Spartacist who were moving towards declaring the country a soviet.  The move was brilliant, but it ironically angered Ebert, who would soon be involved in trying to save that republic, as he felt it usurped the rights of the German people to declare their own form of government.  Those people would soon be embroiled in a civil war during the months in which the Allies worked on the treaty that was to formally resolve the war.

Scheiemann declaring Germany to be a republic in November 1919.

That the German government found the proposed treaty abhorrent was clear.  But what they could really do about it was not.  Southern Germany, about the only region of the country that wasn't a mess at the time, wasn't a mess as the Allies occupied it. Those occupied areas were de facto beach heads into Germany should the war resume.  The Allies were quixotically busy demobilizing, which made their military presence in Germany somewhat debatable, but they were there.

The German army itself was much reduced due to the armistice and what army there was was either fighting the Red Army in the Baltic's, where the Allies had required it to remain until it could be relieved from that tasks by Allied forces (again, a real irony), or engaged in suppressing Communist uprisings.  In that latter role, it had been forced to reply upon the Freikorps, unofficial, but well armed, militia units that sprung up and which were being illegally supplied and equipped by the government.  So while the Allies were demobilizing, and would have had a difficult time resuming the war if they had to, the Germans would have had no allies at all, and had little army with which to counter any resumed hostilities. The government also had a massive political mess on its hands.

In the US returning soldiers were resuming prior occupations as the American economy started to slow, but not everyone who had taken up a wartime job was ready to relinquish it.

Woman welder, May 12, 1919.

The state of Michigan, with its eye's on more peaceful things, created its State Parks Commission on this day a century ago.