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The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, by 66 representatives from 32 different countries. The countries were split into three parties, which were led by the Principal Allied and Associated Powers of Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the United States. Germany was a party in its own right, while the remainder of the countries present (also including the Principal Powers) made up the other party.

Decision making

The five Principal Powers made all of the major decisions in the creation of the treaty, with two delegates from each country meeting to define the peace terms of the treaty in what was known as the "Council of Ten" (this was later replaced by the "Council of Five", which was made up of the respective foreign ministers). The Prime Ministers of Britain, France and Italy and the US President also met in 145 closed sessions throughout the Paris Peace Conference, and President Woodrow Wilson even won the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for the role he played in creating the League of Nations (despite the US later rejecting its membership). The remainder of the delegates met in weekly conferences, and although they did not make any decisions on what would be included in the final treaty, many of their recommendations were incorporated into the final draft. The two German delegations were forbidden from taking part in any of these meetings, to prevent them from causing problems between the other delegates.

The Shandong Problem

China was the only country to send delegates to the Paris Peace Conference, but to have none sign the Treaty of Versailles. This was because Article 156 in the treaty handed the administration of Germany's overseas territories in China to Japan. Although China had originally agreed to these terms, when news of this apparent betrayal was made public, students began to protest in huge numbers, in what is now known as the May Fourth Movement, and the Chinese government then instructed its delegates not to sign the treaty. A separate peace agreement was needed to broker peace between China and Germany in 1921, and control of the Shandong Peninsula was returned to China in 1922. Despite regaining the peninsula, much of the area's commerce remained under Japanese authority, and this led to the Jinan Incident in 1928, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of Chinese civilians.