The German Question, Part Eighty-Nine

"A Divisive Treaty" Part One-The General Outline

The "Treaty of Versailles" was the treaty negotiated during the Paris Peace Conference, beginning in early 1919, to put an official end to the state of war between Germany and the Allies, and to determine war reparations and border adjustments in general, as only an armistice had been signed in November 1918.* With such a devastating war, with millions of dead and maimed, not to mention the tremendous property damage and economic dislocations, any treaty was bound to arouse passions on both sides, and even among the Allies themselves. The main negotiators were Britain, France, the United States and, sometimes, Italy.** As you can see, Germany was not included in the negotiations, although German representatives did arrive in Paris later, but only to hear what the Allied negotiators demanded, not to have input in the conference. The treaty was signed June 28, 1919.

This treaty is VERY important, and I'll be dealing with many of the specifics shortly, as some of the territorial adjustments went to the heart of the question, "Who is a German?" The treaty had ramifications, and it certainly had modest to substantial effect in helping to bring Adolf Hitler to power.

* Germany's allies signed separate treaties to officially end their participation in the Great War, and it should be noted, that Russia did not participate, as Russia and Germany had already signed a treaty in March 1918 ending hostilities against one another.

** The Italians were not always happy with the negotiations and they left the conference, but returned later. 

WORD HISTORY: 

Snap/Schnapps-I could not find a connection to an Indo European base for this word, but that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't one, although, except for recent centuries, the history on this word is sketchy. The noun and verb forms are from the same base word, and that word, then spelled "snappe," in English, came into English in the later 1400s as a borrowing from Low German and Dutch "snappen," which meant "attempt by an animal to make a quick bite, or seize something with its mouth," and we still say things like, "Be careful, the dog may 'snap' at you." This sense has made some linguists wonder if it is derived from a form of Low German/Dutch "snavel," which means "beak;" that is, the mouth part used for seizing (modern standard German has "Schnabel," a borrowing from Low German, with the "v" changed to "b"). The noun then developed a verb form. This certainly makes sense, and if this idea is correct, it would thus be related to English "nib," which in Anglo-Saxon was "neb(b)," and meant "beak, bill" (Old English also had "bile," I believe pronounced "bill-ah,"="bill, beak"). I have put the related parts in BOLD above. The Old Germanic dialects, including Old English, often used base words with various prefixes or suffixes to indicate specific meanings, and of course, there were compounds, so the "s" or "Sch" beginnings of the above German/Low German/Dutch words is not something uncommon. The "el" ending usually indicated a diminutive; that is, it makes the noun item smaller; thus perhaps "small beak." Old English had "heardneb," a compound meaning "hard beak." The notion of an animal using its beak to "quickly and suddenly" seize prey came to mean "quick bite," or "to grab quickly," in English, and we still use the word in a sort of figurative sense that way in, "I'm going to 'snap' up the bread that's on sale before it's gone." The "quickness" notion came to be associated with the word by the 1500s or 1600s, something still around, as in, "I did the job in a snap." The original meaning seems to have also included the idea of the "quick bite" being somewhat noisy; thus the additional association with sound, as in, "The branch 'snapped' from the high winds," which implies both sound and quickness/suddenness. In German, the idea of "quick bite," came to be applied to a hard liquor for "a quick gulp;" thus German "Schnaps" (notice only one "n" and the capital "S" is because all German nouns are capitalized). Standard German got the word from the same Low German word that gave English "snap;" that is, "snappen," which also gave Low German "snaps." German has the verb "schnappen," often used in the sense, "snap up a bit of fresh air," as well as being used similarly to English.