The Treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty that was signed in the city of Versailles at the end of the First World War by more than fifty countries. This treaty officially ended with the state of war between the Germany of the Second Reich and the Allies of the First World War. It was signed on June 28, 1919 in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles, exactly five years after the Sarajevo bombing in which Archduke Franz Ferdinand was killed, the direct cause of the First World War. Although the armistice was signed months before (November 11, 1918) to end hostilities on the battlefield, it took six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The Treaty of Versailles came into force on January 10, 1920.
Of the many provisions of the treaty, one of the most important and controversial provisions stipulated that the Central Powers (Germany and its allies) accept all moral and material responsibility for having caused the war and, under the terms of articles 231-248, should disarm, make important territorial concessions to the victors and pay exorbitant economic compensation to the victorious States. The Treaty of Versailles was undermined early by later events after 1922 and was widely violated in Germany in the 1930s with the coming to power of Adolf Hitler.
