Justice and Moral Regeneration: Lessons from the Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles, which concluded World War I, aimed to establish a “peace of justice”; sadly, it only seemed to pave the way to a second, more devastating world war. What lessons about justice and reconciliation can we learn from the treaty and its apparent failure? Some scholars argue that the fault of the treaty lay in its preoccupation with retributive justice, undermining prospects for reconciliation. Rather than positing justice and reconciliation as inherently conflictual moral values or goals, both need to be conceived as part of the project of moral regeneration. Such a multidimensional project requires a certain kind of justice and reconciliation, founded on mutual respect for the humanity and equality of others. An assessment of the relationship among truth, justice, and reconciliation in the framework of moral regeneration indicates that the most grievous moral fault of the Treaty of Versailles lay in its process, which facilitated neither a truthful accounting of the war's causes and consequences, nor the affirmation of moral truths by victors or vanquished. The lack of an authoritative and public moral accounting of the Great War undermined both justice and reconciliation in international society.