Germany's peace policy both before and during the Versailles peace conference has been dealt with rather harshly by recent historiography. The Berlin government has been criticized for, among other things, its lack of realism, its failure to develop a European perspective in its program, its insincerity in the war-guilt question, and, generally, its traditionalist attachment to the policies of its Wilhelmine predecessor. Briefly, it has been blamed for not having been attuned to the historic break achieved by the revolution of November 1918.

This chapter reassesses Germany's peace policies of 1918-19 in the light of these judgments. It takes stock of the merits of those policies, their drawbacks, and the international and domestic constraints that limited Germany's options. An attempt of this sort requires, first, a chronological review of the major developments in the conception and implementation of Germany's peace program, and second, a reevaluation from a long-term perspective.

The roots of the peace program that Germany presented at Versailles have been justly traced to the final phases of World War I or, more precisely, to the resolution passed by the German Reichstag on July 19, 1917, more than a year before Germany was proclaimed a republic. This resolution was the culminating point of a debate over Germany's war aims that had begun soon after the outbreak of the war and was responsible for a widening split in Germany’s home front.