The Mistranslated Clause
(New Outlook Magazine, 1935)
This surprising article appeared sixteen years after the Versailles Treaty was signed; it argued that the War Guilt clause (article 231) had been deliberately mistranslated by the German Foreign Minister, Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau (1869 – 1928):
Brockdorff-Rantzau, coldly, haughtily, in the best German manner but with trembling legs, carried the thick [treaty] back to his hotel and he and his aides made their own translation into German… Count Brockdorff not only exercised his prerogative there; but he inserted words not synonymous with any that the Allies had written.

