Treaty of Ljubljana (Our Place in the Sun)

The Treaty of Ljubljana was a peace treaty signed between the victorious Central Powers of Bulgaria, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Germany on one hand, and the defeated Entente powers of Serbia, Albania, Romania, Portugal, Montenegro, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, China and Greece on the other. Of the three treaties that followed World War I, Ljubljana was the one that involved the largest amount of countries. It was supposed to be the final treaty that ended the state of war among all the European powers, but the Germans insisted on a secondary treaty with Italy, France, and the United Kingdom, which became the Treaty of Brühl. The treaty was negotiated and signed in Ljubljana Castle in the city of Ljubljana in Austrian Slovenia. The official signing took place on 4 April 1918.

Strategic Situation After World War I
Following the end of World War I with the signature of the armistice on 1 January 1918, the Central Powers had won a decisive victory over the Entente Powers. Serbia had been defeated as early as 1915 and, after the German Summer Offensive of 1917, the French were forced to surrender, freeing up hundreds of thousands of German troops to assist the struggling Austro-Hungarian Army in the Italian front. After a devastating defeat at Monte Grappa, the Italian army continued its full retreat and hundreds of thousands of Italian troops were surrounded at Venice, allowing the Germans to move into the rest of the country largely unopposed and leading to the destruction of the Italian Army in the Battle of Venice, forcing Italy to surrender to the Austrians on 13 December 1917, followed by the Greeks only hours later. On 1 January 1918, the British and Americans signed an armistice with the Germans.

Goals of the Central Powers
Aside from Germany, the Central Powers were experiencing great internal strife that made outward focuses secondary when it came to the end of the war. Though Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria all wanted to make gains in the Balkans, the primary concern of the Ottomans was surviving the war without collapsing, while the Austro-Hungarians were concerned with not succumbing to internal separatist movements which threatened to break apart the empire. Bulgaria wished to reclaim territory it had lost in the Balkan Wars. Germany had little to gain from this treaty but wanted to be a party to it in order to have legal basis for taking further military actions against any of the Entente Powers should they violate a treaty with German allies.

Provisions
The provisions of the treaty were primarily territorial and political, as Germany had assured its allies that it would handle all economic and military restrictions in its own treaty with the defeated powers. Regardless of this, Austria insisted on the creation of a demilitarized zone in northern Italy. The treaty included a “war guilt clause” similar to that found in the Treaty of Brühl, and require large reparations payments to Austria-Hungary. The treaty notably excluded a formal end to the state of war between Germany and Italy, France, and the United Kingdom. The territorial and political changes as a result of the treaty were as follows:
 * Italy
 * Veneto and all territory between it and Austria-Hungary was given to Austria-Hungary, and ownership of Italian Libya was transferred to the Ottoman Empire.
 * Italian territories north of Rome were to become a demilitarized zone enforced by the Germans and Austrians.
 * German troops were given unconditional military access to Italy for one year for the purpose of seizing Italian cultural artifacts, such as art pieces as “national humiliation” for the betrayal of the Central Powers.
 * Albania, Serbia, Romania and Montenegro became puppet kingdoms of Austria-Hungary with a limited degree of national autonomy.
 * Japan was forced to pay $17 billion for the damages inflicted on German eastern colonies.
 * China was allowed to keep Austrian Tianjin in exchange for a payment of $10 billion.
 * Serbia was forced to cede Macedonia to Bulgaria and was also forced to accept full responsibility for starting the war and pay Austria-Hungary $350 billion as reparations.
 * United Kingdom
 * Egypt was to be granted independence and the Ottomans were given the Sinai Peninsula, but the British could maintain conditional access to the Suez Canal.
 * The Ottoman Empire gained control of Cyprus and Yemen.
 * Bulgaria gained eastern Greek Macedonia and parts of southeastern Romania.
 * The Ottoman Empire was given the Greek Aegean Islands.
 * Portugal ceded Angola to Germany in exchange for a payment of $10 billion
 * The United States was forced to pay an extremely small sum of money for their participation in the war