When should Germany have surrendered?

[Narwan]

Yes, quite true in a public sense, however (and I'll have to have a root around to find the references) there is more than a suggestion that Llyod-George was going to give a significant part of the fleet back to Germany and was certainly not going to enforce all the treaty conditions.

True, but this was after he himself had agreed to those same terms. In fact, some of them the British delegation had proposed themselves or had their inclusion forced. The position of (general?) Smuts who represented South Africa in the british delegation perfectly sums up the problem they had with the final treaty. After the final version was drafted he held a passionate speech within part of the delegation pointing to how this would merely set the stage for another war to come or perhaps worse, would so bankrupt and impoverish germany that it would fall into bolsjewik hands almost automatically. He and some others in the delegation went to Lloyd-George and told him they wouldn't sign. To which he replied to Smuts "so are you going to give german southwest africa (Now Namibia) back to them then?". Which he wouldn't off course.
Everyone saw that is was a bad treaty but expect someone else to act to rectify it. The treaty wasn't as much aimed against germany and the other central powers but more to create a 'fair' new balance of power between the victors. The idea of giving back part of the fleet was int he back of the mind of LG indeed, but would that mean only ships destined for the UK or should everyone who got part of the Hochsee Fleet in the settlement give some back? If not, the UK's position of primairy naval power was at risk... So I don't think it was more than an idea he played with, not a serious option.

There was certainly a feeling in some quaters that sacrificing Germany in the way it was would rebound on the other major powers in particular the UK. Allowing Germany to remain "armed" would provide a bulwark against French expansion abroad ... that is if the German's still had guns then the French would have to keep troops at home and stop messing around in the colonies ... no more repeats of Fashoda for instance.

Likewise allowing Germany to keep its colonies would keep the presure of the UK colonies ... at least to a certain extent.

The European's don't call us "Perfidious Albion" for nothing.

The UK had the largest commercial interests in germany and needed a healthy german economy as a market to dump their goods in (especially those produced cheaply in the dominions and colonies). They also suffered far less damage to their own economical infrastructure so wanted to get things back to 'normal' ASAP. Whereas the french in particular had to rebuild a significant part of their industry (up to 90% of the coal mines in former german occupied france had been destroyed by the germans which accounted for over 2/3's of frances prewar coal production capacity).

Keeping germany armed wasn't an option. As it was the french could barely accept the treaty as it was as they felt it left germany far to strong. A stronger germany would have been completely unacceptable to the French and the British would have had to come up with some huge compensations for the french to get anything like that through.

For that same reason (the careful balance between the victors) no serious amendments were possible or happened. In the end Germany just stopped abbiding by the conditions and the allies let them.

Narwan