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What happened to Germany’s overseas colonies under the Treaty of Versailles?

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Treaty of Versailles The “Big Four” (left to right): David Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the United States, the principal architects of the Treaty of Versailles.

Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was compelled to relinquish control of all its overseas colonies. These territories, which had served as symbols of Germany's world-power status, were redistributed among the victorious Allied powers through the League of Nations mandate system.123

The mandates were assigned to individual Allied victors based on the territory's location and development level:2

Class B Mandates: These included African territories such as Tanganyika (assigned to Britain), parts of Togoland and the Cameroons (assigned to France), and Ruanda-Urundi (assigned to Belgium).23
Class C Mandates: These territories were administered as integral parts of the mandatory power's own territory. They included South West Africa (assigned to South Africa), New Guinea (Australia), Western Samoa (New Zealand), Nauru (Australia, with Britain and New Zealand), and various Pacific islands north of the Equator (Japan).23

While the mandate system was theoretically supervised by the Permanent Mandates Commission, the commission lacked the authority to effectively enforce its will on the mandatory powers.2