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It's a fairly persistent narrative that it was the harsh terms of the treaty of versailles that lead to the second world war, but it's always struck me as a load of rubbish. If your enemy is still strong enough to make another serious go of invading you a generation after you have decisively defeated them, it's an argument that you were not thorough enough in their hobbling, not the reverse. You don't hear many people saying that the Romans were in danger of the hurt feelings of the Carthaginians causing another great war when they made their desert and called it peace.
The problem with the post-WW1 peace was that it did not change the fundemental conditions that lead to the outbreak of WW1. It left a Germany that was humiliated and embittered, but still in pretty much the same place it was before the war. If your aim is to prevent the rise of Hitler and WW2, you need to disarm its military at the end of the war, rather than letting them go home under arms, occupy the country and then dissolve Germany as a nation. Of course I'm referring to the nation as a political entity and not advocating for some sort of mass disintegration of all Germans, but I think having Germany forcibly broken up into a series of smaller nations is a fair price to pay for starting the greatest war in history and then making the rather inadvisable decision of losing it.
I would say that WW2 was a consequence of firstly, that special brand of German pig-headedness that convinces them that everything must be done the German way. And secondly, a dangerous cocktail of American softness mixed with the bitterness of two empires that had just spent the lives of a generation of their men (and a whole lot of money) with very little to show for it.
Somewhat tangential to this point, I'm not typically given to writing great long essays for the internet, but I do feel that one day I will be compelled to research and write a great screed about the US and it's approach to international relations and diplomacy. I'm thinking of opening it with "American diplomats and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race".
Well, it seems you probably want one or the other. But the Romans didn’t negotiate an end with Carthage; they utterly destroyed them because they beat their armies in toto.
But yes, it would’ve been better if there was less financial penalties on Germany and more military punishments.
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Agreed, it certainly compares well with the treaty the same Germans inflicted on their defeated enemies. The impact of Versailles is often overstated imo, the reparations requirements were downgraded several times in the Dawes Plan and Young Plan, Germany frequently just didn't pay, and ultimately only ever delivered about 12% of what it owed. Reparations certainly weren't an impediment to rearmament, on which much many times more money was spent, and broadly the German economy had been improving in the decade before Hitler's rise, especially in inflation. Things got much worse right before he came to power, but this was due to the Great Depresion, not Versailles.
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