[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
The Treaty of Versailles was flawed because it was imposed upon the Germans while they were still holding French land. With that in mind, the treaty was extraordinarily punitive to a people that didn’t think that they had lost. This in turn caused so much resentment that the first chance they had to tell their enemies to go to hell they pounced on it.
Hitler could not have existed without the Treaty of Versailles. If the terms had been status quo antebellum he couldn’t have fostered the kind of resentment that he needed to gain power. He couldn’t have gained capital by flaunting his public repudiation of the terms. In doing so, he found that nobody would raise a finger to stop him, which led him into Czechoslovakia and Austria, and ultimately into Poland.
We created that monster, and we did it consciously and with full intention.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not so sure it is as cut and dry as that.
I mean do you really think that Hitler’s stab in the back theory really has validity?
Germany was defeated, sure they occupied French territory when the armistice was signed but you must note it was signed when it was because the German leadership knew it was only a matter of time before they would be facing the allies on German territory.
The conditions at home were a mess, there were riots and huge shortages. There were a few mutinies on German ships and there was no possible way Germany could have gone on. They threw away their last chance at defence with one last big push which temporarily worked but floundered when the exhausted and ill equiped troops stopped to feed themselves with food found in allied trenches.
The Punitive nature of the treaty was to punish the agressor nation and to have it pay for the destruction to the French countryside it cost. It also tried to disarm a beligerent and agressive nation to prevent another conflict.
This belief that Germany was not to blame for WWI was the nonsense fed to the German people to dispute the legitimacy of the Treaty. When the Fischer Thesis was published in the 1960s there was such a violent reaction against the notion that Germany had blame for the First World War in Germany.
Their actions from Unification to 1914 were not that of a peacful nation. At least under Bismarck there was an attempt to keep balance and keep out of the colonial game to keep tensions down in Europe. Once Willie took the reigns that was thrown out the door and Germany belligerently tried to force their way onton the stage.
The Treaty itself had worked. From 1919 to 1932 that Treaty was enforced including an occupation of the Rhur by the French when the German government tried to end reparations. Germany even had a brief period of prosperty and normallacy in the late 20s despite the Treaty. It was not all hyperinflation and poverty(That existed because of the collapse after the war, not just because of the treatys repiration stipulations). Had the depression not hit Germany could very well have developed into a peacful democarcy.
Unfortunately that was not to be and with another economic collapse it was easy for those on the fringe to blame it all on the treaty (and the Jews).
Up to that point France was being pressured by England to ease up on the Treaty up to the point where Hitler gambled and successfully reoccupied the Rhineland.
Had the French put up troops to enforce the treaty that would have likely been it for Hitler as the Generals would have retreated the lesser army (Rememeber the French had the largest well equiped Army at that particular time While Germany had nothing but what the Treaty had allowed them). It was the lack of enforcement of the Treaty due to the belief that somehow it was unfair that lead to the 2nd World war.
