# When complete and total jerk-asses happen to be right **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 6, 2025, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-complete-and-total-jerk-asses-happen-to-be-right/1019273 "2025-06-06T16:30:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 29
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-complete-and-total-jerk-asses-happen-to-be-right/1019273/29 "2025-06-08T00:56:58Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Ironic, considering the bludgeon Germany used in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1917 which ripped away large chunks of resource-rich territory from Russia including Ukraine and the Baltic states, and imposed reparation payments. None of which really happened. Since the Russian government went into revolt and then the war ended. Did any substantial reparations get paid? The treaty was signed 3 March 1918; the war ended by an Armistice in November 1918, like 7 months later. Did the Russians pay over anything durinbg the brief time? The Versailles Treaty was in full effect until 1938, during that time the French invaded the Ruhr and started grabbing stuff. The Germans paid about 21 Billion Gold marks. And modern economists think the Versailles treaty went too far- > **[Treaty of Versailles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles)** > > The Treaty of Versailles\[ii\] was a peace treaty signed on 28 June 1919. As the most important treaty of World War I, it ended the state of war between Germany and most of the Allied Powers. It was signed in the Palace of Versailles, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which led to the war. The other Central Powers on the German side signed separate treaties.\[iii\] Although the armistice of 11 November 1918 ended the actual fighting, and agreed certain princip... _In his book [The Economic Consequences of the Peace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_Peace) , John Maynard Keynes referred to the Treaty of Versailles as a “[Carthaginian peace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthaginian_peace)”, a misguided attempt to destroy Germany on behalf of French [revanchism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revanchism), rather than to follow the fairer principles for a lasting peace set out in Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which Germany had accepted at the armistice. He stated: “I believe that the campaign for securing out of Germany the general costs of the war was one of the most serious acts of political unwisdom for which our statesmen have ever been responsible.”[[185]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles#cite_note-FOOTNOTEKeynes1920-235) Keynes had been the principal representative of the British Treasury at the Paris Peace Conference, and used in his passionate book arguments that he and others (including some US officials) had used at Paris.[[186]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles#cite_note-FOOTNOTEMarkwell2006-236) He believed the sums being asked of Germany in reparations were many times more than it was possible for Germany to pay, and that these would produce drastic instability.[[xii]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles#cite_note-237)_ So comparing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk,- which in reality did nothing, to The Treaty of Versailles (which caused WW2) is bogus. > [@Jackmannii](#): > > Germany’s gains were annulled but Soviet Russia still lost lots of territory including Finland, Poland and the Baltic states. They went independent. They did not stay as part of the German Empire, and the main reason they went independent is the Russian Revolution, not a meaningless treaty. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-complete-and-total-jerk-asses-happen-to-be-right/1019273)._