Where did this "Versailles was harsh" meme come from?

Yeah but their money was literally worthless during the Wiemar Republic.

Considering the fact that the world had just been though the most devastating war up until that point it's understandable the allies didn't want a powerful German military still about

German propaganda

Germany:
>told austria to invade serba
>declared war on France and Russia
>invaded the neutral Belgium, knowing full well that Britain had guaranteed its independence
>murdered thousands of civilians
>sunk the Lusitania
>killed Edith Cavell

But sure, the Germans weren't the bad guys

Yes, that was understandable. ist created the conditions for Hitlers rise though. Germany could not Deal with the literaly millions of right and left wing paramilitaries fighting in the streets with that tiny army and so the people went for the radical strongman

I agree Britain used the belgium invasion as an excuse to get involved in the war had the British stayed out the war would have been over a lot quicker with far less destruction. It's just the British were far better at propaganda than the germans

>and never before had one nation (German Reich) been punished to this extent
What an awful post

why?

It caused ww2

>Honoring a treaty is an excuse
>Defending a completely neutral 3rd party that had absolutely no reason to be invaded by Germany is propaganda

You are trying to whitewash Germans in an absolutely irredeemable situation.

>implying it's not Kaiser Wilhelmina II and by extension the German people's fault, for escalating the fourth Balkan war to world war status
>what is stresseman years

Because it's written by somebody who ignores existence of Trianon or partitions of Poland which literally erased countries out of existence.
Because Brest-Litovsk was far more brutal in concessions than Versailles.

Because Versailles was in many ways mirroring treaty of Frankfurt and French actually paid that off instead of jerking off on revanchism like Germans did.

>yielding territory
low to moderate loss of territories is not "fucked beyond belief"
>paying reparations
which amount to about 5% of Germany's gdp in a single year? Which was exacerbated by German politicians who provoked hyperinflation to weasel out of paying the reparations back, causing untold suffering among their citizens? Reparations that were substantially reduced over a decade and eventually halted with the Depression? The same reparations which America gave a huge loan, a loan larger than the loan West Germany received under the Marshall plan, to help alleviate? Wow, so harsh!

pic related. eternal teuton will stoop to anything to avoid paying its debts

>tfw you enslave Belgian women to work in your factories, then their husbands and sons invade the Ruhr for reparations

>Peace of Frankfurt, 1871.

France lost Alsace-Lorraine, apparently this is a "huge territorial concession" whereas Germany losing literally the same territory in 1919 plus additional territories in the East and West plus all colonies is not. Get a grip.

>Peace of Brest-Litovsk of 1917

The territory lost there was indeed huge, though one should compare this treaty to the settlements of Trianon, Saint-Germain and Sèvres (dismantlement of multi-cultural empires). The reparations that followed Brest-Litovsk (6bn marks) were not comparable to the reparations that followed Versailles. Same with the Frankfurt treaty, France was easily able to raise the money on the capital market, France was in a decent economical position overall and had a constant inflow of money from the revenue of French property abroad, whereas most German property abroad was liquidated during and after WWI.

It was a rather harsh treaty. It's often exggerated and this should be countered, but making up contrarian memes ("one of the most lenient treaties") is not the right way.

The death and destruction of the war was their own country and commanders fault. No one forced them to launch fruitless land expeditions across their lines which butchered and maimed millions of soldiers.

That's one reason why reparations are stupid. Paying for another countries idocracy.

Literally before the Germans signed it the US and British were like WTF This is way to harsh and attempted to redraft the treaty but ended up being like fuck it, its too late.

The media in everycountry continued saying it was too harsh since it became public.

Does anyone have a copy of Hitler's Brest-Litovsk apology speeches he alludes to in Mein Kampf? (apology as in defense).

It came from John Maynard Keynes, who stormed out of the Versailles peace talks because he insisted that the treaty represented a "Carthaginian peace." Keynes then a book called "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" where he denounced Versailles from top to bottom and proposed his own alternative plan. Keynes said that Germany should not have to pay any reparations whatsoever, and that all war debts should be completely forgiven. He traveled to the USA to promote his plan, but he was unable to convince President Woodrow Wilson to accept his ideas. Regardless, John M. Keynes and his book became a major forcing in shaping the overall negative perception of the Versailles treaty.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_Peace

Alsace-Lorraine was the most industrialized and resource rich part of France in 1870. It had supplied the entirety of coal for France's industrialization up to that point. Germany's annexation of it was a huge blow to France, regardless of the cultural issues. Had the French not near-miraculously discovered another source of coal elsewhere in their country, France's developed would have been seriously hampered. If all this weren't enough, the Germans imposed huge reparations, larger than Versailles, which France had no problem paying off within a decade.

>plus additional territories in the East and West plus all colonies is not.
Not really. Belgium made a few territorial gains with Malmedy (in compensation for its truly awful treatment under German occupation); Saarland also became de facto independent but under French influence (because, you know, the Germans had a habit of depriving France of coal and the Saarland produced huge amounts of coal). Besides that, they didn't lose anymore Western territories. And all land ceded in the East had Polish majorities, which was a fair enough compensation to a nation which had been mercilessly partitioned among the Eastern powers in the 1790s. German colonies were always a meme and had practically no development. You also forget that the Kaiser's menacing blunders in the two Moroccan Crises convinced Britain and France that Germany could not be trusted to keep the status quo in the colonial arena (especially after putting up stiff but futile resistance in Africa during the War).

>The territory lost there was indeed huge, though one should compare...
Treaties entirely separate from Versailles. Ironically, the rump states created by these cruel settlements were extremely bitter about this, but their economic and strategic losses were such that they could never have launched a war of reconquest like Germany was positioned to do.

>inflow of money from...French property abroad, Fr. emp. was notoriously unprofitable.

The French Empire was notoriously unprofitable*

Further: Brest-Litovsk did not only entail reparations but also included territorial cessions that amounted to a huge percentage of Russian industry and natural resources falling to the German sphere of influence. The huge concessions that the Bolsheviks made for peace was one of the major factors that provoked Russian nationalists and others to fight a civil war against the Reds.

Interesting. Didn't know about that.

>which amount to about 5% of Germany's gdp in a single year?

The London schedule of payments of 1921 would have meant that Germany was obliged to pay about 7% of its national income as reparations every year. This is indeed a lot, since Germany would have had to achieve annual export surpluses of 7% for several decades to come in order to earn the necessary hard currency. Not an easy -not to say impossible- thing to do in an era of protectionism.

>provoked hyperinflation to weasel out of paying the reparations back, causing untold suffering among their citizens?

That analysis is incorrect, there were a number of causes for the inflation (prominently the war debt - after the amount of reparations became known, even the conservative central bank regarded inflation was seen as the only way to make the war debt disappear), deliberately crushing the economy is not one of them. At most, German politicians used the inflation to boost the export business, thus putting pressure on the Entente countries' economies. The effects of the inflation aren't seen as unequivocally negative either by researchers, the high liquidity caused a little reconstruction boom from 1919-1922, contrary to the depressive effects of England's policy of deflation during the 1920s.

It's true that the annual reparation rates were reduced in 1924 (they were supposed to continually rise later though) and eventually cancelled altogether; it shows that especially the UK and the US came to accept that the reparation thing was no way to go.

I don't recall trying to whitewash the german position in fact had Germany not supported the austro-hungarians unconditionally the assassination wouldn't have led to world war. It was also Germany who declared war and invaded France. Britain however did not have to get involved, the government was split on whether to go to war and it was voted through on a very narrow margin. Had britain stayed out of the war millions of British men wouldn't have died and the country wouldn't have become a debtor nation after the war british power started to pass to the USA and has stayed there ever since

>It had supplied the entirety of coal for France's industrialization up to that point.

Wrong, coal was mined in the departement Nord (perhaps elsewhere too, didn't bother to research) already long before 1871. Besides, nations like The Netherlands and Denmark did manage to develop despite having little coal; and Lorraine was by far the most important sorce of iron ore for Imperial Germany. Germany lost far more land in 1919 than France in 1871, including highly industrialised parts like Lorraine and Upper Silesia, which is why it still makes no sense to claim that the treaty of Frankfurt resulted in a "huge territorial concession" while the treaty of Versailles did not.

The territory ceded to Poland was ethnically mixed and a referendum was denied in most cases, on top of that the dubious partition of Upper Silesia after the plebiscite.

>German colonies were always a meme and had practically no development.

There was developement and after all, the Germans still wanted to keep them; France kept Algeria and other colonies in 1871.

>You also forget that the Kaiser's menacing blunders in the two Moroccan Crises

You mean that time when France occupied Morocco even though its independence had been guaranteed by treaty? Evil Kaiser

>Fr. emp. was notoriously unprofitable.

It's not about the empire, but revenues from investments in other countries.

>larger than Versailles, which France had no problem paying off within a decade.

They were not larger, which is why France could easily take up loans to pay off the entire sum relatively quickly. The capital market would've never allowed the same in 1919.

>Treaties entirely separate from Versailles.

Not really, since the states involved were German allies and their dismantlement resulted in reduction of the German sphere of influence. The point was rather that comparing Versailles with Brest-Litovsk is like comparing apples and oranges: Germany wasn't as multiethnic as Russia, which is why the peace settlements of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire serve for a better comparison.

>yet_another_French_snooty_supremacy_thread,jpg.
We get it: you nearly lost the war to them.

>... their dismantlement resulted in reduction of the German sphere of influence.
I disagree. The dismantlement of the Russian and AH Empires left a handful of weak successor states in their wake, and Germany very much dominated them economically in the interwar years.
The treaties are also distinct because Versailles was front and center of the news of those times. The American involvement, as well as the processions from all over the world coming to plead their cause, made the settlement a truly international affair. The treaties regarding the AH and the Ottomans, however, weren't as well known, and so the French and British had much more power to impose a savage peace in the East. Whereas Germany's treaty did preserve a semblance of national self-determination, Sevres and Trianon flouted this altogether for strategic interests. A huge percentage of Hungarians really were denied living within their national borders and, had the allies had their way, Turkish-speaking lands would have been territorially butchered.

> The capital market would've never allowed the same in 1919.
Fair enough

>France kept Algeria and other colonies in 1871.
Bismark did not believe in colonies at this point, but he certainly would have taken colonies in the 1880s.

>It's not about the empire, but revenues from investments in other countries.
I'm not aware of how big german investment was abroad besides tsingtao and the baghdad railway. but not nearly as high as the british and french, the latter using colonies to prop up ailing industres.

> Germany lost far more land in 1919 than France in 1871, including highly industrialised parts like
Lorraine belonging to the French originally...Of course Lorraine had been developed by the Germans but since the Great War happened as it did there was no way lorraine was going to remain German without a huge shitstorm in france (yes, revanchism was only revived in the years before the wars, but many french calmed down by early 1900s)

I mean to say in the last sentence that revanchism revived before the war happened and even if revanchism was not strong, to have gone through an massacre of a war and then have Alsace-Lorraine returned would have been an insane disregard of public opinion, thereby forever damning all politicians and political parties that had to do with it.

>The point was rather that comparing Versailles with Brest-Litovsk is like comparing apples and orange
To address this point: The only resemblance I see is that B-L and the Allied treaties is that they related to Eastern Europe and Western Asia. I don't think the fact that they were multi-ethnic empires is the biggest factor in this. And actually, while the frontiers were certainly multi-ethnic, Russians were actually a huge proportion of the Empire's population. if we include belarussians and ukrainians among along with Russians it amounts to about 80 million out of 125 million in the Empire. 20 million further lived in borderlands far from Eastern Europe. Half that remaining 25 million was jews and poles, and the baltic peoples, germans and others make up for the rest. Still large amount of ethnic groups, but a \ minority of the Empire which was basically inherited by the Soviets anyway.

While AH was (imo) stronger than historians once thought, and Russia did collapse in the war from internal and external problems, there's no denying that of the three empires (ottomans, ahs and russians), the Russians were far and away the most powerful and had the highest potential to grow and challenge Germany hegemony in Europe. As it is, Russia's performance, despite the revolution, was decent in the war. While the Germans did strike hard the Russians succeeded in fatally wounding the Ottomans and Austrians. So to knock out a huge portion of Russia's resource and industrial base while Germany still kept its industrial heartland in the Rhine shows that the Russians lost a lot more.

cont.
And all Russian losses in Eastern Europe amounted to a German gain in the influence in the period after the war.

>There was developement and after all, the Germans still wanted to keep them;
Forgot to address this, but the simple answer is that the French and British had an implacable notion in their heads that German colonies abroad were a threat to the status quo partly because a series of incidents, some we now consider trivial that convinced them of this. There was also the very real threat of Germany challenging Britain's naval supremacy, totally unacceptable to an island nation which relied heavily on trade with India and other colonies. The whole dreadnought arms race between Britain and Germany is partly what precipitated Britain's joining the war on the side of the French. The Germans were seen as incapable of abiding by the principles of free trade.

>Upper Silesia
You're right, it was important economically

>The territory ceded to Poland was ethnically mixed and a referendum was denied in most cases, on top of that the dubious partition of Upper Silesia after the plebiscite.
Assuming this map is correct, it proves you wrong. As far as I know the real ethnic problem was the Ukrainians and Lithuanians in the east who were denied sovereignty, but on the western side of things most Polish lands had Polish majorities. Strategically, too, the French and allies created Poland as a counterweight to Germany in the East (and I suppose the Soviets too), so it was essential for the new country to have an industrial base to start with. Upper Silesia provided this base.

Actually, no. Germany only finished paying off 'reparations' from the Great War in 2014. Not harsh? Really?

That just means they have a really good repayment plan.

Britain just finished paying off a loan from the 16th century.

It was harsh though.
Harsh enough to make the germs mad, and not harsh enough to prevent them from doing something about it.
Basically a bad treaty all around.