This comes again an again as a cause of WW2, but did they really deserve a better treatment? We know that the Weimar didn't pay enough of it and didn't meet the disarmament requirements, even before Hitler became chancellor (The UK didn't even try to enforce it and when France did in Ruhr, the League and US came down to be more lenient on Germany and offer them debt cuts) So the biggest effects were The guilt clause (but the Deutsche Zeitung told us were were winning!) and the territory lost, which is standard for any country that is defeated in war. What else could have been done to make it 'fair'?
And no one mentions that the armistices the Central Powers made with Russia and et al were shitty as well.
No it was completely fair. Anyone who thinks not is a delusional stormfag. Germany escalated the war into one of the deadliest and most destructive conflicts the world has ever seen. The Germans actually got off pretty well considering all of the lost territories weren't even German and the whole country didn't collapse like Austria-Hungary
Tyler Wood
France had to pay more in 1871
Gabriel Edwards
Had the terms been harsher WW2 would not had happened. Versailles set back Germany significantly but did nothing to truly curb its ability to rearm nor crush the spirit of its citizens and politicians to support and wage war.
Zachary Ross
Germans were prideful sports who couldn't accept they got outplayed. They deserved a worse deal in hindsight.
Benjamin Richardson
It's a shame they didn't win. World would be a better place.
Brayden Taylor
The allies made the classic mistake of compromise. Like Pontius at the Caudine Forks they were simultaneously too cruel and not cruel enough. The Wilsonian philosophy of peace with out victory (with the exception of the return of Alsace-Lorraine) to rehabilitate the Germans. Alternatively, German should have been destroyed to ensure the eternal Hun could never practice his evil again.
Angel Garcia
I hate stormfags as much as the next guy but I went to a french school and we were taught about the treaty of versailles as being very (too?) harsh. That's not to say they were right, but it's not an opinion only stormfags hold.
Carter Brooks
The treaty was cancerous. Germany was blamed for the whole war. They also had to pay for the destruction of the war which led them into debt. Finally, they had to give up all oversea colonies and reduce their army size to nothing. During the 1920's Poland had a bigger military than Germany. Which in desperation to bring a country back from the ashes and to punish all those that fucked her over before. So yes, Germany was fucked during the Treaty of Versailles. Oh, and I forgot to add; they couldn't represent themselves and had nothing to say against the treaty. Now, if you think that's unfair go look up the Treaty of Sevres, the Ottoman Empire got much worse than Germany.
Connor Reed
>Germany was blamed for the whole war. They Shouldn't have invaded neutral Belgium and broken the European tradition of NOT invading neutral countries.
Lucas Kelly
What if I told you the Vichy traitors to France influenced a lot of public education in french schools?
The truth is the treaty wasn't harsh enough, krauts were autistic faggots that want everyone to feel sorry for them because they lost.
Hudson Green
Yes, either too harsh, or not harsh enough.
James Mitchell
They was treated unfair because they should gave all eastern Prussia and Silesia to Poland Shlesvig- Holstein to Denmark Lelft side of Rhine to France Rest of Germany should be dismantle
Lucas Ortiz
Versailles was a fuck up because it was half arsed, France wanted to fuck Germany forever so it would never be a threat and America wanted to just replace the government and self determination for relevant ethnic minorities. What they got was a compromise which didn't neuter Germany or allow it to be a successful democracy
Adrian Ortiz
What are you talking about? Versailles strictly forbade Germans to rearm themselves. Anglo and frog were pussies for not enforcing the treaty in the thirties and let themselves be bluffed out by Hitler all the time.
Nathan Richardson
The Germans and Austrians literally started the war so the war guilt clauses made perfect sense.
Reminder that Versailles 1871 disarmed France and imposed a proprotionately larger indemnity which France actually fucking paid.
Anthony Cruz
Yes this isn't an exclusively stormfag position. Lots of American and British documentaries I use to watch as a child either hinted at this or outright stated that Versailles was very harsh. And these seemed pretty respectable not History channel trash (it didn't exist back then).
This existed in fiction too. I remember Young Indiana Jones has some episodes where they showed the German delegation at Versailles being humiliated and treated unfairly, and another was sympathetic to the Habsburgs. Yes this was fiction, but it influenced many
Nathaniel Hughes
Hollywehr loves to push the Teutonic agenda.
Connor Hill
God it feels like summer in here
Benjamin Sanders
>Germany lost little land and what it did lose was mostly ethnically Polish >Germany's industry was basically untouched by the war while they ravaged France's; the treaty did not balance that out >Germany entered the war with Europe's largest continental GDP, exited the war with the same and underwent great economic growth until the depression >reparations were designed to look much worse than they really were; French/British specifically designed reparations that Germany was able to pay >total bill that Germany had to pay was $12.5 billion; to appease their populations at home, the allies designed the treaty to look like Germany was paying $33 billion. The Germans were able to turn this around and make it look like they were forced to pay far more than they could afford. The conditions Germany offered as a PEACE arrangement in 1916 were much more harsh than what they got from what was a fairly unambiguous defeat. And let's not even think about comparing this treaty to what they imposed on the Russian Empire after they won that war.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septemberprogramm Essentially, to make France pay for all of their personal debts and make them completely dependent on them, to cut out a few vassal states out Russia, pseudo-vassalize Belgium, and isolate the UK.
Ayden Myers
Reminder that Germany started colluding with the USSR to bypass treaty restrictions as early as 1922.
>literally start the Bolshevik Revolution >collude throughout the 20s and 30s >secretly ally with the Bolsheviks >divide Eastern Europe with them
"mein gott mein gott can't you stupid tommies see we are Europe's only defense against Bolshevism?"
Alexander Wilson
Why does everyone hate extremely white and based Germany so much?
Levi Evans
>. During the 1920's Poland had a bigger military than Germany.
the absolute horror! Definitely deserves a genocidal world war
Ian Jones
I don't want to talk about the lost of territory, but if we could only say it was unfair (maybe not as unfair as after WWII, but still unfair). It's good that the Ostgebiete which were annexed during the 18th/19th century were returned to Poland. Those were mostly Polish speaking territory which deserved an Polish state. However, Alsace-Lorraine was almost completely Germanic around that time. Bismarck avoided annexing the Romance parts of Lorraine for a reason! The French just annexed most of the land during the 18th-century, so it wasn't really French. The Alsatians had a lot of freedom in the German Empire and it gave them a change to keep their language and traditions. Return Alsace-Lorraine to France without a referendum was a huge mistake. The amout of money Germany had to pay was way too high as well, but the other aspects of the treaty were fair.
Connor Wilson
It was the worst peace treaty in the history of mankind. Versallies was harsh enough to make Germans want vengeance but not harsh enough to cripple Germany so that it wouldn't be able to rearm. Western powers shot themselves in the foot when they decided to keep Germany around to counter the USSR.
Luis Miller
>The Alsatians had a lot of freedom in the German Empire and it gave them a change to keep their language and traditions.
It was harsh enough, but the Anglos wanted a strong Germany to fuck everyone else in Europe and keep Russia on check so they didn't want to enforce the treaty and even the Americans gave loans and debt cuts to the krauts. If France/Belguim had their way, Germany would have never recovered enough to have the war industry Hitler inflated and it might have prevented the WW2 as we know it.
I don't know how a softer treaty would have helped, for the Entente allies to be happy at least they would have to take away Germany's colonies and stolen land, which of course could be used again as an excuse for another war, with a better prepared Germany.
Wyatt Flores
Woodrow Wilson and John Maynard Keynes both supported the "Versailles was too harsh" position. Too me, this adds some credibility to that position. The real cause of WW2 was the great depression. If not for that, the Nazis never would have seized power in Germany. Therefore, the only way to prevent WW2 is too prevent the Great Depression. Going harsher or softer on Germany makes no difference unless this is achieved.
Easton Price
The g*rmshits were lucky that angl*s were there to protect or else there woul be no germs-many
Benjamin Watson
>all this kraut bashing >no talks about Russian mobilization actually being the push for war
The shitheads in Russian army even made sure the mobilization couldn't be canceled.
Henry Miller
so the POTUS was a stormfag too?
Isaiah Lee
Most Americans believe that Versailles is soo unfair was is one of the main causes of WW2 because that's how they are taught about it in school and It's more nuanced than that, there are many factors specially inside Weimar/German politics that are overlooked and are much more important than a treaty that was used more as propaganda foil than being effective (mostly because it wasn't enforced)
Because if the Germans really hated the ToV, 1. the National Socialist would have had much more support from the beginning (Hitler had decried the treaty since the Munich Putsch in 23') 2. they would have focused more in punishing the Entente for revenge and recovering their colonies instead of Hitler's ideals of Lebensraum towards the east, and killing ze juices.
Caleb Cooper
Treaty itself was fine, land cessions were fine, I think the only honest problems were the demand for monetary reparations (which tanked the German economy) and the war guilt clause.
Ayden Davis
I don't think you can create a just peace in this case. Everyone had sacrificed to much for victory, a lenient peace for Germany would have meant discontent back at the homefront. There are also a few other problems, that made Germans so bitter about losing the war:
- The fact that victory in the east had filled many with hope, which was crushed only a few months later - The fact that the Entente hadn't set foot on German soil before an armstice was signed and the OHL abuseing these facts to create the "stab in the back myth" - The fact that no Central Power was allowed to participate in the negotiations - The fact that the Kaiser had abdicated and that the new socialist government had to suffer the consequences of a war it didn't start - The fact that "national self-determination" wasn't extended to the Central Powers (mainly in Austria) - The fact that Wilson wanted a "peace without victory", but didn't deliver on his promise - the fact that the negotiations were in Versailles just to humiliate the German delegation
Add to that the sporadic ethnic violence in the German-Polish border region and a general threat of socialist revolution and you can understand, why the Germans were disappointed by the treaty
Kayden Reed
>major political figures in the inter-war period who went on to fight Germany anyway were stormfags The obsessive need to be anti/pol/ is turning Veeky Forums even more retarded than /pol/ itself
Robert Clark
The terms were. The pushover "enforcing" parties were not, because election worries made it unpalatable.
Common-man voting was a mistake.
Carter Myers
The real mistake was the blame meme. That enforced a culture of eternal bitterness. Terms can be dealt with, but being made "the bad guy" has a profound effect on individuals and cultures. And culture is everything.
Justin Wood
What happened in 1922?
Blake Kelly
This. Why does everyone forget that the US Congress never ratified Versailles? The Americans posting here would have to contradict the official stance of their own country in order to support Versailles. It isn't revisionist in the slightest to have this opinion.
We've had a history of pulling out of international accords, and even pulled out of several within the past year. I understand that the Europeans ITT have different reasons for holding their opinions on the treaty, but we had a plan, it was called the Fourteen Points, and when the Entente stabbed us in the back and refused to implement the Fourteen Points, that was the red line for us.
Dylan Howard
How does the idea that Germany's plan was retaeded mean that the treaty wasn't?
Luke Jenkins
Addendum: The failure of Wilson's policy objectives (more like the refusal of Western Europe to entertain them), is the single factor most responsible for the period of isolationism proceeding after the war. The US delegation was humiliated in victory, and it became a case in point why the US would not intervene in another European war unless it was certain to be able to dictate the terms. Churchill would get a taste of his own medicine at Yalta.
Ian Powell
you really think so? look up the turnip winter, when civilians were making bread out of turnips and saw dust. Germany had to import pretty much all of its food supplies, which is tough when England controls the seas. Germany had no way to finance a war, that shit is crazy expensive. England and France were taking loans from America hand over fist. World war one broke Germany, otherwise they would have won, you know?
Lucas Martinez
Treaty of Rapallo
Joshua Gray
Americans aren't obliged to slavishly obey their state like you dinky-dick homo Eurofag trash are.
Carter Stewart
The Alsatians and Lorrains were certainly germanic but so were other parts of French such as the French flanders. More importantly they felt French (compounded by the fact the Germans treated them like subhumans during their annexation) although there was a sizable minority wishing for outright independence. Also why a referendum when Germany never granted a referendum to Alsace Lorraine when it annexed them and didn't plan to offer one to the territory it planned to annex had it won the war?
Liam Campbell
~~Play stupid games ~~
Anthony Jones
The Congress only reflected how most people felt about what happened. A lot of people really believed in the Fourteen Points, and thought the USA was finally going to have a decisive voice at the table. Besides, guess who ended up paying for Versailles anyway? Bingo! The United States of America. If you look at German reparations, the majority of these are financed by the good old USA, and most of that money is never ever paid back. It doesn't take a genius to look at the treaty and realize it's just an indirect means for the French to extort more funding from Uncle Sam.
Brody White
America never should have gotten involved.
Sebastian Scott
You mean in WWI? Or in the war debt payment scheme? Because for the latter the writing was on the wall. Germany also needed to rebuild its economy, it needed stimulus not an outflow of scarce cash. The economic contagion that stemmed from Weimar snowballed into the Great Depression. Think of it like Greece times ten. The USA only tried to save the world, after the world turned its back.
Jace Myers
This anti-kraut shit has gone out of fucking hand already. Literally every fucking post that is slightly sympathetic to krauts is now screeched and considered /pol/tard or stormfag. You can't even tell anymore if /pol/tards are posting it...
Soon Veeky Forumsfags will blame germans for still being virgin neets.
Carter Jenkins
My family is from French Flanders & other parts of Artois and Departement du Nord and they fled to the north after the annexation of France. So, I don't reallt think they felt very French. I don't think this is just true for the north, but for a lot of eastern parts of France as well. Of course it's not the 17th-century anymore, but they didn't feel French then. I just don't know how French the remaining people of the North feel now.
Noah Taylor
Self determination was extened to the austria tho They gave Croatia, Czechslovakia, Bosnia, and Hungary self-rule
Camden Howard
*were this mistake is all over Veeky Forums lately it's really bizarre
