Could World War II have been avoided if we had listened to him?

Could World War II have been avoided if we had listened to him?

Nope.

Considering what happened in Turkey. The allies couldn't realistically force anyone to stick to treaties.

Even if you said "Let's divide germany up! :D" Local Nationalists would just start piecing the whole thing back together again and rearm.

I mean, shit, Allies just stood like dunces when Germany annexed Austria.

WW2 could have been prevented simply by supporting the Weimer Republic government. Once the Kaiser was removed, the new Weimer Republic government should have been embraced as a liberated state, and given a place at the negotiating table as a partner in creating a lasting peace. Instead, the Entente treated the Weimer Republic as if it were completely responsible for the war, and locked the German representatives out of the entire negotiating process. By doing this, the Entente essentially guaranteed that the Versailles treaty would never be regarded as legitimate instrument of peace, but rather a weapon of vengeance that was deployed against a newly-created liberal democracy.

But what if the allies hadn't stood like dunces when Germany annexed Austria

Because the terms of the Versailles were so unreasonably cruel that once emotions settled down, everybody realized they'd made a huge mistake. Austria was filled with people who wanted to be part of Germany, so "defending" Austria would have been silly.

The allies were unsure of war
Even though i think The wehrmacht were weaker before they annexed Sudetenland,the allied thought that avoiding war is a much better option,this isnt like the Great war where everyone thought the war as inevitable

>Austria was filled with people who wanted to be part of Germany
Not after Hitler acted like a faggot and killed their chancellor they didn't

>so unreasonably cruel

Yes, Austria, Hungary and the turks got what they deserved and became irrelevant and harmless. They tried to resist, of course, but the later only managed to retain a small portion of their empire and the other two did basically nothing until they had german protection. The german empire should have been divided like the Ottoman, and if some Klaus von Ataturken managed to undo part of the division and create a Prussian Republic so be it. Still better and less dangerous than Germany.

>Kaiser is removed from power
>Germany is finally a democracy with a liberal constitution
>Do we welcome this newly free nation into the brotherhood of humanity, leaving the horrors of war behind to create a lasting peace built of mutual trust and understanding?
>No.
>Instead, we will hold the ordinary people of this fledgling liberal democracy responsible for the crimes of their deposed autocrat, I'm sure this will in no way embitter them and cause them to distrust us in the future.
>Also, let's arbitrarily remove parts of the country and give them to other countries. This will basically guarantee that revanchism will come into play, but whatever.
>And on top of that, we'll make them pay huge "reparations" which will cause their currency to hyper-inflate, wiping out their savings and leaving them all poor and destitute. This surely will not enflame nationalism.

Yes, Versailles was unreasonably cruel. No reasonable person, aware of the facts, could possibly disagree.

They only fought occupation in Silesia, they never fought the French and the rest of them were busy in the Baltic states fighting communists and independence activists for the White movement

what could have been

>why Germany annexed Alsace and asked France to pay a huge amount of war reparations in 1871?

Irrelevant. That happened when the Kaisers were in charge of Germany. Ordinary Germans had no power to influence policy whatsoever. Near the end of WW1, the Germans finally rose up and the Kaiser was forced to flee the country. A new government, based on democratic principles, with a liberal constitution, was formed in the wake of the Kaiser's departure, and this newly created government immediately sought peace with the Entente on the basis of the 14 Points enumerated by American President Woodrow Wilson.

The Germans should have been applauded for removing the Kaiser and seeking peace. Instead, they were brutally punished for it. The 14 points were ignored, and representatives from the Weimer Republic were treated like criminals.

Brest-Litowsk was the product of Erich Ludendorff, who was himself an agent of the Kaiser. Again, blaming ordinary people without power in government for the depraved actions of a deposed autocrat is simply sadism, there is no justice to it. The Weimer Republic should have been embraced as the world's newest liberal democracy.

>only the kaiser wanted the war so germany itself was innocent :^)

that mean, republic-seeking social democrat party of germany that endorsed the war and government wasn't representative of germany at all either, right?

The Kaiser had full control of the German military, therefore he holds full responsibility for whatever happened during the war, yes. You could also blame the General Staff, but they were appointed by the Kaiser, so it still leads back to him.

What about the other perspective.

> Germany invades the industrial heartland/entirety of your country
> Occupy it for 4 years, plundering it of minerals, food, and seizing your belongings
> Germany uses so much chemical weapons that the land is still unsafe to visit 100 years later
> millions of unexploded ordinance litter the countryside, and continues to kill people and livestock for decade to come
> When the Germans are pushed out of your country, they scorch the earth and poison the wells
> If you lived in the area that used to be the front, you have nothing left and you can never go home again.
> Germany chimps out and surrenders before you can invade German soil for retribution
> It will take countless billions to rebuild damaged infrastructure, destroyed homes, razed fields, clearing UXO, and cleaning as much of the chemicals as possible
> Some land is permanently unusable.

That's WW1 to the French and Belgians, and here you are to say that "Germany didnu nuffin". If Versailles didn't include reparations to the French and Belgians, they would have cancelled the Armistice and pushed to Berlin, sacking German cities to get the resources they needed to rebuild.

John Maynard Keynes, who invented the "Versallies was too harsh" meme, was British, and the war never touched British soil.

>Instead, they were brutally punished for it
The reparations Germany was required to pay after WWI were a slap on the wrist, especially considering that unlike France they got out of the war with their industry and infrastructure intact.

>The Germans should have been applauded for removing the Kaiser and seeking peace
It was Ludendorff who suggested that the Kaiser abdicate.

...

>The Germans should have been applauded for losing the war they started and be offered stuff

K den
What about the millions dead tho?

> Prussia exists
> Poland can not into Baltic Sea
> German Holstein
> Autistic Austria Amalgamation

Redraw map sempai.

>Let's ignore one of the world's most respected authorities on economics because he's British

Really? Also, while Keynes certainly deserves credit for getting the ball rolling, once emotions died down any reasonable person could have seen that Versailles had been a huge mistake. The focus should have been on ensuring that the Weimer Republic would be a stable, lasting government. Forcing all those concessions on the new government did nothing except ensure that it would eventually fall to radicals, either communists, or ultra-nationalistic revanchists, which is exactly what happened in real-life.

This isn't theoretical. This actually happened, which is undeniable proof of Versailles failure to create an environment conducive to a peace. You're defending an idea that is already a proven failure by the very text of history.

>B-but what if they made it harsher instead? Hahaha, gotcha now!

Okay, have fun with all those communist revolutions then. This surely was a better outcome than supporting the liberal democracy that recently came into existence.

>LOL MUH DEMOCRACY
>LOL MUH EVIL AUTOCRAT XD

Kill yourself.

>The Germans should have been applauded

Yeah I can totally see that happenning

>France and Belgium fight a defensive war against German invaders for 4 years
>Millions dead
>Thousands of cities destroyed, forest ravaged, land poisoned
>Finally, after 4 years of struggle, Germany starts losing and surrender as war reach its soil
>French and Belgians proceed to write "gg" in the chat and applaud Germans for their stiff resistance while offering them a beer

Great argument. Your deep understanding of the situation really made me think.

The big question is "what kind of peace would have suited Germany" ? A peace in which they lose no land? In which they don't have to pay war reparations? As soon as the war was over, German high command started to spread the "stab in the back" myth. A good peace would have required the allies to take Berlin first in order to clearly make Germans understand they were utterly defeated.

You still didn't answer the question of how do you get a fair deal for the millions of French and Belgians who lost their home and livelihood, and for the damage done to those countries.

Do you tell them to just suck it up? Well then enjoy Revanchist ultranationalist uprisings in France instead of Germany. France had been nursing a grudge since 1870, and they were going to get their comeuppance.

History hipsters are always quick to point out "this is horrible" without looking at the potential effects of the alternatives.

>Attacks neighbouring countries
>Loses
>"Lol it was just a prank bro! Let's forget about all that and do as if nothing happened, we cool now"

Yes. The end of the war should be been a celebration of our shared humanity, and a commitment to rebuilding the world anew under the guiding principles of self-determination for all people and free trade between nations. You know, kind of like the 14 Points..........

Then why did evil US of A occupy Germany and Japan after WW2 instead of "celebrating" with them?

Only if he wasn't such a bluepilled cuck and actually advocated for the genocide of all krauts

>what kind of peace would have suited Germany

That's a fair question. And we'd have a real answer to that question if representatives from the Weimer Republic had been allowed to participate in the discussion.

>As soon as the war was over, German high command started to spread the "stab in the back" myth.

The fact that the Weimer representatives were forced to sign a treaty which they'd had no hand in negotiating is exactly where the "stab in the back" comes from. If there had been an open negotiation, the entire premise of the myth wouldn't exist.

>The big question is "what kind of peace would have suited Germany" ? A peace in which they lose no land? In which they don't have to pay war reparations?

Hmmm, I think a peace in which they receive lands and reparations from the victors might have been okay, but that's the bare minimum expected

why in the everloving fuck would France and the Brits wanted to give reparation

> losers setting terms

That's not how unconditional surrender works sempai.

It's mockery of the "Versallies was too harsh, Germany was a good boy" idiots.

But it wasn't an unconditional surrender. It was a surrender based on the premise that the 14 Points would be the guiding principles in the final negotiations. The very first point in the 14 points calls for treaties and agreements between nations to be arrived at openly, and that "diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view." Since the Versailles treaty was produced in secret, behind closed doors, with no German involvement, it certainly was not compliant with those principles. This heavily contributed to the feelings among the German public that they'd been that they'd been baited and switched, tricked into prematurely surrendering.

This is the origin of the "stab in the back" myth that proved so destructive once revanchists predictably took control of the government after the fledgling liberal democracy was crushed under the weight of the concessions it'd been forced to make at Versailles.

That literally has nothing to do with the "stab in the back" myth, which was propagated because the German people thought they weren't loosing the war.

In fact it was one of the first Weimar presidents who said "Welcome home undefeated soldiers of the German Army."

>That literally has nothing to do with the "stab in the back" myth

It is literally the entire premise of the myth.

>It was a surrender based on the premise that the 14 Points would be the guiding principles in the final negotiations.

Well, maybe theu should have surrendered to the US and not to France then
They surrendered to Foch and he never gave a shit about the 14 points
Actually, no one did bare the irrelevant USA

Given that the US is the entire reason that France won the war, I'd say they were pretty relevant, and would have become even more relevant had the war lasted longer. France and Britain were both at their breaking points in 1918. American reinforcements were the only reason that the Entente was able to keep fighting.

No, the premise of the myth is that Germany was winning or at least still capable of fighting the war (Which was obviously not the case) and that the civilian government stabbed the German Army in the back by seeking peace.

Now if you want a real stab in the back, take the USA after WWI. They promised to come to France's aid in case of German aggression if France would agree to their terms of the Treaty of Versailles. They chimped out on this promise barely a year later and returned to isolationism.

>You still didn't answer the question of how do you get a fair deal for the millions of French and Belgians who lost their home and livelihood, and for the damage done to those countries.

John Maynard Keynes had a plan for all that. If only the world had listened......

>undefeated soldiers of the German Army
what did he mean by this?

Yeah, and if there had been open negotiations, nobody would have been able to make those sort of claims. That's the natural consequence of doing things in the dark.

>No negotiations
The amount of money the Germans offered to pay as reparations were higher than what was demanded in the final treaty.

Completely ignoring politics and the will of the people in a pixie sparkle dust plan is no plan at all. His plan boiled down to "Let the Americans foot the bill", which of course sounds great to a brit.

Keynes was so butthurt by Versailles that he helped convince the German government to print money in 1921 and purposely cause hyperinflation to dodge Versailles payments.

>Germany started WW1

Germany assassinated the archduke? Whoa, who would have guessed?

>Cucknadian posting a tiny skirmish in the offensive that won the war instead of the offensive itself to feel relevant

Pretty sure WW1 started when Germany turned a Balkan War into a global conflict by attacking France and Russia

>His plan boiled down to "Let the Americans foot the bill", which of course sounds great to a brit.

The money would have been owed back the United States with interest, making it a mutually beneficial outcome. It really wasn't very different from the Marshall plan, actually. Sadly, the world was no enlightened enough to accept it in 1919.

I don't accept the premise that Germany started WW1. I can, however, accept the premise that the Schlieffen Plan was destructive enough, both in terms of concept and in terms of actual execution, to be considered a "wrong" even in the context of war, especially considering what happened during the passage through Belgium. That's a legitimate argument, something which certainly would have been discussed in detail had there been true negotiations at the end of the conflict. However, trying to pin the entire blame for WW1 on Germany isn't just childish, it's historically false.

>France and Britain were both at their breaking points in 1918. American reinforcements were the only reason that the Entente was able to keep fighting.
That's debatable. The French had defeated german last offensive in the second battle of the Marne, and only a few american troops participated. By the end of the war, France and the UK had more tanks than Germany, and because of the blockade its population was starving. Its allies were also defeated without american help. The ottoman empire was defeated by the UK, Bulgaria was invaded by French and Serbs, Austria-Hungary defeated by Italy. At the end of the war, Germany was clearly alone.

Yes

No, it's not. Both Britain and France were starting to draft 50 year old men. They were that low on manpower. And the fact that Americans were coming was the only reason that the Germans were still needing to go on the offensive at all. If not for the threat of incoming Yanks, the Germans could have simply adopted a defensive posture, allowing Britain and France to wreck their remaining armies in futile attempts to dislodge them. However, the fact that Ludendorff know that the enemy would soon be getting massive numbers of fresh troops meant that he was forced to go on the offensive in a hopeless attempt to finish off France before the Yanks were ready to fight.

It was the canadians who made the last campaign possible you goddamn snake

The Germany Army was broken by 1918 and the Allied high command was drafting plans for offensives that would take them all the way to Berlin.

That....doesn't contradict anything that I just said.

Not really, France was so scared of Austria they created a defensive pact with Czech Romania and Yugoslavia.
and Hungary was told to not make a single gun.
If Austria and Hungary wern't so pressured they would have easily taken The Czech and Romania. Austria would not be as powerful but strong.

The Germans biggest concern weren't the French and Brits
It was the Italians who broke through and threaten to punch through Vienna and penetrate the Southern part of the r*ich

>And the fact that Americans were coming was the only reason that the Germans were still needing to go on the offensive at all. If not for the threat of incoming Yanks, the Germans could have simply adopted a defensive posture
Yes so basically, the US entering in the war gave the allies a huge moral boost, which was more important than their actual military participation. I'd say Germany had lost the war in 1914, when they failed to defeat France. After that, they were basically fucked. And you forget that even though the offensives were failures, they still inflicted huge causalities on the german side, and Germany had less men.

How about this, then: the Royal Navy's blockade would still be there with or without American intervention. Germany was suffering severe food shortages by 1918, food shortages that would only get worse as time went on.

Um.....no. It wasn't a mere "moral boost." It had a very significant impact Germany behavior, because Ludendorff knew that he had to finish off France in the very immediate future otherwise he'd be fighting oceans of yanks.

Not who you're replying too but what if Germany has allowed for totally unrestricted submarine warfare in response

Not him but submarine warfare turned out to be a total dud in WW1. At its peak, the U-boats only sank about 4% of ships coming into the UK. It made life miserable for British civilians, but not anywhere near the soul-crushing devastation that British blockade had on Germany. Germany would have been better off without the U-boats.

But again, that's a psychological consequence. If the US hadn't entered in the war, what could Germany do ? Wait, while their population and their army starve?

The U.S. occupation of Japan was pretty benign and more of a hint to soviets to stop eyeing the home islands.

>I don't accept the premise that Germany started WW1.
The only reason Austro-Hungary declared war on Serbia was because of German assurances that they will be supported no matter the outcome.

Or is it easier for you to accept a premise where the Austro-Hungarian leadership goes into a two front war war with Serbia and Russia while also bordering irredentist Italy (inb4 defensive pact) without explicit German support? I'm not saying the Austro-Hungarian leadership was particularly good but they were not outright retarded.

>unreasonably cruel

L-O-L

Hungary had it coming though.
>Ausgleich
>Constant bitching
>Magyarization
>Ruined the AH army

>Let's just ignore the fact that the Archduke was assassinated by a Serbian terrorist group, Austria was just being mean!

I've already explained twice. I won't do it again.

"Borrow money from the Americans and pay it back with intrest" is exactly what happened with the "too harsh" Versailles payments under the Dawes and Young plans.

Then keep in mind that after the war, independent American investors dumped tons of money into Germany.

Great! So they could have done the same thing, but without the crippling "reparations" destroying the Weimer Republic. Then there'd a faster recovery for the global economy, AND a stable democratic government in charge.

I fix europe.

But Weimar economy wasn't crippled by Versailles, it was fucked up by 1929. The fact the Germans chose inflation as a mean to oppose to Versailles is another thing.

No, you didn't. You said "Germany could just adopt defensive positions, and the allies would have lost because they would have launched offensives". You don't know if the allies would have launched offensives, and even if they did that, and failed, the Germans would still have lost many men, and Germany lacked manpower with a population under a naval blockade.

>Germany could just adopt defensive positions, and the allies would have lost because they would have launched offensives

Correct. What part of this confuses you?

This
G*rman autosm in action again, Wilhelm decided to borrow money instead of raising taxes like French did to get moeny for war. Even when the war ended, Entete took only about 40% of what they demanded at first, but instead of raising taxes which would fix economy, G*rmans decided to print shitload of mpney to buy foreign currencies to pay reparations, which of course caused hyperinflation.

>germany responsible for the great war
brainlet tier answer

There never should have been any "reparations" in the first place. Or at least, they should have been limited to no more than £2,000 million, all of which would have been paid exclusively to Belgium.

Fuck Hungary desu

>Given that the US is the entire reason that France won the war
lol

>no reparations
thats not how it works user

> The French march on Berlin and loot their reparations back.

It gets even better than that. After the French handed back control of the border, Germany stopped repayments so France occupied the Ruhr valley. Then the Weimar government told all the workers in the Ruhr to strike, and issued generous stipends to the workers to keep them striking and not producing goods for the French. The money for the striking workers was printed, so you have simultaneous over-supply of money, and under supply of goods since the strike was hampering output.

Hyperinflation started in the Ruhr due to the strikers having tons of money, but they weren't making goods for each other to buy, and spread from there.

He was assassinated by an Austrian citizen even assuming that it was the direct fault of the Serbian government the demands in the ultimatum to Serbia were unacceptable to any sovereign nation and were written to be as such so as to be denied.

Austria-Hungary was a multiethnic empire that even had shades of multiethnical representation, of course there would be a couple unhappy people in there at the age of nationalism, specially so in the recently annexed Bosnia. Serbia, on the other hand, was the ISIS of its day, they funded a bunch of southern slav nationalist movements in Austria, hell, the ultimatum didn't even mention the Black hand, it said they should dissolve "Narodna Odbrana and similar organizations"

What point are you trying to make? The ultimatum was accepted bar one point which would literally violate the independence of Serbia by allowing Austrian police to conduct investigations in Serbia.

That's not even the point though, it's more or less accepted that this event did not bring about a world war, rather it merely started the kick-off which lead to the war, and Germany was undoubtedly the country most responsible for it besides the obvious fact that they declared war both on France and Russia.

Germany wanted the war the most,but it doesn't exclude the part every other Great power in Europe had in it.

To be absolutely fair, the Kaiser did try to convince A-H to wait for diplomacy to run its course, once it became apparent what A-H was planning to do. And once Russia mobilized, Germany obviously had to also mobilize in response.

Now, where you can really start to pile blame on Germany is in the Schlieffen Plan, and in its execution. The General Staff had no plan which would allow Germany to mobilize against Russia without also mobilizing against France. And worse, the Schlieffen plan meant attacking France through neutral countries like Belgium and Luxembourg. And although British propaganda greatly exaggerated the extent of what happened, despicable acts were committed by the German armies during their passage through Belgium.

However, all of this was the result of the Kaiser and his General Staff. The average German had no hand in the creation of the Schlieffen plan. It was highly secret. Nobody knew about it except the General Staff and the Kaiser. All the German soldiers who committed to atrocities in Belgium were killed in the actual war, so Versailles didn't punish them, just the innocent people back home who had no idea that any of this was happening. Nobody likes being punished for something that they didn't do. It's easy to understand why this treatment would breed bitterness and resentment. If the Entente had executed the Kaiser and the General Staff, then they would have been quite likely justified in doing so. But using Versailles as a mechanism to take out their anger on ordinary Germans was a tragic mistake, not just for Germans, but for the entire world.

The Hungarians deserved it to be quite honest. Besides, only Transylvania could be argued to be significantly Hungarian in character.

>>Instead, we will hold the ordinary people of this fledgling liberal democracy responsible for the crimes of their deposed autocrat, I'm sure this will in no way embitter them and cause them to distrust us in the future
Wow just like what Germany did after the Franco-Prussian war. How unfair.