Tuesday, March 13, 2012

How did the Treaty of Versailles cause World War 2 and contribute to the environment that made it possible?

The Treaty of Versailles was a huge factor in instigating World War II. Germany had to take responsibility for starting World War I even though it was not one of the first two belligerents. The nation also had to pay reparations to the Allies, all while losing valuable industrial districts to France and losing valuable agricultural territory to the new nation of Poland. Germany was also prohibited to have a large army or any war machinery, such as aircraft or warships. The German signers of the treaty knew that it was a horrible deal for Germany, but they signed it anyway in order to lift a British blockade of Germany that was starving hundreds of Germans to death daily. The German people, who were told that they were winning the war all the way until the Armistice, felt betrayed. Many blamed Communists and Jews for taking the nation out of the war. They looked at how Communist agitators took Russia out of the war and suspected that the same thing had happened to Germany. The Germans also felt betrayed by Wilson—they forced the abdication of the Kaiser in order to get better peace terms, but the terms were actually quite draconian. The Treaty of Versailles also separated Germany from land in which German speakers lived, as in much of western Poland. Hitler was able to harness this anger in his rise to power. His hatred of Communists and Jews was meant to punish the people he blamed for losing the war, though this hatred stemmed from anti-Semitism that had existed in Europe for centuries. He invaded Austria and the Sudetenland as a way to unite German speakers with the mother country. These were the arguments that he sold to the German people in order to get them to go along with his plans. If the Treaty of Versailles had been more just, Germany might not have turned to Hitler as a solution to its postwar problems.

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