Had the Treaty of Versailles been more fair could WWII been avoided?

[Retroit]

The Versailles Treaty validity as a Nazi excuse for war is about as valid as their blaming of the Jews. Germany was on a nationalism kick and they would use any excuse to achieve it.

[Frihed89]

Originally Posted by Unsettomati

This is completely wrong.

In November 1918 the war was obviously over for Germany. Its allies were bailing (the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria) or falling apart due to internal strife (Austria-Hungary). Revolution was incipient in Germany, public support for the war had collapsed, and German had exhausted its resources - and faced the reality that the American troops that had arrived at the battlefield that year, while not the battle-hardened troops of France and Britain, were capable and lacked only experience and would flow in a nearly endless stream.

The notion that Germany could have continued to fight but surrendered, you know... just because... is the stuff of the Dolchstoss, the stab-in-the-back myth flogged to no end by just about every German nationalist political party postwar - most notably, the Nazis. The idea held that the politicians had sold out a military that was holding its own (or, in the even more absurd versions of the fairy tale, on the cusp of victory).

Oh, and Germany knew exactly what to expect - after all, it had foisted harsh terms on France under the 1871 Treaty of Versailles at the end of the Franco-Prussian War.

At any rate, the reparations regime collapsed in the early 1930s - Germany paid nothing from 1933 onward. So the notion that somehow Germany had to attack Poland and the USSR in search of land, and France and the low countries in order to secure their flank in order to attack Poland and the USSR, and Denmark and Norway in order to outflank Britain in order to attack Poland and the USSR, and Yugoslavia and Greece to secure the Balkans and bail out their Italian ally in order to attack Poland and the USSR... because of Versailles reparations that were mostly unpaid and which had not been an issue at all for over six years... doesn't make much sense.

The factor that greased the skids of the Nazi rise to power far more than Versailles was the Great Depression. Grievances over Versailles simply were not that integral to the Nazi seizure of power.

And Hitler was a random event in political evolution? (T/F)

[Sneakerfreak]

Originally Posted by Retroit

The Versailles Treaty validity as a Nazi excuse for war is about as valid as their blaming of the Jews. Germany was on a nationalism kick and they would use any excuse to achieve it.

I was just coming here to say this

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by PeaceAndLove42

One big contention is that the Treaty of Versailles was much too harsh on Germany and contributed to WWII. My question is even had the treaty been the most fair and balanced treaty ever, in the end do you think it really would've mattered? Had the Allies after WWI been much nicer and fair would it have stopped groups like the Nazis from coming or do you think the treaty ultimately didn't matter and Germany would still be on course to WWII?

Wars must be fought to the finish and WW I ended with an armistice. Wars that ended in "truces" don't end. Think WW I and current Middle East battles. As for WW I even during the pre-Nazi Wiemar Republic period, the Germans refused to comply with the disarmament part of Versailles.

The civilized world has always tried to limit the bloodshed of war initially. During the Civil War, Union forces took no steps to occupy Virginia or North Carolina prior to their long-delayed secession from the Union. During World War II, much time was spent in both the European and Atlantic theaters on peripheral engagements with enemy troops, some at great cost of Allied life. In the Pacific theater of WW II, how many Americans died at Guadalcanal, Midway, and Iwo Jima that could have been saved had the atom bomb been available for use earlier?

Both the Civil War and WW II ended when the victors became serious about fighting. General Sherman's "March to the Sea", which devastated large swaths of Georgia, convinced the remaining Confederates that their cause was hopeless. The Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, in my view, for the first time convinced the German and Japanese people, respectively, that their "leadership" was taking them one place; to the grave.

For war to end, the ultimate victors must prosecute it to the maximum extent possible. I am not advocating attacking supermarkets and skyscrapers deliberately. However, we cannot let the presence of civilian facilities stop a war effort. If people are inconvenienced they will find a way to get their governments to stop the madness. In inter-war Germany the people were still chafing at the bit to get back to war.

See my thread (link) on this subject. And to reiterate, the problem with Versailles was not its harshness. It's the fact that Germany was permitted to live on to fight another day.