Gixxerman, just a question here, no disrespect implied or intended, but in your opinion how much of the WWII Germans goverment aggression was atributed to the Treaty of Versailles?
An interesting question.
My own view is that what could have been a lasting piece had the original Wilson fourteen points principles was blown drastically off course by the French determination to make Germany pay for WW1.
......and that goes back to the fall-out of 1870, just as undoubtedly if we are stupid enough to do it some sort of society survives it a historian will point to the roots of WW3 going back to WW2.
Versailles dealt the world a huge problem......but as events were to show (even with Hitler and his crowd in charge of Germany) the USA, UK and others were inclined to this view and were prepared to revise revisit some of what had been done.
I'd also say that WW1 itself was a huge part of the problem, with millions of brutalised men taking back harsh attitudes home with them, it's a wonder the idea of inflexible dictatorship wasn't successful elsewhere (although Britain did have the Hitler admiring Mosley his blackshirts).
So I would agree that the French were not very smart in what they did and undoubtedly it provoked German hostility but even so at the end of the day it was Germany that knowing started the war with the invasion of Poland, knowing the guarantees France Britain had given.
In fact Hitler is on record as saying that he had wanted the war to begin in 1938.
He was an opportunist cynic to the core and he brought nothing but horror to Germany and the German people he claimed to love so much.
Do you think that it was one of the main causes of Germany invading France (aside from France declaring war on Germany)? Many Thanks.
As a main reason for the German invasion of France itself I'd have to say no, I don't think so.
Yes, it was no doubt in there as a chance to settle a score amongst that generation and I don't think one can forget the effect of what was seen as the repeated humiliation on the German middle-classes who not only suffered the WW1 defeat but economic catastrophe shortly after (and some of that in large part due to French reparations demands).
My view is that the real main reason for invading France was to attempt to knock the French and British out of the war before Hitler turned towards Russia which was always his chief goal.
His recorded comments about a 2-front war and so on being prime.
The fact that the Germans were more successful in France in 1940 - even more so than they had dared hope - was simply an unexpected bonus.
(although I have to say, given that they were so successful and as we saw events transpire I just wonder what on earth they would have done had they not been so successful as they themselves expected?
Had a situation akin to the WW1 stalemate arisen with the British and French still operating in a partially occupied divided France how could that have been a 'platform' to operate freely against the Russians or anywhere else?
That's one I find difficult to understand.)