The immediate legacy of the decision to lay the blame for WWI at Germany's door was the disastrous Treaty of Versailles ( 1918 ). Of the nations that participated in the drawing up of the treaty, only the United States sought some measure of leniency for Germany, seeing this as the path to a lasting peace in Europe. As it was, while Britain was ambivalent, France under Georges Clemenceau, elder statesman of the Third Republic wanted vengeance. The Treaty explicitly stated that Germany accepted sole responsibility for the war and promised to pay reparations for all the damage done to the civilian populations of the Allies. Germany's military was to be limited to no more than 100,000 troops, the navy severely cut back, an airforce was forbidden, as was any manufacture or import of armaments. Finally, in an effort to create a buffer zone with France, the Rhineland was to be turned into a demilitarized zone.
Most devastatingly, Germany was forced to pay reparations, initially 226 billion Marks in gold, although this was subsequently reduced to 132 billion Marks (then $31.4 billion, £6,600 million) in 1921 which is roughly equivalent to $ 385 billion in 2011, a sum that many economists at the time, notably John Maynard Keynes, deemed to be excessive and counterproductive and would have taken Germany until 1988 to pay. The final payments ended up being made on 4 October 2010. the twentieth anniversary of German reunification, and some ninety-two years after the end of the war for which they were exacted. This ruinous amount meant the Germany could not effectively rebuild its own damaged economy. This in turn created a populous impoverished underclass that was ready to listen to and embrace radical revolutionary movement that promised to alleviate the country's plight and resurrect its fortunes. Perversely, at a time when the allies were demanding this enormous sum, they stripped Germany of 13% of its territory, including Alsace-Lorraine – a powerhouse of the German economy-which reverted to France. With the loss of this region, together with west Prussia, 16% of its coal fields, half of its iron and steel industry, and all of its overseas colonies. Germany faced a ruinous future.
The most important impact of the treaty was the effect it had on German political life. The allies demanded the creation of a civil government, and so the Kaiser and his chancellor were replaced by a parliamentary democracy – the Weimar Republic – which was disliked by moderates and loathed by extremists on both the left and right. Its inability to deal with the economic crises that occurred between 1919 and 1923 left its reputation in ruins among German workers, even after the economy began to pick up in the latter half of the 1920s. In practice, the parliament was so weak that any unscrupulous but determined groups willing to target dissatisfied workers had a good chance of securing power within the republic.
In any event, the Allies were either unwilling or unable to enforce the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, most importantly the provision on re-armament. Although they made some token effort to ensure compliance, Germany soon began to roll back the terms of the treaty. When a political party arose in Germany in the late 1920s that promised to restore German freedom and pride – the Nazis – the Allies watched and did nothing. Even France, which had a clause inserted in the treaty that allowed for French occupation of the Rhineland should Germany ever attempt to remilitarize it, failed to act when the critical moment came in 1936. Vacillation simply encouraged extremists in Germany, who resented the treaty and interpreted a lack of action by the allies as weakness.
Of all the legacies of the four major powers ruthless imperial policies, the rise of Hitler was the most significant. In many respects, the horrors of the Holocaust and the misery of WWII are directly attributable to WWI and the subsequent ruin of Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. The Nazis were able to rise to power only because Germans were resentful and beset by economic and political crises. As Professor Richard J. Evans (Regius Professor of Modern History University of Cambridge) writes, the Nazis tapped into the "incredulous horror [of] the majority of Germans [and] the sense of outrage and disbelief the swept through the German upper and middle classes like a shockwave." Those were some of the people that cheered as Hitler made clear his intentions to discard the lingering military and territorial provisions of the Treaty of Versailles along with a promise to resurrect Germany's former glory.
Had it not been for the Four Powers Imperial delusions, WWI may never have been fought in the first place. Even if Britain had not intervened, and Germany had defeated France in a European war, the circumstances that bred Hitler would never have eventuated. A German victory would have refashioned the face of Europe, with the next big war likely to have been a clash between Germany and the rising tide of Communism in the east. World War II might have been avoided. And with nothing to hasten the fall of the old imperial powers, the way would not have been so clear for the United States and the USSR to emerge as the two contending superpowers of the second half of the twentieth century.