I think i have previously accepted that all the nations that went to war in 1914 share a measure of the guilt. If not that has to be admitted./ however, as to who was responsible, or mostly responsible, I think I have made it very clear who is to blame for the outbreak of the war. I take a strictly legailistic view in that regard, because judgements made on the basis of moral position are just too open to abuse. Who fired the first shots, who undertook the first invasions? In point of fact the actual events that immediately precursored the war are not all laying blame at Germany....other nations were quick to pull the trigger as well, but germnany was at the centre of the maelstrom, and had the ability to either cause the war or avoid it. She cose war, though other nations were only slightly less gleeful to getting into the war.
Versailles was an unsatisfactory treaty, there is no doubt. It could have been a weak treaty in the hope that it might appease the german public into not trtying their hand at war again, although I seriously doubt that would be successful, or it could have been a much more severe treaty in the hope of terrorizing the German people into never trying on an aggressive war again, but I doubt that would work either, unless Germany was shown in absolute terms that they had been utterly defeated. Instead, we got this half hearted affair, that was trying to be all things and finished up being nothing. Because of its obvious weakness, but implied malevolence, it gave its enemies all the ammunition they needed to paint a lie about how badly Germany had been treated, and robbed of her rightful victories etc etc.... none of this was true.
Right, I've read the entire thread and found this post by
parsifal to be perhaps the most objective and well thought post of it all. Could have ended there. As stupid as WW 1 was, it was inevitable. With most of the western nations having gone through their own industrial, technological, and scientific innovations at break neck speed, combined with a nationalistic and militaristic fervor not before seen, it was not a question of "if", but "when". I'm convinced that had it not been Gavrilo Princip's shot in Sarajevo, it would have been something else. The entire notion that one country holds more blame than another (others) is a bit moot, considering that at the same token, it is also pointless to blame the powder keg when it's fuse has already been primed and lit.
That said, I find the idea that Versailles being the focal point of having been the root of WW 2 to be a little absurd. While it may have provided the Nazis with inspriation as a point to direct their ire against, with the Locarno Act and later Kellog-Briand treaty, Versailles was made more or less toothless, in conjunction with ports of Versailles not being enforced. The fact of the matter is, by the time Hitler took power, Versailles was really no longer having any effect other than some kind of symbolic glue holding the Allies together. By the time Hitler had completely solidified his hold on Germany, Versailles, for all intents and purposes, was really nothing more than a propaganda point. Mind you, I would argue that had Clemenceau and Foche had
their way, extreme as their idea may have been, there probably would have been no WW 2 either.
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.
As already discussed on a much older thread, The US and UK effectively tied France's hands on this issue. Mind you these are the days before anything like "pre-emptive strike" became a foreign policy.
The raw seeds of WW1 are in 1870 - the Franco Prussian War. Total French humiliation - The Emperor was captured. Revenge for France poisoned all relationships after that. The neighborhood had changed - France didn't.
MM
Please explain to me how it was France which did not change out of the remaining nations of Europe, other than the fact that France remained a representative Republic when the other nations were either monarchies, constitutional monarchies, or autocratic states. Your statement makes no sense whatsoever. Are you suggesting that France should have accepted the loss of Alsace and Lorraine regions? It's a complete dismissal of the fact that France has always viewed the natural border between France and Germany as the Rhine River, whereas the Germans always held the view that the border was the Voges region. You're using too much hindight with a personal bias to arrive at this conclusion.
"... If France hadn't been bailed out by Britain in 1914 they would have reached some agreement with the Kaiser - adjusted themselves - and become the beginning of the Benelux economic union - by 1920."
MM
Classic revisionism, and in complete contradiction of historical fact. Firsly, no one "bailed out" France. Secondly, just how on earth was France to become a "Benelux" nation with crippling postwar economic ruin and manpower (human) shortage after such a war boggles my mind, though I'm interested in your theory, if it exists. Your statement is at odds of the fact that the Marshall plans and Versailles were designed differently for the circumstances at hand. The Marshall Plan had much more to do with building a powerful economic wall to counter the threat of Communism after WW 2........with Versailles there was no such exterior ideological threat.
Gentlemen, everytime I read a discussion on what role exactly did the Versailles Treaty play in circumstances leading up to WW 2, I'm always amused, and even astounded by a certain ignorance in one crucial aspect of such conclusion. What is
never discussed, is what compensation should have been owed to France/Allies by Germany/Austro-Hungarian empires? Mind you, people often forget that much of Eastern France, and also Belgium at the end of WW 1 looked like this:
When presented with a wasteland such as this, any immediate agricultural output is out of the question. With countless villages wiped of the face of the planet, just what kind of economy exactly is to be expected? Not to mention over 1.3 million of her men now buried in her soil, I'm curious to ask just how France is to recover without compensation. Just what exactly would have been considered a "fair" compensation package using common 1918 logic? France a "Benelux" nation in 1919? Blow-wine-out-my-nose-laughing!