Tommy Doesn't Know What Day It Is

[Louis VI the Fat]

Because naturally, Germany was guilty for World War One.

It is not about guilt (but yes, Germany was the most guilty, and no, the Treaty of Versailles did not lay the blame at Germany), it is about losing.

Germany lost. Rather than bleeding it completely dry, or to take revenge, Germany was magnanimously granted the peace it sought. This peace offered the best conditions a losing side has had in Europe in centuries. All it asked was for Germany to become a democracy, to pick up its share of the civilian damages (roughly five percent), and please not start another war.

(What, I wonder, would they have deemed fair? The victorious allies paying for all of the civilian damages of the war on their own? The war wasn't fought on German soil, so the civilian damages were on the allied side. Germany was only asked to pay a small percentage towards reconstruction, while the allies payed the lion's share.
Plus they'd have wanted to let the losing Germans their army fully intact and operational, ready to strike once it had regained full strenght in a year or two? While the allies must spend their time and resources repairing civilian damages, and the Americans and Commonwealth troops return home?
This is preposterous. These two are some of the fundamental flaws in the interpretation of Versailles as needlessly harsh)

No, what happened is that German nationalists could not stomach defeat. This is the origin of WWII. Twenty million deaths, and all they could think about was starting it all over again. Stubbornly expecting a different outcome this time.

And this, sixty million deaths to try one's luck once more, I do not consider an act of civilization. Call it trolling, call it being a tad too agressive, I call it putting the blame back where it belongs.


(AP - I am not demonizing Germany's role in WWI. A silly war that should not have been reprised twenty years later all over again. I am talking about the origin of WWII. Demonizing, or rather, putting the blame for WWII, fair and square on German nationalists. Unfortunately, they whinged and cried so much ever since 1918, increasingly so since 1933, and renewed since the internets, that many people forget that Germany was not the victim of Jews, Bolshevists, Versailles, France or Octosquids, but was the agressor)

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Louis, huge portions of that post are false, especially when dealing with the terms of the treaty. Husar and myself have already quoted you the relevant sections in another thread.