History How culpable is Versailles for Nazi Germany?

lloyd007

Well-known member
It's already been explained why that would never fly. For starters, the Germans were tired of war, but not tired of living. They actually threw in the towel with the expectation that Wilson's fourteen points were going to be the basis for the peace. Instead, the settlement was far more cruel. If the Germans had known how it would play out, they would've kept fighting.

If the prospect is the utter dismantling of Germany... they'll fight to the last man. And since they have basically nothing to lose, they'll be more motivated to keep fighting. Meanwhile, the French were also on the brink of collapse. If a chance to end the war was squandered due to some insane desire to vindictively destroy Germany, the French soldiers would mutiny. They'd say "to the Rhine, and not beyond it".
The German army was a spent force, the navy was in open revolt and the Kaiser had little power. Empowering the regional governments of Imperial Germany, regions which all had their own cultural and historical roots and which were not unified until Prussia got it done a few decades beforehand, wouldn't have somehow magically revitalized Imperial Germany's armed forces any more than the much harsher treaties against AH did there... Or how the historical Versailles which spawned WW2 magically revitalized Imperial Germany's army when it dropped with assuming all war guilt, reparations, outright occupation of the Rhineland and Saar... and basically ignored Wilson's 14 points anyway since he was crippled physically, mentally and politically at that point.

Also I dunno where you're getting that I'm saying this version of Versailles would be some Morgenthau Plan of destroying all industry in the area of Imperial Germany rather than the French/British working backward from our TL in using the Treaties of Saint Germaine / Trianon as their guides in writing Versailles.

Or, put another way, Bavarians being ruled from Munich in both domestic and international policy since the Republic of Bavaria is now a thing (and so on and so forth) is pretty far from them having nothing to lose and having to fight to the last man.

Edit: and I'm working from the perspective of 1918-19 where all the history that happened in reality of course wouldn't have happened here. Hitler is a well known architect, Himmler Foods is a part of Nestle and Goering became a snack for the same South Pacific cannibals who ate Amelia Earhart...
 
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ATP

Well-known member
It's already been explained why that would never fly. For starters, the Germans were tired of war, but not tired of living. They actually threw in the towel with the expectation that Wilson's fourteen points were going to be the basis for the peace. Instead, the settlement was far more cruel. If the Germans had known how it would play out, they would've kept fighting.

If the prospect is the utter dismantling of Germany... they'll fight to the last man. And since they have basically nothing to lose, they'll be more motivated to keep fighting. Meanwhile, the French were also on the brink of collapse. If a chance to end the war was squandered due to some insane desire to vindictively destroy Germany, the French soldiers would mutiny. They'd say "to the Rhine, and not beyond it".



...Supposing that your psychopathic proposal were to be somehow carried out anyway: congratulations, by destroying Germany, you've left a gaggle of chaotic successor states, vulnerable to all sorts of extremist agitation, also of the far-left sort. This is then combined with the fact that they will be unable to adequately fight the USSR (and indeed, we may expect some of them to join the USSR). You haven't prevented World War II. You've caused an alternative World War II, which will be fought against Stalin. Considering how poorly the Western allies responded to German expansion on OTL, we may expect them to be just as bad (or worse) when it comes to the Soviets. The hellish timeline you've created will see the Hammer and Sickle over Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris -- and every city East of there. And because the USSR has far more strategic depth than Germany, and no reason to join Japan against America (rather the opposite!), we may expect a re-conquest of Europe to be averted altogether. (Probably, it will not be attempted -- but if attempted, it will most likely fail.) The Channel will be the Iron Curtain of this ATL. You've doomed all of continental Europe to decades under the communist yoke.

We may all be thankful that for all their vindictive spite and short-sighted stupidity, the creators of the OTL peace settlement were at least not so insane or so evil as to do what you have proposed here.

You have the benefit of hindsight. You should know better.

Not dismantling germany,but making Bavaria,Saxony and other german states FREE AGAIN.
Why catholics and saxons should fight against it to the last man?
and in Prussia,catholic from Poland and Rhineland would toss weapons,too,if they knew that they could live free from their protestant overlords.
Even protestant in Meklenburgia would prefer their Prince back.
Which leave only part of protestant prussians as die-hards.Colonial troops would deal with them.

After that - sralin could try something - against Poland allied with France,Romania,and probably catholic german states,too.I wish him luck - he would need it.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
It's already been explained why that would never fly. For starters, the Germans were tired of war, but not tired of living. They actually threw in the towel with the expectation that Wilson's fourteen points were going to be the basis for the peace. Instead, the settlement was far more cruel. If the Germans had known how it would play out, they would've kept fighting.

They could have kept on fighting in May-June 1919 but chose not to do so.
 

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