In article ,
Fred J. McCall writes:
Owe Jessen wrote:

:Am 21 Oct 2003 16:09:53 -0700, schrieb (The
:Black Monk) :
:
:Unfortunately, rather than statesmen Germany was led by madmen.
:Hitler's racial theories prevented him from making Germany a leader of
:Europe in the manner that America would later be. As Spengler
:predicted in 1936, Hitler's sick reich didn't last 10 years.
:
:If Germany would have been lead by statesmen and not madmen it would
:not have waged war, me thinks.

And if Germany had been fairly treated by the victors of WWI, rather
than robbed blind, and hadn't had such sensible options as Anshluss
foreclosed, she might have been led by statesmen rather than madmen.

I really don't think that that was the case. The near-simultaneous
collapse of the two phases of Imperial German society in late 1918 -
the defeat of the Army's Kaiserschlacht in France, and the collapse of
the Home Front or civilian ability to support the war, due to a
combination of lack of resources due to the British (and later,
Anglo-American) blockade of all German shipping, and the rise of the
various Communist and Anarchist rebellions in late 1918, left Germany
without a clear r sense that they had, in fact, lost the war. The
Front-Line veterans, and the Army General Staff (Who'd been running
the shpw by fair means or foul since just before the outbreak of the
First World War) felt that they'd been stabbed in the back by the
surrender by the REMFs in Berlin. As far as they were concerned, they
may of suffered some setbacks, but they hadn't lost. The Home Front
felt that they'd been let down by the Army, which surrendered after s
relatively small seris of setbacks. After all, the Army was still
deep within French terretory, wasn't it? This wasn't really true - the
Kaiser's Government had it right, and Germany had reached the point ot
total exhaustion - but we're dealing with emotions here, and not
fact. This general feeling that they hadn't really lost, and that if
they only tried a little harder next time, they'd win, pervaded most
aspects of German society in the 1920s and 1930s.

That was one of the motivations behind the "Unconditional Surrender"
demands of the Allies in the Second World War. They wanted the
Germans to be in no doubt that they'd lost, by losing in that manner,
it put out most of the smouldering embers, if you will, of resentment
that gave Hitler such a receptive audience.

That's not to say that Germany wasn't treated with excessive harshness
at Versailles. But when you balance the Treaty mandated reparations
against the forgiveness of those debts by the British and American
governments, and the loans and loan guarantees provided to teh Weimar
Republic, it's not really a serious issue.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster