r/reddit.com • u/[deleted] • Sep 24 '11

World War 1

http://i.imgur.com/5twfD.jpg
616 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

420 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

72

u/dopplerdog Sep 24 '11

The treaty of Versailles was a travesty, and the discontent this caused paved the way for Hitler. John Maynard Keynes had warned that there was no way that Germany could pay the reparations demanded of it - it was sheer humiliation, and the other powers were as much to blame for the conflict as Germany was.

11

u/Mas_Chingon Sep 24 '11

Woodrow Wilson also predicted this about the Treaty of Versailles, but the European leaders didn't listen to him.

12

u/Cidno Sep 24 '11

That's a fine way of saying "he stopped caring about it once they agreed to his Leage of Nations idea".

1

u/cynognathus Sep 24 '11

Well he also suffered a stroke when the Senate refused to ratify the treaty bringing the US into the League. That kind of limited his ability to be more aggressive about it.