VENGEANCE: WAS IT WORTH IT ?

He would have found another excuse to carry out his plan.

who's hitler?

There is a reason that the Versailles Diktat Myth is called a myth. That reason is that it is not true. The runaway inflation which crippled the economy of the Weimar Republic began in 1914, before the war began, as German economists have pointed out in recent years. It became runaway inflation in 1917 with the horrible failed attack against Verdun, and the tightening noose of German material isolation. The Versailles treaty did not impose on the Germans more than was imposed on any other nation, proportionately--and it was rather mild, considering what the Germans did in Belgium and France. Austria and Hungary were excused their reparations debts when it became clear that they could not pay them, no matter what economic sacrifices they made. Turkey paid no reparations because the French introduced a Greek army, and when the invasion failed, Mustafa Kemal established a Republic which repudiated the treaty which had been signed. Only Bulgaria paid its reparations debt.

The Germans did not pay their reparations debt. The amount they did pay was largely accumulated through property seized as in-kind payment immediately after the war. The Versailles Diktat Myth served the political ends of many politicians in Germany in the 1920s and -30s. What is pathetic is that so many people repeat it to this day, as though there were any truth to it. There isn't.

but woud his excuse have been ACCEPTED ?

Woud the Germans have elected enuf nazis
to the Reichstag to take it over,
if thay were not resentful about the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 ?

No single reason can explain the failure of the Weimar Republic. The most commonly asserted causes can be grouped into three categories: economic problems, institutional problems and the roles of specific individuals.

Granted,
but that does not render it inevitable
that it necessarily had to be replaced by the nazis.

In fact, the Weimar Republic did a good job in dealing with Germany's economic problems, including the run-away inflation (which, as i've already pointed out, German economists have determined began even before the war). Almost every measure which ameliorated the economic conditions in "inter-war" Germany and the unemployment was passed by the Weimar Republic.

This topic actually points out precisely what was operative in Germany in the 1920s & -30s, which is political myth. The reparations required of Germany were heavy, but not unreasonable in view of the incredible destruction they visited on Belgium and France. They didn't pay their reparations, and the rest of Europe (France very resentfully) simply accepted that, as they had already forgiven Austria and Hungary their reparations debts, and Turkey had simply repudiated theirs. (Only poor little Bulgaria paid). The inflation, as i've pointed out, wasn't a product of the peace settlement, it was already there, mounting and poorly understood by those who had to deal with it. It was largely the product of the over-valuation of Germany industrial capacity and capital resources before the war, and it was exacerbated by the deficit spending of the government during the war, and especially by the extraordinary expense of the Verdun offensive. The Germans destroyed a good deal of the industrial and mining capacity of Belgium and France, but did not exploit it themselves to their own benefit.

With so few people understanding what had happened and what was happening, it was a simple matter for the political demagogues to make scape-goats of the Weimar Government, and the spread the Versailles Diktat Myth. It was certainly not inevitable that the NSDAP would take over, nor was it even inevitable that a conservative party would take over. The DVP (German People's Party) was the other large right-wing party in Germany, but they hadn't attracted the notoriety that the NSDAP had done, nor the personalities which made the NSDAP popular. That popularity was not universal--the NSDAP never polled more than 35% in an open election (which is exactly what Hitler polled when he ran against Hindenberg for the office of President), and even after the Reichstag fire, with leftist parties banned from participating in the election, they still only managed 44% in the midst of greatly reduced voter participation.

Hitler was the wild card in all of this. He was one of history's greatest gutter politicians, which was about his only talent. He didn't invent the Versailles Diktat Myth or the Stab in the Back Myth (the latter used to excoriate the politicians of the Weimar Republic as traitors who had sold out Germany) nor the myth of the undefeated army. This latter myth alleged that the German army had not actually been defeated in the field, but had been sold down the river by the politicians who would form the Weimar Republic, and was therefore tied into the Stab in the Back Myth.

All of this fantasy propaganda was operative before Hitler rose to prominence. In particular, the stab in the back myth, with its undefeated army component, seemed to the Germans to be vindicated by the very unwise decision on the part of the Allies to allow the Germans in the East to retain their arms and to police the Baltic states, and act as a buffer against the Bolsheviks. Freikorps formed all across Germany, and they were a magnet for discontented soldiers who returned home to face unemployment, and for whom the defeat of Germany was inexplicable. They were used successfully to put down the several Bolshevik-inspired uprisings in Germany after the war, and especially the Bavarian Soviet Republic. It was probably for this reason that Freikorps troops were allowed to prosper in the Baltic, Prussia and Silesia, the Allies believing that they would protect Europe from the consequences of the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution (two separate events, something often not understood in the West). In the event, it took Pilsudski with his Polish Great War veterans, heavily backed by French troops, to stop the Red Army--the Freikorps had proved useless at stopping the Bolsheviks.

This did not mean that the Freikorps were not popular though. However, they were very fragmented, and were often unpopular with Germans who did not participate in the Freikorps. An attempt to take over the state by a coalition of Freikorps was defeated by a general strike, and when Hitler organized his "putsch" in Bavaria, he was opposed by members of Freikorps who did not support his German Workers Party (later changed to the National Socialist German Workers Party, the NSDAP or Nazis).

The conservatives of Germany were fragmented, and this remained true right up to the Enabling Act. Hindenberg loathed Hitler, and attempted to govern without him, but the attempt by von Papen to form a government failed, and Hindenberg was obliged to call on Hitler to form a government. The NSDAP had only polled 35% of the vote, but that was more than any other single party. They allied with the DVP, now lead by von Papen, and had the votes necessary to prop up the NSDAP government. After the Reichstag fire, Hitler convinced the Centre Party (a center-right Catholic party) to support the NSDAP and the DVP in passing an enabling act (1933) which allowed Hitler and the NSDAP to govern for a specified period without reference to the Reichstag. The Reichstag was already a rump, because left-wing parties had been banned after the Reichstag fire--now it became completely irrelevant, and Hitler used the Enabling Act to completely reorganize German government, to place his cronies and those who owed him politically in key positions, and to eliminate any serious political opposition.

It certainly was not inevitable that a group such as the NSDAP would take over. In fact, i am convinced that it was only because of Hitler that the NSDAP attracted enough discontented conservatives to win the most seats in the Reichstag. Prior to the rise of Hitler, conservatives, with their hordes of bully boys drawn from unemployed veterans of the war, had been unable to coalesce and form a united conservative front which might have governed Germany. Hitler was able to use his charisma, his skills as a gutter politician (who would stab in the back anyone who got in his way) to unite many of the discontented veterans and form a conservative alliance which had a shot at electoral success.

It remains significant that even with left-wing parties banned, the NSDAP was unable to win a simple majority. Without Hitler, i doubt that any single conservative party would have done that well.