To what extent can the Treaty of Versailles be blamed for WW2?

 

The arguments that point to the Treaty of Versailles:

 

  • The treaty shocked and angered all Germans

  • It shocked many other contemporaries too

  • Hitler gained support because he condemned the treaty and promised to destroy it

  • By rearming, remilitarising the Rhineland and joining with Austria he did as he had promised

  • And by getting away with it he went further (the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia)

  • He then turned his attention to Poland and that led to WW2

  • We can also add that the successor states created by the treaty, eg Poland and Czechoslovakia, were not made strong enough to resist a revitalised Germany

 

Other factors that must also be considered:

 

  • British Appeasement (though this is also linked to the treaty)

  • The Nazi-Soviet Pact

  • The treaty could have been revised peacefully (something Stresemann had done to some extent)

  • Hitler’s policy of lebensraum was not directly related to the treaty

  • Neither was his racially motivated disregard for Slavs

  • Neither was his determination to smash communism

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