Quote:
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Originally Posted by TSGracchus
And, absent the Versailles treaty, the Weimar Republic would probably have worked and survived...
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by USViking
A new and thoroughly compelling line of argument
has just occurred to me.
I don't see how I missed it to begin with.
It deserves a separate post. I will follow up later.
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Survival of Weimar is irrelevant to the your premise.
It would not matter what government Germany had
if WW2 could have been averted despite Versailles.
Versailles would have worked if it had been enforced.
Germany could not rearm and go to war without control
of the Rhineland, and it could not control the Rhineland
without having military forces there. Versailles prohibited
Germany from stationing such forces.
Well, when in 1936 the German military reoccupied the
Rhineland in violation of Versailles the French alone
could have easily evicted them. In fact, the German
occupying forces had orders to retreat immediately if
the French took action.
France and the UK would have been within their rights
to remain in occupation of the Rhineland from 1936
in perpetuity as long as Germany had a government
which did not accept Versailles to the letter. It was
within their power to do so in 1936.
So it was not the terms of the Versailles treaty which
led to WW2 as much as the fact France and Germany
did not force Germany to abide by it.