Treaty of Versailles the Nazi

Treaty of Versailles

The Nazi slaughter of millions of people in WWII, including approximately 6 million Jews, might not have been possible if the Treaty of Versailles had been a more balanced and fair document. it's pure speculation, but an alert reader delving into how a bigoted fanatic like Adolf Hitler could seize dictatorial control over German can clearly see that the Treaty of Versailles - which punished Germany perhaps too severely - played right into Hitler's hands. And he beat on it like a drum. He used the hardships that German people suffered from because of the Treaty as emotional leverage to gain power. The rest is history.

The Treaty of Versailles - signed by the allies and by a defeated Germany at the end of WWI - forced Germany to disarm and severely punished Germany. This harsh punishment, and the suffering the German people had to go through as a result of it, gave Hitler the issue he needed to convince citizens they needed a powerful nationalistic leader like him. He played on their fears and their anger and emerged as dictator largely because of that.

According to Philip Towle, writing in the Journal of Strategic Studies, at the end of WWI, the Germans did not believe that "the military superiority of the Allied Powers" - that had defeated them - would "endure." And so the Germans "never willingly acquiesced" to the measures in the Treaty to disarm. The Germans "argued bitterly against reparations" and they vigorously protested the "boundaries" that the Treaty ordered established (taking away German land). The Treaty also limited Germany's army to 100,000 long-service volunteers, and Germany was prevented from having heavy guns, tanks, combat aircraft, poison gas - and the navy was allowed only six old battleships, a dozen destroyers and torpedo boats and six light cruisers.

Moreover, Germans were ordered to pay reparations for the damage the war - launched by Germany - had done. The Weimar (German) government signed the Treaty because, as Jim Cort writes (Learning Through History), "they had no choice." The feeling soon became widespread, however, that the Germans had been "betrayed" (Cort, 2006). Enter Adolph Hitler, who worked his way up into a leadership position, became Chancellor and then dictator. Hitler was very effective at stirring up passions - social, economic, and political passions - to entrench himself as ultimate leader. Cort writes, "Into this stew of national resentment and wounded pride a war veteran named Adolph Hitler." Indeed, Hitler's is speech on September 19, 1939, at Danzig, Germany - eighteen days after German tanks had attacked inside Poland, basically starting WWII - was emotionally-charged rhetoric based on the Treaty and also on Hitler's hatred of Jews.

The world...sheds tears when Germany expels a Polish Jew who only a few decades ago came to Germany," Hitler shouted. But the world "...remained dumb and deaf toward the misery of those who, numbering not thousands but millions, were forced to leave their home country on account of Versailles." The Germany of 1918 was "kept by England," Hitler went on, and now England confuses the "present German nation" with the "misled and blinded nation" of 1918, due of course to the Treaty of Versailles.

The Nazi dictator ended his speech with a series of threats against England. He assured his audience there would be no "second Versailles." The first Treaty of Versailles, Hitler fumed, "...was intended to exterminate 20,000,000 Germans." Where he got that number is not important, but the impact of him ranting about the terrible treatment the Germans received from the Treaty was enough to keep the German people well stirred up.