Treaty of Versailles is an unjust treaty?

Answer 1

It was victors justice and was the single biggest contributing factor to the beginning of WW2.

I cannot agree more with your statement and I would like to add the following as a wider more relevant contextual answer:

However in defence of Germany pre WWII, one has to go right back to Austro-Hungarian empire and their private little war that they thought would be over quickly. And it all started by an assassination no one even cared about.

With the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife on June 28th, 1914, Austria-Hungary was able to secure the promise from Germany that it would aid in a war with Serbia and possibly Russia, if Russia chose to enter the fray due to their treaty with Serbia. It should be noted here that Austria-Hungary did not really expect Russia to enter the fray as they expected this to be a very small war that would be over quickly, before Russia would be obligated to respond. Now with Germany's support if Russia did enter the fray, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia with remarkably severe terms that Serbia would be sure to reject, thus giving Austria-Hungary an excuse to go launch a limited war on Serbia to reclaim territory in the Balkans.

So why go to war over an assassination, if nobody cared? Because, while nobody seemed to much care about the assassination itself, Austria-Hungary had been looking for an excuse to wage a "preventative war" against Serbia as a state in order to weaken or destroy them so as to take back territory in the Balkans, which had been taken during the Balkan Wars. They had not taken it back up to this point because they lacked Germany's support; without that support, they feared Russia too much, because of the treaty Russia had with Serbia.

Surprisingly, Serbia responded relatively well to the ultimatum, but they did dispute a few minor clauses, which gave Austria-Hungary the excuse they needed to go to war. At this point, the following general series of events happened due to a variety of existing treaties between various nations, which escalated this minor clash into the first "Great War".

These are the events that led up to the first world war.

Russia bound by their treaty with Serbia decides to come to Serbia's aid.

Germany, with the recent treaty with Austria-Germany, declares war on Russia.

France, bound by an existing treaty with Russia, now is at war with Germany by association. Germany then invades Belgium to have easy access to France.

Britain, allied to France with an existing treaty, declares war against Germany. This was unexpected by Germany as they expected Britain to stay out of the war, due to the fact that the treaty with France was loosely worded and not entirely binding. However, Britain also had a 75 year old treaty with Belgium. So because of both of these treaties, they decided to declare war on Germany.

With Britain now warring with Germany, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa enter the war as they were colonies of Britain.

Japan honors an existing treaty with Britain and declares war on Germany.

Austria-Hungary declare war on Japan for declaring war on Germany.

The U.S. tries to stay out of the war but in 1917 decides to enter due to Germany's submarine's hindering the United State's commercial shipping because the U.S. was shipping a lot of supplies to the Allies.

So in the end, a small quick war over a minor land dispute got turned into a lengthy war that was joined by powers all over the globe due to a variety of existing treaties dating back as much as 75 years before the war started.

So one can see why Germans backed Hitler and his Nazi party, because he promised to put Germany back to the way it was before the first world war, and the large amount of land it lost to other countries.

Today this would be unheard of to land steal from a country.

While it's also important to understand that the Austrian - Hungarian empire also back stabbed Germany, practically leaving it to fight a war it started and it could never win...infact the austro-hungarian empire came to an abrupt alt during the conflict after it was absolutely annihilated by Russia.

Overall it was extremely harsh that Britain and America demanded restitution for the damage done / caused..and I am more than sure back then once that treaty had been signed, knowing how unfair / unjust and savage that treaty was, it wouldn't be long before Germany would do something about it.