Why did Germany get punished by the Treaty of Versailles?

Answer 1

NoteThis question was originally in the section on WW2

With the Marshall Plan implemented after WW 2, the U.S. did more to help Germany recover after the war than any victor has ever helped a defeated foe in the history of humankind. Respectfully, you may have confused The Treaty of Versailles, concluding WW 1, with all of this. Rightly or wrongly, The Treary of Versailles was punitive towards Germany.

Richard V. Horrell WW 2 Connections.com

I cannot believe this question. Unlike the current situation in Iraq the allies made detailed plans of exactly how they were going to run Germany after they had liberated it. There are lots of books on this subject but in short the idea was to take the nazi ut of nazi Germany and to encourage all the good things that Germans could be proud of in their past such as culture and a belief in decent human values. So everyone in Germany had to fill out a big form stating what they had done during the nazi period. There were huge list of people who were to be arrested and investigated such as SS and party people and people who had run camps and prisons. If the answers on your form proved that you were not a nazi or only went alongwith the whole thing you would not be locked up. Depending on the answer you could lose your job or go to jail or be hung. Sadly we now know that lots of really bad people got away. Read a boo kby Tom Bower "THE PAPERCLIP CONSPIRACY or a book called "RATLINES",I forget the author. Look at Werner Von Braun who later headed NASA. Some big Nazis got away because they were useful to the allies in the cold war KLAUS BARBIE for example,but the Russians did the same,they took people they found useful.

But in general the re-making of Germany was a success. With the help of American money and British food Germans were taught to be democrats again. (bread in Britain was not rationed during the war but was rationed in the late 1940s in order to stop Germans from starving. Does this make me proud to be British? Yes, it does. Are the Germans grateful - don't think so) Britain and America helped write the Germany constitution. People who say that the allies did not help Germany after the war should do more research or else stop reading neo nazi propaganda. Mnay people would argue that we did not punish the Germans enough,but it is a difficult question. Ask former east Germans how the soviets treated them and then tell me the allies were too harsh on the west Germans

In the early stages Allied policy towards Germany had many contradictions. What Richard V. Horrell writes is true but/and I'd like to add:

1. A total of about 11.7 million Germans were expelled from the more easterly parts of Germany, which were given to Poland (and the Soviet Union), also from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and various other parts of Eastern Europe. Many perished in the process.

2. After WW2 Germany did in fact have to pay reparations to some of the Allies. It's not something that is talked about much. It's true that the British government prevented starvation in its zone of Germany, but as late as February 1949 the British authorities were still dismantling factories in the Ruhr - and this was happening just a few months before the first general election in West Germany. It took a blazing row in the House of Commons to put an end to such absurdities.

3. West Germans were pleasantly surprised and very grateful for the Berlin Airlift. At first they expected the Western Allies to do a deal with Stalin and swap West Berlin for Thuringia ... Many German historians single out the Berlin Airlift (along with Marshall Aid) as one of the key things that pulled West Germany round to identification with the West.

4. West Germany benefitted enormously from the introduction of the new currency in 1948. This really did rely entirely on American support initially. Then West Germany, along with the rest of Western Europe, did very well out of the prolonged post-WW2 boom. It was this, more than anything else, that enabled the West German economy to absorb the expellees referred to in 1. - and the large number of refugees from East Germany.

5. From 1951 onwards West Germany was a founder memeber of the early forerunners of the European Union. This had the great advantage of providing an enlarged market and stimulating trade.

6. East Germany didn't enjoy any of these benefits. In the longer run, it was the East Germans who ended up suffering.

Overall, however, I agree with Richard Horrell's comments.

The answer to that question is complicated and multifaceted.

In the U.S. in the years 1944 - 1948 the "Writers' War Board" and the "Society for the Prevention of World War III" performed an initially very sucessful campaign to bring U.S. public opinion over to the side that the German people deserved punishment.

Meanwhile in the U.S. government the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr. worked succesfully to sell his plan to ensure that Germany could never again pose a threat to the U.S. How to accomplish this? Easy; by ensuring that Germany did not have the industry required to wage war, i.e. by removing a large part of the German economy, effectively "pastoralizing" the country.

General Eisenhower, in command of the U.S. occupation zone supported this policy, in 1945 famously stating "...I say let Germany find out what it means to start a war."

The only problem was, Germany was the industrial center of Europe, and all the Western European countries were and are economically interdependent on each other. By shutting down Germany, the traditional supplier of coal and heavy machinery, the economy of the rest of western Europe started following Germany down the drain, to the delight of the communists.

Former U.S. president Herbert Hoover wrote in March 1947 in one of his reports from Germany:

"There is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a 'pastoral state'. It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it."

Meanwhile press-pictures of starving German children were starting to change U.S. public opinion.

So, in the summer of 1947 the U.S. occupation directive JCS 1067 was rescinded. It had, quote: directed the U.S. commander to take "no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany" (Look up the article "Pas de Pagaille!" in the time magazine online edition)

Germany eventually revovered and was rebuilt, but the dismantling of West German factories that the U.S. had set in motion was not ended until 1951. And yes, West Germany was a beneficiary of the Marshall plan, but a minor one, it only received a fraction of what countries such as France and the UK received. Also; the combined Marshall plan aid to Germany over the years was dwarfed by what the Allies each year took from West Germany as payments for "occupation costs", not to mention the value of the factory equipment dismantled or the ship-yards blown-up after the war.

Some of the previous answers perplex me. As to Britain it is true that there was rationing, but part of the answer to that was that the war and postwar attempts to hold on to the "Brittish Empire" and to counter communism in places such as Greeze had bancrupted them. The Jewish humanitarian Victor Gollancz through his campaign "save Europe now" in December 1946 ended the British prohibition on sending food aid to Germany.

As to Denazification and the illusion that the U.S. and UK created democracy in Germany I recommend you do a Google for: "Did the United States Create Democracy in Germany?" and you will find a very intresting article.

Answer 2

World War I ended with Germany being the only "enemy" left of the original combatants and the world was plenty mad about the millions of deaths the war caused, so they got to shoulder the burden of paying restitutions to the countries that [Germany] had opposed. As with most questions involving war, this is but a simplified explanation. Any good WWI reference could fully answer the question.