Why did Germany's loss in World War 1 affect their role in World War 2?

Answer 1

Germany's loss in WW1 affected their involvement in WW2 because after WW1 at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, they were forced to accept full blame for the war, and pay reparations for all the damages done to the allied countries. This left Germany globally humiliated and bankrupt. When the worldwide depression hit, Germany was already exhausted and on the brink of collapse. Adolf Hitler played this to his advantage and promised that he would once again make the German nation powerful. This made it easy for Adolf Hitler to seize complete control of Germany, and he then invaded Poland, essentially starting World War 2.

Answer 2

It's probably more accurate to say that the end of WWI set the stage for subsequent events in Germany, which created the turmoil within Germany and Europe that erupted into WWII in 1939.

Though Germany and the western Allies had essentially fought to a stalemate in France and Belgium throughout the first three years of WWI, the entrance of the United States on the side of the Allies tipped the scales against the Germans.

As the fighting ended in November 1918, the victorious Allies were bent on exacting a terrible punishment on Germany. Their primary goal was to render Germany powerless, to eliminate the German threat to peace and harmony in Europe by limiting German power. In particular, France was inconsolably bitter because so much of the war had been fought on French and Belgian soil, devastating the population and the countryside. The result of the bitterness was the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919.

The treaty forced the Germans to accept sole responsibility for the war, and imposed upon them considerable sacrifices in territory. In particular, Alsace-Lorraine and the Saarland were ceded to France, and all of Germany's foreign colonies were parceled out to Great Britain, France, Japan, and Belgium. Other lands in Europe were given to Poland, Denmark, France, Czechoslovakia, and Belgium.

Also within the treaty were strict limitations on Germany's future armed forces. Germany was severely limited in the size of its standing army, the size and composition of its navy, and the nature of the weapons it could produce. Germany was permitted to have no air force whatsoever.

But perhaps worst of all, the victorious Allies demanded reparation payments that were, in any reasonable estimation, a crippling burden on Germany, especially a Germany that was trying to recover from a war, no matter whose "fault" the war may have been. Economists of the time estimated that a healthy, prosperous Germany would be paying for 70 years to satisfy these demands!

The results were, in retrospect, predictable and almost inevitable. The Weimar Republic, Germany's post-war attempt at mollifying the Allies, was a complete failure.

Economic instability and hyperinflation to a degree unknown in most places on earth became the rule; a German worker who got his paycheck on Friday spent it quickly! He was likely to find that it wouldn't buy his week's groceries on Sunday. In late 1923, a US dollar was worth four BILLION German marks. The German government actually printed paper notes (like dollar bills) in the denomination of 100 TRILLION marks -- 100,000,000,000,000! The worldwide depression that struck in 1929 was hardly noticed in Germany, which had been mired in economic misery for a decade.

Political unrest was the norm. Going back to 1918, a large percentage of Germans could not understand why their government had surrendered to the Allies. (There had been no Allied invasion of Germany itself.) Suspicion of the 'eastern menace' (Russia) was rampant, especially since the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and the subsequent establishment of the Communist USSR. In addition, class struggles were sharpened in a contentious political atmosphere, and a tradition of European anti-Semitism became concentrated in Germany.

The stage was set for Adolf Hitler. And once Hitler was firmly in control of Germany and its resources, another war in Europe was a foregone conclusion.