Iraqi Oil

[Chaerophon]

I'm sure you've heard this before...

What "started" WW II? The treaty of Versailles?

To my mind, yes. Essentially, it created the economic conditions under which the Weimar government failed and armed Hitler and the Nazis with the polarization of the German people against those nations who had, through economic reparations, essentially crushed them.

From the Treaty of Versailles:

The Allied and Associated Governments... require, and Germany undertakes, that she will make compensation for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allied and Associated Powers and to their property during the period of the belligerency of each as an Allied or Associated Power against Germany by such aggression by land, by sea and from the air, and in general all damage as defined in Annex l hereto.

The view of Germany (as they presented their own suggestions at Versailles):

In spite of such monstrous demands the rebuilding of our economic system is at the same time made impossible. We are to surrender our merchant fleet. We are to give up all foreign interests. We are to transfer to our opponents the property of all German undertakings abroad, even of those situated in countries allied to us. Even after the conclusion of peace the enemy states are to be empowered to confiscate all German property. No German merchant will then, in their countries, be safe from such war measures. We are to completely renounce our colonies, not even in these are German missionaries to have the right of exercising their profession. We are, in other words, to renounce every kind of political, economic and moral activity.

But more than this, we are also to resign the right of self-determination in domestic affairs. Dictatorial powers are conferred on the International Reparation Commission over our whole national life in economic and cultural matters, its power by far exceeding those ever enjoyed within the German Empire by the Emperor, the German Federal Council and the Reichstag put together. This Commission has the unrestrained power of disposal over the economic system of the state, of the municipalities and of private individuals. All matters of education and public health likewise depend on it. . . . The Commission . . can, in order to augment the payments of Serfdom, inhibit the whole system of social care for the working classes in Germany.

Also in other respects Germany's right of sovereignty is abrogated. Her principal rivers are placed under international administration, she is obliged to build on her own territory the canals and railways desired by the enemy, she must, without knowing the contents, assent to agreements which her adversaries intend concluding with the new states in the East [i.e., Poland and the Baltic states] and which affect Germany's own boundaries. The German people is excluded from the League of Nations to which all common work of the world is confided.

Thus a whole nation is called upon to sign its own proscription, yea, even its own death warrant.

And yet, the League of Nations didn't see the writing on the wall. The Germans seemed to make some very generous concessions that were never accepted...

1. Germany offers to take the lead before all other nations in disarming herself, in order to show that she is willing to help them in bringing forth the new era of the Peace of Right. She will give up compulsory service and will . . . diminish her army to 100,000 men. She is even prepared to surrender the battleships which her opponents intend leaving her. But she hereby acts on the assumption that she will be immediately admitted, as a state with equal rights, into the League of Nations. . . .

2. In territorial questions Germany unreservedly endorses the Wilson program. She renounces her sovereignty in Alsace-Lorraine, desiring, however, a free plebiscite to be carried through there. . . . [here follow a description of the further concession Germany is willing to make: cession of territory indisputably inhabited by Poles and Danes; a free port in Danzig and Polish access to the sea; submitting her former colonies to the administration of the League of Nations, with mandatory rights for Germany. All this is coupled with a 'demand' that the right of self-determination be respected also in favor of the Germans in Austria and Bohemia.]

3. Germany is prepared to make the payments incumbent on her . . . up to the maximum amount of 100 billion marks gold, namely, 20 billion marks gold until May 1, 1926, and the remaining 80 billion marks gold afterwards, by annual installments bearing no interest . . . In conceding this, Germany acts on the assumption that she will have to make no further sacrifices of territory beyond the above mentioned ones, and that she will again be granted freedom of action at home and abroad.

4. Germany is ready to devote her entire economic power to the work of reparation. She is desirous of actively cooperating in the restoration of the devastated territories in Belgium and Northern France. . . .

9. The German Delegation again raise their demand for a neutral inquiry into the question of responsibility for the war and of guilt during the war. An impartial commission should have the right of inspecting the archives of all belligerent countries and examining, as in a court of law, all chief actors of the war. . . . . . The high aims which our adversaries were the first to establish for their warfare, the new era of a just and durable Peace, demand a Treaty of a different mind. Only a cooperation of all nations, a cooperation of hands and intellects, can bring about a permanent peace. We are not under a misapprehension as to the intensity of hatred and bitterness that is caused by this war; and yet the forces at work for the union of mankind are now stronger than ever. It is the historical task of the Peace Conference of Versailles to bring about this union.

He was right in his characterization of the reparations as unfair. In 1922, the Germans missed a payment and the French refused to believe that they couldn't pay. They invaded parts of Germany and took over control of coal mines, railways, factories and steelworks. The Weimars ordered the Germans to resist passively and the subsequent economic fall led to hyperinflation to a dramatic degree:

In 1918 a loaf of bread cost just over half a mark. By 1922 the cost had risen to 163 marks for a loaf of bread. By November of 1923 a loaf of bread cost 201,000 million marks.
Millions of people faced starvation as a result of the hyperinflation. People such as pensioners who were living on fixed incomes found that prices rose so much faster than their earnings. Even if they could afford to buy food they could not afford the gas to cook it.
It was at this time that Stresemann came to power as one of Germany's most able statesmen and Hitler lead the putsch in Munich.

Furthermore, the Weimar Republic was doomed to failure from the outset. As a result of the unfair conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, the economic lives of Germans had become wretched and the nation was poor, starving, and completely dispirited. Anything was better than starving, and when Hitler and the Nazis came along, the public was very susceptible to his propaganda, so long as he managed to once again instill some national pride into the failing republic with promises of economic prosperity and vengeance.

I don't think that it is at all unreasonable to argue that the Treaty of Versailles was, ultimately, the springboard that set off the events of the next quarter century. Despite Hitler's evident powers of charisma, the Nazis would have never been granted the opportunities that they were if it was not for the League of Nations' foolish decision to position themselves as scapegoats. While American isolationism and Europe's unwillingness to enter into war may have allowed the Nazi's to gain a military foothold, it was the foolish decision on the part of these nations to alienate the German people that led to the ideological entrenchment of Nazism.


As for the rest of your post: fair enough.