That is historically totally wrong.
Aristide Briand started to soften the Versailles treaty conditions as early as in 1925.
You mean six years too late? You left out the part where France occupied the Rhineland to squeeze money out of Germany, thus starting the whole hyperinflation spiral and dealing further humiliation to Germany. You also left out the whole Versailles fiasco where the victorious powers, spurred chiefly by French desire for revenge, treated Germany as some sort of 3rd world power. No wonder they despised the final treaty, it was a totally unfair dictate that severely undermined the credibility of the new republican government. It's almost as if France hadn't noticed that the Kaiser wasn't in charge any more, so they were punishing the wrong people. If on the other hand France had chosen to be generous in its victory, the new republican system in Germany would have been strong enough to combat radical tendencies on the fringes of the political spectrum and the Nazis would have never become a dominant political party.
At the minute the 1929 crisis touched Germany, they stopped paying reparations and everyone let them do. At the minute Hitler decided to send troops back in Rheinland, we let him do. At the minute Hitler decided to make the Anschluss, we let him do. And it's been the same when he invaded Bohemia-Moravia and in multiple other times.
So, first you treated the democratic government in Germany as crap, thus indirectly causing it to be overthrown by totalitarian forces, and when the time came to be firm against this new tyranny, you caved, sacrificing your democratic allies in the process.
Wonderful. Now you know what I meant when I said "
If the French government had been at least one bit sensible"...
France started its reconciliation policy with Germany as early as in 1925. A long time before the economic crisis. That portrayal of an evil blind France murdering Germany is, historically, totally wrong.
I didn't say France was evil, just totally incompetent in its role of the peacekeeper of Europe.
Both France and the UK were far too lenient with the axis powers during the 1930's. Both countries basically let Germany, Italy and Japan do whatever they wanted without saying a word. Their mistake was there. Not in signing a treaty which didn't even last 5 years.
You misunderstood me - by the time Nazis were in charge, it was already too late. Then you should have been ready to fight Hitler, but for some insane reason, it was the time you suddenly began being soft against Germany.
You've obviously understood nothing. It's not at all a thirst for war. The negociated peace of 1918 basically helped Ludendorff, Hindenburg and Hitler to promote the idea the war hasn't been lost by the Wehrmacht but by lousy politicians. And later, the British and French softness convinced Hitler he could basically do everything he wanted without firing a single bullet.
Sigh, you're missing the whole 1918-1933 period.
Most of the damage was done between 1919-1925. The peace wasn't resented in Germany because its armies were not defeated enough, it was resented because it was patently unfair. You put all the blame for the war squarely on Germany, you decided to suffocate its economy through war reparations (so that you could pay your own debts to the Americans), you forced Germany to give up territories that were ethnically German, thus violating your own promises of self-determination, and you didn't even try to support the new German republican regime.
This was the root of all the problems that followed later, and you can hardly deny that.
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