Aftermath of ww1 for germany8/22/2023 Army hospital in France, took the photo after driving with a colleague past “No-mans Land” and abandoned German trenches to reach the city. Syracuse University medical school graduate Edward S. To many Americans, especially many ethnic groups, German-, Irish- and Italian-Americans, it looked like a victor’s peace because so many people in Germany, Italy and Ireland were unhappy about the peace treaty.įrench Marshal Ferdinand Foch, commander of the Allied forces, enters the city of Metz, Germany, (later reverted back to France after decades of German occupation) the day after Armistice Day in 1918. The president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, promised this would be a war to end all wars and would be followed with a peace without victory. Q: How was the United States shaped by the war?Ī: The response to the war in the United States was resentment about what many people feel was a failed peace effort at Versailles. But the casualties list in the Great War was a major reason for appeasement. For example, some European leaders had such a fear of the Soviet Union that they saw Hitler’s Germany as a bulwark against the spread of hated communism. There are other reasons why they did that. So when Hitler began to rearm Europe, instead of responding, the British and French wanted to avoid conflict at all costs. The war brought about such bitterness about the nature of war because it went on for so long and had enormous casualties-for example, the French had 1.39 million military deaths in a nation of 40 million and the British had almost 800,000 dead. “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time,” British Lord Grey said. It shattered the secure, ordered life of Edwardian England, and people said after the war that the same sense of stability would never be there again. He was dedicated to the proposition that he would wipe away the “stain of Versailles,” which was the peace conference after the war. It resulted in, inevitably, World War II and another revolution in Germany, which brought Hitler to power. It led to the Russian Revolution, the collapse of the German Empire and the collapse of the Hapsburg Monarchy, and it led to the restructuring of the political order in Europe and in other parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East. It was not entirely unfounded, however, because Germany did suffer greatly because of the treaty, and it was this suffering that made them hunger for World War 2.Meredith Professor and Professor Emeritus David H. What he was really doing was using Germany's loss and subsequent hardships to get the German populace to support his aggressive foreign policy, and eventually, World War 2. The Germans deserved better, he claimed, and he could give it to them. He stirred the German people by telling them their loss in WW1 was caused by backstabbers at home like the Jews, and the terms of the treaty were unfair. Continuing with his promises and highly successful propaganda campaign, Hitler's support ballooned, allowing him to evoke nationalistic and warlike sentiment in the German population. He used the threat of another conflict to extract fear and compliance from nations like England, whose prime minister signed the Munich Agreement giving Hitler more territory. Hitler rebuilt the military and abused his power, both at home and abroad. He eventually rallied enough support to take over the government. He stoked the people's fire, appealing to their anger from defeat in World War 1 and their hopelessness from their financial crisis. The German people needed a leader to bring them out of the hole, who they found in Adolf Hitler. Their already brutal economic situation, caused by perhaps the worst inflation in history, became worse. The worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s essentially nailed the coffin for postwar Germany. The treaty forced Germany to admit to causing the war, even though there were plenty of other people involved - further angering the German people. The economy collapsed, caused in huge part to the payments Germany had to make to the Allies as a sort of compensation. Not only did they suffer the most dead during the war, but now they had to deal with all the pain of the peace treaty. Humiliated in defeat, crushed by debilitating war reparation payments, and angered by the war guilt clause, Germany came out of the war a truly weak nation.
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