The Treaty of Versailles can be listed as the biggest reason for the rise of Nazi Germany, but in effect it is only the tip of the iceberg.
1) Some French simply couldn’t accept that Germany was just as much a victim of the French-German war as France: All based on a falsified document and lies to unite the German states for war against France - and we have an analogy in our own very recent history: How the Bush Jr cabinet rallied England and the United Nation to remove Saddam Hussein. The French German-haters wanted revenge ignoring all reasons and historic facts, and all governments who didn’t stand up against them, fully aware that Germany would have no choice but to remove the shame put onto it, effectively tilted the land and planted the seeds for WW-II.
2) Europe was a powder keg ready to blow up, and there is no country that is free of guilt for all governments understood that unless it gets diffused all Europe will be at war. Blowing up it did.
3) We have the parallel in the US: The building of America. The socio-economic condition caused the last industrial revolution gave raise to the socialist movements. Not socialist in the sense of what is best for country but Socialist and Communist movements for unilateral benefit of the worker and lower social classes living in misery. I was born in 1950, and heard plenty from my parent and great-parent generation how it was: Few are those today who can even imagine the miseries that existed. The communist became very powerful, and for good reasons most feared that they would gain upper hand, and in no country as much as in Germany.
First the socio-economic condition of pre-WW-I with WW-I on top was bad, and the Versailles treaty effectively destroyed the moral of the Germans. Germany was ripe for a take-over, and it came down to the Communist or the Socialists (Nazional Sozialisten, the Nazis). The miracles of the Nazi social programs created sympathizers in about every country in Europe as well as in the US. Germany recovered and compared to the preceding decades was now a heaven. Many Germans rallied behind the Nazis upon hearing: We will remove the shame put onto Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. The country was delivered on a silver platter. There was a split in Germany brought on by the Browns who did the dirty work for the Nazis leaders and then the eliminating the communists; many didn’t like the answer to “what will be next.” Additionally, the Jewish, because for historic reasons, fared better than the average German, and became scapegoats - the few Jew (the swear word) provided enough food for the anti-Jewish movements to take hold; another “what next” for many. All the Germans, mostly older and better educated, who understood where all would lead and left the country, ridiculed at first of course, but when the wake-up call came for the country as a whole, the Reichstag Fire, it was too late for most. By that time, all politically and socially important positions were in control of die-hard Nazis, and all potential opponents removed if not even silenced. Gestapo and its counterpart, the rats, begun to instill fear, and in no time it was “survival, trust no one” ruled a Germans life.
Could WW-II have been prevented? Absolutely so, many times. This was one reason there was a huge shift in consciousness in Europe. The other that no country was free of shame for what it did during the war: Unlike what is so strong in the US, in Europe there is no more glory and honor in war, and to some extend it goes for patriotism too.
