Question

How did the treaty of Versailles directly impact Germany and set the stage for hitlers ideas ?

Answer 1

First of all, the Treaty of Versailles drafted and signed to bring World War I to a legal conclusion imposed heavy conditions to the German economy for it bound Germany to pay the expenses that the Allied powers had incurred in to finance their war effort and the reparation of damages caused by the German armed forces against private individuals during the war. This clause of the treaty effectively crushed the German economy and led to a high rate of unemployment and political turmoil. Also, Germany armed forces were ordered to be drastically curtailed by setting a limit of 100,000 men for the German Army (including non commissioned and commissioned officers), 3 old warships for coastguard duties and the use of tanks and aircraft was prohibited. Furthermore, a clause of the treaty prohibited Germany to keep any military personnel in Rhineland, a region on the French-German border, as a safety measure for France.

Right after the end of the war, the German people would see their soldiers return home carrying their weapons and gear, which puzzled many Germans since the return of so many soldiers carrying their uniforms and equipment led them to believe that the German armed forces were still in good combat condition (otherwise, they argued, they would have returned in shabby uniforms and most of them unarmed). This gross misinterpretation of the war situation in 1918 led to the baseless "stab in the back" theory, which stated that someone in the High Command had cowered and betrayed the German armed forces by ordering them to surrender when they were about to win the war. Actually, the entry of the U.S. in the war had flooded the battlefronts with millions of well-equipped and well-supplied soldiers, plus the U.S. industry was also providing supplies such as ammunition, weapons and food for the British and French armies, and the only reason for the relative inactivity in the Western Front during November 1918 was that the Allies were piling up massive amounts of manpower and supplies to launch a spring offensive in 1919 and run over the German troops, at the time, facing shortages of all kinds of supplies. Hitler made extensive use of this theory in order to speak and act against the humiliating Treaty of Versailles, which earned him the admiration of most Germans.

Overall, the speeches of Hitler on his path to the absolute power in Germany were based on statements about having Germany ignore the treaty (even though, theoretically, a failure by Germany to comply with the treaty would be met with a military intervention by Britain and France against Germany) and restoring the former glory of Germany. Once in power, Hitler gradually violated article after article of the Treaty of Versailles, much to the German's people joy, and went ahead with his plans of expansion and the like because he clearly realized that Britain and France were undergoing severe economic crises and were unwilling and unable to go to war.