The Way the Treaty of Versailles was Written

If I could change one event in history, I wouldn’t erase World War II. I would go back twenty years earlier and change the Treaty of Versailles, because I believe the way Germany was treated after World War I helped create the conditions that eventually brought on World War II.

World War I wasn’t simply a war that Germany started. It grew out of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, Germany’s support of Austria-Hungary, Russia’s mobilization, and a complicated system of alliances that pulled the major European powers into war. Germany certainly made decisions that escalated the conflict, but responsibility for the catastrophe was more complicated than simply blaming one country.

Yet after Germany was defeated, the Treaty of Versailles imposed severe consequences on it.

Germany lost territory, its military was drastically restricted, and it was required to pay substantial reparations. Article 231—the famous “war guilt clause”—required Germany and its allies to accept responsibility for the losses and damages caused by the war.

To millions of Germans, Versailles wasn’t simply a peace treaty. It was a national humiliation.

Then came economic and political turmoil. Germany experienced devastating hyperinflation in the early 1920s, and later the Great Depression brought massive unemployment and hardship. Not all of those problems were caused by Versailles, but the treaty became a powerful symbol for Germans who believed their country had been unfairly punished.

And Adolf Hitler knew exactly how to use that anger.

He promised to tear up Versailles, rebuild Germany’s military, restore the territory and prestige Germany had lost, and make the country powerful again. Resentment toward the postwar settlement became one of the major grievances the Nazis exploited in their rise to power.

That is why, if I could change one event in history, I would change Versailles.

Instead of punishing Germany after World War I, I would have supported its recovery.

Imagine if the victorious nations had helped Germany rebuild economically, encouraged its new democracy, and brought Germany back into the international community. Give ordinary Germans something to gain from peace instead of giving extremists a grievance they could exploit.

We can never say with certainty that a different Treaty of Versailles would have prevented Hitler or World War II. Hitler’s rise also depended on the Great Depression, political instability, nationalism, antisemitism, fear of communism, and many other factors.

But Versailles provided Hitler with something enormously valuable: a humiliated country and a promise he could make to restore its pride.

Ironically, after World War II, the United States and its allies took a very different approach. Through reconstruction and programs such as the Marshall Plan, Western Europe was rebuilt, and West Germany was eventually welcomed into the community of democratic nations. Germany went from being one of America’s greatest enemies to one of its closest allies.

Maybe that was the lesson we should have learned after the first war instead of the second.

So if I could change one event in history, I would rewrite the Treaty of Versailles. Germany would still have consequences for its role in the war, but the objective would be reconciliation and reconstruction rather than humiliation and punishment.

Would that have guaranteed there was no World War II? Of course not.

But I believe it might have removed one of the most important conditions that allowed Hitler to convince millions of Germans that following him was the way to reclaim their country.

Sometimes the way you treat a defeated enemy determines whether you’ve ended a war—or simply planted the seeds for the next one.