What Angered Germans regarding the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WW1

What Angered Germans regarding the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WW1



France launched a preemptive strike on Prussia due to its growing power.

(It had taken over 50 years for Prussia and Bavaria to unite the fractionated Germanic State pieces).

Prussia responded with a precision unseen up until that time. Inferior German small arms were offset with much better artillery (which was used offensively).

The war lasted less than a year with a Prussian victory. As with wars in this time frame, France had to pay a war penalty and lost most of Alsace-Lorraine. Casualties were in the thousands.

While there were breech loading artillery, rifles were still muzzle loaders. (These sorts of penalties were the standard in 19th Century wars. The armies fought, the loser paid the price and things went back to normal.


Fast forward to WW I. The machine gun and ranged artillery were now weapons of war along with poison gas, tanks and flamethrowers.

One million people died in only 4 months and the No Man’s Land between the unmoving trenches became a killing field.

This was 20th Century War but still addressed with a 19th Century mindset. Germany finally sued for peace but France wanted revenge for the F-P War.

This time, Germany had to pay war reparations and it lost both The Rhineland and The Saar.

The loss of those two places led to a killer famine in Germany and serious damage to its economy. France never suffered like this in the previous war.

Their for revenge and punishment versus rebuilding led to WW II slightly over 20 years later.

17 million people died in WW I and as many as 85 million died in WW II. Picture: Germany 1920.



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