The narrative that the Versailles YEETY Treaty was a very important cause of WWII is true, but for different reasons than are taught in school.
The political order established by the Treaty of Versailles relied on an incredibly unlikely and unique pair of circumstances that emerged after WWI to persist indefinitely - that the impetialist powers of Germany and Russia would simultaneously implode and retreat from the world stage, without attempting to reclaim their former position under successor regimes. The Versailkes order as a result made Weimar/Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia pariah states, which repeatedly pushed them together (Reichswehr-Soviet rearmament and technological exchange in the 20s; Molotov-Ribbentrop in 1939) and destabilized the extremely fragile peace only held firm by the noncommital and unstable regimes of the alliance between a British Empire entering terminal decline and the perpetually unstable French Third Republic. Throw in Imperial Japan to the mix threatening their colonial empires. The Versailles order had a LOT of enemies committed to destroying it, and the impotent League of Nations was the only peaceful outlet to moderate these conflicts.
The failure of the Versailles order was precisely why America had to step up as the indisputable hegemon to stop the communists.
The narrative that the Versailles
YEETYTreaty was a very important cause of WWII is true, but for different reasons than are taught in school.The political order established by the Treaty of Versailles relied on an incredibly unlikely and unique pair of circumstances that emerged after WWI to persist indefinitely - that the impetialist powers of Germany and Russia would simultaneously implode and retreat from the world stage, without attempting to reclaim their former position under successor regimes. The Versailkes order as a result made Weimar/Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia pariah states, which repeatedly pushed them together (Reichswehr-Soviet rearmament and technological exchange in the 20s; Molotov-Ribbentrop in 1939) and destabilized the extremely fragile peace only held firm by the noncommital and unstable regimes of the alliance between a British Empire entering terminal decline and the perpetually unstable French Third Republic. Throw in Imperial Japan to the mix threatening their colonial empires. The Versailles order had a LOT of enemies committed to destroying it, and the impotent League of Nations was the only peaceful outlet to moderate these conflicts.
The failure of the Versailles order was precisely why America had to step up as the indisputable hegemon to stop the communists.