“Do you think it ever occurred to Herodotus Boy that “bragging” TO the winning side about what one did to help the winning side afterwards might not be the most damning evidence in the world? Is that the best he got?”
There was no “winning side”...nobody won the war... it was an armistice... a suspension of hostilities by mutual consent.
Then the Germans have no one to blame but themselves for offering to make that generous donation of 31 billion Marks and some land to go with it....
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Sure, the Germans agreed to crippling reparations just for kicks.
WWI ended with the complete capitulation of Germany, as attested by the Treaty of Versaille. The actual fighting stopped with the armistice of 11/11/1918 at the 11th hour, but the surrender of Germany was unconditional, just as it was for the Axis in WWII. That and the Treaty of Versaille were, IMO, the proximate causes of Hitler’s rise to power and WWII. Which happened when the great American socialist/progressive, Woodrow Wilson managed to drag us into a European conflict that, left alone, would have petered out with just some changes to the map of Europe and only minor changes to status quo ante.
Socialism/progressivism led directly to the subsequent horrors of the Soviet Union, Germany, Japan, then Korea, Vietnam and today’s mid-East. In my never to be humble opinion, could we go back in time and eliminate just one individual to spare the world most of the horror of the twentieth century, persuading Wilson’s mother to abort Woodie would be the almost perfect solution.