“Since the Treaty of Versailles had reduced the German military to a small fraction of its previous size, it was basically a matter of shifting expenses to reparation payments from munitions.”
Kinda hard to have that same pre-war economy when the Royal Navy maintained the starvation blockade, LONG after the war had ended.
The Allied blockade ended after the Treaty of Versailles was signed, in June 1919.
The armistice was just a cease-fire - it was the end of the shooting war but not the end of offensive operations, nor was it the beginning of peace.
Without actual occupation of Germany - which would have meant a bloody resumption of fighting similar to the putative invasion of the Japanese home islands in 1945 - the blockade was the only way to force Germany’s compliance.
One way to think of the blockade is as WW1’s atomic bomb - it couldn’t be countered and eventually forced a military dictatorship to disintegrate.
If by "LONG" you mean the eight months between the surrender and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, OK.
The reason why Germans were starving from the blockade was the understaffing of farms and most food in Germany being shipped West to feed absent farmhands and others who were now soldiers.
Once the soldiers returned and the rationing ended, the blockade went from being a death threat to a survivable but onerous imposition.
The Germany economy was actually recovering faster than the French and English economies by 1921. Although it was predicted that it would be a decade before German industrial output returned to its prewar height, they met that goal in 18 months.