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The end of the Great War showed how primitive and unsophisticated the so-called "sophisticated Euros" were. Instead of re-building Germany into a Parliamentary Republic that would be an anti-Bolshevik bulwark against Lenin and Stalin, France and England wanted payback.

France and England's method of peace lasted barely 20 years. The peace of the "unsophisticated" Americans lasted over 60 years.

Isn't payback the way so many people go? It's un-Christian but feels good, for a while at least.

In fairness, both Britain and France paid a heavy price in men and materials. America’s level of sacrifice didn’t even come close to matching theirs. No wonder they were angry, and their populations could not have brooked to lenient a treaty.

France had also gotten a rough deal out of the 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt, in which they lost Alscace-Lorraine, and their idea was to break Germany so it could never threaten France again. Understandable really, although as we know, things didn’t work out that way. The allies might also have taken a much more punitive attitude towards Germany after WWII (remember that they completely disbanded the German armed forces after that war, which didn’t happen after WWI), but they also faced the threat of Communism from the Soviet Union, so it was particularly important not to drive the Germans into the arms of the Soviets. The Germans of that period were predisposed towards extremist ideologies, and Communism was the other side of the coin to Nazism.

The end of the Great War showed how primitive and unsophisticated the so-called "sophisticated Euros" were. Instead of re-building Germany into a Parliamentary Republic that would be an anti-Bolshevik bulwark against Lenin and Stalin, France and England wanted payback.

France and England's method of peace lasted barely 20 years.

Here's an appropriate song:

Thanks for the Memory--Charlie & His Orchestra (c. 1941)

Thanks for the memory
In every German's mind, when you broke the ties that bind
And dictated a peace called the Treaty of Versailles
How rotten that was!

Thanks for the memory
Of British aims devine, French Negroes on the Rhine,
The food blockade and misery throughout the German Reich
What an injustice that was!

Many's the time that you feasted
And many's the time that we fasted.
For you, it was swell while it lasted.
You did have fun, but harm was done.

So, thanks for the memory.
It gives us strength to fight
For freedom and for right.
It might upset you, England,
That the Germans know how to fight
And hurt you so much.