“Since the war reparations KILLED the German and its allies’ economies,though the later treaties hurt too, it all really began in Paris. “
John Maynard Keynes, whom most freepers think was a socialist although he wasn’t, was at the Paris Peace Conference and he immediately saw that the Reparations plan was setting up a disaster.
He first came to public attention with a little book about it titled “The Economic Consequences of the Peace” which essentially was a warning that the reparations were impossible for Germany to perform; not “too hard”, but rather “cannot be done”.
Reparations were probably to blame for the enormous inflation that plagued the postwar Weimar Republic. This impoverished the German middle class, embittered the German people, and left them receptive to the angry, vengeance seeking speeches of one Adolph Hitler.
The reparations, though there were other things as well, set off the onslaught of the coming world wide Depression. And yes, it was impossible for Germany and its allies to meet those demands. And then there was the Sykes-Picot mess, conjured up in the very midst of WW I!