Wow! Thanks for your well thought out and presented perspectives.
LOL--....while FDR vigorously hunted down Nazi agents in America, he never could find even one Communist agent in his own government! Yes indeed, couldn't locate a single one or twenty.
Your perspectives on Brest-Litovsk and the Belgian reparations put the German reparations into context. Thanks for your three thoughtful and detailed replies/perspectives.
These types of exchanges are the things I love most about FR. I have added the Fromkin book to my list of Christmas wishes. Might I suggest to you, "Versailles 1919" which came out a couple of years ago written by a woman author. I'm sorry I can't be more specific, the book is at my other home 225 miles from Rush Lake.
"Might I suggest to you, "Versailles 1919" which came out a couple of years ago written by a woman author." Yes, ideed! ;-)
Margaret MacMillan c2003, "Paris 1919"
An excellent book, and I don't disagree with anything she says... -- except possibly any suggestion that if, somehow, Western Allies had been more nicey-nice to the Germans, that MIGHT have prevented a Second World War.
I suspect: regardless of what the allies did in Versailles, Germans were not going to give up their dream of European conquest without another major war, sooner or later.
Along those same lines, I also suggest another Fromkin book:
David Fromkin c1989 "A Peace to End All Peace"
This one reviews that other, even longer lasting consequence of Versailles in 1919: origins of the modern Middle East conflicts.