The $ rang heavy in the hearts of the French. So the Germans devalued the Mark and used wheelbarrows to pay their debt. True the Allies behaved like Chamberlain. The US went into isolationism, its traditional stance. ALL the former allies were weak! and the French wanted $ too. Weakness was IMHO personified in FDR who allegedly knew of the atrocities against Jews, Gypsies, Catholic Priests etc etc;but did nothing to assist in defeating the Axis until attacked, an event he was allegedly warned of...etc. etc Would he/we have fought Germany had they not declared war on US??? The war was fought, now we’re down to semantics and speculation.
Of course the French wanted reparations, after all they had paid reparations to Germany after the war of 1870.
And Germans had also extracted reparations, along with territory from Belgium and Russia, so everybody understood: if you lose, you pay.
Tuketu: "So the Germans devalued the Mark and used wheelbarrows to pay their debt."
History records the Germans made one legitimate reparations payment after WWI, their first one.
After that it was all smoke & mirrors, super-inflation, which finally ended when Americans agreed to loan Germany the money to pay their reparations to France & Britain, which the French & Brits then used to pay down their war-debts to Americans!
It all ended in 1929 when Americans finally figured out we were being had (we were stupid long before Trump said it) and cut off the loans to Germany.
So Germany cut off its reparations to France & Britain, who stopped making war-debt payments and the date was...
oh, yeh, October, 1929.
Tuketu: "True the Allies behaved like Chamberlain.
The US went into isolationism, its traditional stance.
ALL the former allies were weak!"
All had excellent reasons to be, beginning with the millions killed in the greatest war ever imagined, much less waged.
All wanted to lick their wounds and stay-the-h*ll-out of any such future calamities.
In that the victors felt just as defeated as the vanquished though with no motivation to seek Round Two.
But for German leaders especially, Round Two was the reason for their request for peace in November 1918.
Tuketu: "Weakness was IMHO personified in FDR who allegedly knew of the atrocities against Jews, Gypsies, Catholic Priests etc etc;but did nothing to assist in defeating the Axis until attacked, an event he was allegedly warned of...etc. etc "
You know, I'm sure, that FDR & Holocaust were the Second World War, not the First, but you may not realize that the Holocaust itself, with gas chambers & crematoria, never really got started until after Hitler declared war on the United States.
But regardless, well into the Fall of 1941 80%+ of Americans did not want to be sucked into another war like the First World War.
Americans felt duped & betrayed and were dead set not to let it happen again.
Of course, FDR knew better, a lot better and more important, he cared about the future of our French and British friends.
FDR also knew Germans from personal experience, he spoke German traveling in Germany as a boy, and he hated Germans for their arrogance & belligerence.
Did FDR know about Pearl Harbor in advance?
No evidence says he did, but it doesn't matter because he and the US government in Washington certainly did expect a Japanese attack somewhere and soon.
That's why they sent out war warnings to all the Pacific Commanders, from Panama and San Diego to Hawaii and even MacArthur in the Philippines.
All were told to expect Japanese attacks very soon, but none were really prepared when those attacks soon arrived.
And long before December 7, 1941 US war planners agreed that Europe would be America's first priority, then Japan.
The overall allocation of resources was to be two-to-one Europe over Japan, though with specific services (i.e., Navy) that was reversed.
Tuketu: "Would he/we have fought Germany had they not declared war on US??? "
Sure, but the more interesting question is whether it was even psychologically possible for Hitler, given the circumstances, not to declare war on the US?
I doubt it.