Hmmmmmmmmmm................
Clutch Martin: "the Wilsonian doctrine crushed Germany financially... "
That's nonsense because, first, Pres. Wilson's 14 points said nothing about reparations -- zero, zip, nada about reparations.
So it wasn't the "Wilson doctrine" which allegedly "crushed Germany".
Rather, reparations were insisted on by the Brits and especially the French, who had suffered the most.
Wilson went along with them to get their support for his 14 points, especially the League of Nations.
Second, the reparations were not "crushing" in any real sense, but were used for propaganda purposes and to blame for Weimar Germany's 1922 wildly inflationary fiscal policies.
If we translate the 1920s numbers to today's values, the German economy (GDP) then was roughly $2 trillion per year and the US GDP about double that.
Today German GDP is around $4 trillion and the US GDP is $25 trillion.
The Versailles imposed reparations, in today's dollars, totaled $2 trillion, which is about the size of the German national debt today.
Originally, Weimar Germany was required to pay about $50 billion per year, in today's values, and they actually made one solid payment.
Every other payment was made with borrowed money, mainly from American banks.
In 1924 the Dawes plan reduced payments to $20 billion.
So, the Weimar government actually paid around $400 billion total, nearly all but the first $50 billion with borrowed money.
The 1929 financial crash was triggered by US banks refusing to loan Weimar Germany any more money, so Weimar stopped making reparations payments and the French & Brits stopped making payments on their war-loans from the United States.
Clutch Martin: "the 1929 depression exacerbated the financial calamity."
Arguably, the Great Depression was caused by the 1929 financial collapse which followed American banks refusing to loan Weimar Germany any more money to pay their reparations to France & Britain.