Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles formally ended World War One between Germany and the Allied Powers in June of 1919 and took six months of negotiating. The most well known portions of the destructive treaty had to do with forcing Germany to fully disarm, the seizing of German industry and significant territory and, on top of that, the imposition of punitive fines – reparations – totaling approximately 132 billion marks or roughly $31.4 billion.

In fact, Germany did make the burdensome payments and only finished making them in October 2010 – thus taking nearly a century to pay. Most of the tension initially caused by the punitive treaty found expression in the rise of Adolf Hitler, which ultimately led to the Second World War.

While there seems to be good evidence that Hitler was funded by Western powers, especially by Wall Street and Rockefeller influences, he – Hitler – used resentment against the Treaty to good advantage. By whipping up anger against the unfairness of the Treaty and the "Jews" that undermined Germany, Hitler was able to leverage his National Socialist party into a position of power that ultimately led to him taking over the government.

In retrospect, World War I achieved little. Germany wasn't permanently weakened, France was not made any safer and the state that came to power in the 1930s was more aggressive and expansionistic in its way than the previous German empire.

There is also considerable controversy about the basic aims and historical evolutions of these two world wars. Conspiratorial historians claim that the wars were really generated not for any political reason but to create one-world government. When the League of Nations did not prove powerful enough, another world war was fomented that led to the creation of the United Nations.

It is hard to prove any of this, but certainly the patterns are available for inspection for anyone who wishes to look. And the Treaty of Versailles itself added significantly to the tensions that eventually found themselves expressed in World War II. It was a bad treaty and bore terrible consequences for humanity.