NP, just about money and Germany

[Mark Kohut]

I'm sure you've heard the story how in the negotiations following World War I, 
Germany was saddled with such huge and putative payments, that it sent their 
economy into collapse and spurred the rise of the Nazis? Historian Margret 
MacMillian says you heard wrong.
At the Paris peace talks of 1919, President Woodrow Wilson was very clear that 
there should be no punitive fines on the losers, only legitimate costs. The 
other major statesmen in Paris, Prime Ministers David Lloyd George of Britain 
and Georges Clemenceau of France, reluctantly agreed, and Germany equally 
reluctantly signed the treaty. ...  The fact is that Germany could have managed 
to pay, but for political reasons chose not to. ...  In 1924 and again in 1929, 
the total sum owed was negotiated down. In 1933, when the Nazis took power, 
Hitler simply canceled reparations unilaterally. In the end, it has been 
calculated, Germany paid less in real terms than France did after the 
Franco-Prussian war of 1870 to ’71 (and France paid off those obligations in 
just a few years).
Not only is this op-ed interesting for the fiscal facts behind the "war to end 
all wars," but the way in which the meaning (and even the outcome) of the war 
was reworked by political forces over the following decades is a cautionary tale 
for America.