How Did The Treaty Of Versailles Help Cause World War Two?

It’s easy to blame one person or group of people for a large problem, because it feels as if they will be the only ones who have to deal with the consequences of their actions. However, that sentiment is incorrect, as illustrated by Germany after the first World War. The Treaty of Versailles, signed seven months after the war’s end, blamed mostly everything on Germany, and weighed them down with many debts, both literal and figural. When all was said and done, the Germans came home, bitter and humiliated, to a devastated, war-torn country. So how did the Treaty of Versailles help cause World War II? Through territorial losses, reparations, and the war guilt clause. The Germans were incredibly angry over the territory they lost in the Versailles Treaty. The loss of Alsace-Lorraine, the region they had fought over for years and finally won in the Franco-Prussian war, cost them 40% of their coal
Germany had to, “accepts[s] the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage which the Allied and Associated Governments...have been subjected to as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies” (Versailles Treaty Article 231). Expectedly, the Germans were disgusted and humiliated. Their country was no longer a place of pride, but of revulsion. As one can imagine, Hitler’s successes after such horrible defeats and poor governing with the Weimar Republic propelled (some of) the German people into an excited, nationalistic state. Hitler forced “the world to look at Germany anew” (Moyer). A new nation, degraded by weak leadership and grave mistakes made in war, seemed to have come into it’s own. That newfound self-esteem stemming from the humiliation of the war-guilt clause allowed the German government to take war-prompting actions and help result in World War