Causes of WW2 - the Versailles Treaty

Ethnically spoken the population of Alsace was and still is germanic, but there never was a doubt that they wanted to be part of France.
Ethnicity in no way should impose you a certain nationality, your free will should do so.

 

Alsace, Lorraine & the Saar have been fought over by the West Franks & East Franks since the death of Charlemagne. Suffice to say, whoever did not have them wanted them.

Forcing France to give them up was a huge blow to National pride - as was forcing Germany to give them back.

It would be like forcing the UK to surrender Wales to Germany, or Ameica to give up Texas.

 

There aren´t many Germans in Wales, though, Ricky. So the analogy is a bit a longshot. And Texas.....

Whatever. I was trying to see at the whole thing as a starting point wor bad vibes leading to WW2.
Was there a possibility of a good and fair Versailles? And how would it have looked like, in order to prevent WW2?

 

Just pointing out that both sides believed the territory to be theirs - and both sides had gained the territory by warfare.
That strip of land had originally belonged to the 'Middle Kingdom', owned by Lothar (third son of Charles), which was basically Italy.
Wales was conquered by England, but is now an acccepted part of the UK.
Texas was conquered from Mexico, but imagine if Mexico demanded it back?
On a possibly more relevant note - how would most Israelis feel about Israel returning to the 1948 borders?

agreed

Um...
It is tricky to see how politicians used to playing 'The Great Game', and performing power politics etc etc could/would make such a treaty.

A 'fair' treaty? :-?

 

Exactly my point what happened to france in 1871 was a huge blow and the were desperate to redress the balance and get alsace lorraine back.

the same also can be said of the versailles with the germans it was a huge blow which they desired to redress.

many treaties have been drwn up in the atmosphere of post conflict amd then turned around by the inflicted nation at a later point look what the turks did!

 

A "fair" Versailles treaty would never have been accepted since it was easily argued, and thorougly propaganda-ed, that Germany was to blame for the war and wouldn't get off lightly. Public opinion, especially in France, wouldn't have allowed the Allied politicians to basically slap Germany on the wrist, then tap it on the head and leave it at that. I doubt American public opinion, a new big player in international politics, would have allowed the atrocious Germans to get away with it like that either.

Whatever it would or may have looked like, international relations by that time simply wouldn't allow the treaty to be nice enough to prevent deep-felt resentment among the Germans.