Asher Sisneros

Today, some people seem to have borderline sympathy for Hitler, seeing him as a deliverer to the German people following the impossibly high reparations imposed on them post-WWI. However, sympathy for the German people can become seriously misplaced when it evolves into sympathy for Hitler and his policies. After all, there is a tremendous difference between criticizing the Versailles Treaty and condoning Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. Of course, much has been written on the millions killed in the Holocaust. However, that is not the only stain on Hitler’s legacy. He also implemented the Aktion T4, otherwise known as the T4 Program, which euthanized handicaps inside of Germany because they were “useless mouths to feed” who could not contribute to the general welfare. If serial killers are condemned and drug cartels are villainized, how is genocide any different? Is it because a “single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”¹? While human nature may implicitly view facts through that lens, objectively speaking, if one death is evil, a million deaths is demonstrably inexcusable. The question is not whether Hitler is a villain; it is whether policies during WWI caused WWII and whether Hitler’s rise to power was preventable.  

In a sense, the answer is yes. Nobody could have known the influence Hitler would have on Germany leading up to WWII immediately during the aftermath of WWI. Predicting that would have been impossible; at the time, he was just a low-ranking lance corporal. However, the circumstances that allowed Hitler and his Nazi Party to rise to power were, in all likelihood, preventable. 

For one, there was the problem with the Treaty of Versailles and how it directly contradicted President Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen points. Yet Wilson’s fourteen points were the basis of German surrender.² With American involvement, the Allies successfully depleted German resources. Seeing victory as impossible, they agreed to surrender with the assumption that Wilson’s involvement would create a fair settlement with, as Wilson said, “no contributions, no punitive damages.”³ But that is not what Germany received. Instead, they were barred from participating in the negotiations and forced to pay an unconditional, unspecified amount of reparation payments to the Allies under the threat of invasion. To quote Ralph Raico, “The sum eventually proposed was said to amount to more than the entire wealth of Germany,”⁴ a policy that economically crippled the state. 

Another issue came from the Allies’ violation of Wilson’s principle of self-determination, one of the promises made in exchange for German surrender. Wilson rightfully believed that all people should be free to choose their own government, whether that be the right to create an independent state as America had done in 1776 or the right to join another nation as Texas had done in 1845. After all, self-determination is the bedrock of democracy. Even so, Austria, Salzburg, and Tyrol were forbidden from joining Germany and creating German-Austria, despite the fact that their assemblies voted for it with over 95 percent majorities. 

Moreover, the redrawn borders created a phenomenon of widespread, state-supported discrimination against the Germans in Czechoslovakia and mob violence in Poland.⁵ In fact, in 1931, the League of Nations publicly reprimanded Poland’s terrorism against the ethnic Germans, but “no effective action was taken,” and the “British delegates had ‘frankly adopted the view that where German minorities were concerned, it was for the German Government to look after their interests.’ After 1933,” with the election of Adolf Hitler and the rise of the Nazi Party, the “German government chose to do exactly that, in its own savage way.”⁶

Hitler’s Nazi Party was initially a fringe group, but in a matter of years, it became the dominant political power in Germany. He did not gain support through chicanery. Rather, it was because his message resonated with the people of Germany. When he said victory in WWI was robbed from Germany because of internal sabotage, they believed him. When he spoke of the possibility to “make Germany great again,” they said hallelujah. If the Allies had listened to President Wilson and not enforced unjust reparations on Germany; if they had heeded the tradition of the Congress of Vienna and not redrawn maps; if they had let the people of each region decide on their own form of government and not subjugated them to other powers, then perhaps Hitler would have never rose to power. Following the Congress of Vienna, France’s global ambitions were thwarted and it endured conflicts internally. If the diplomats in Versailles emulated their predecessors, perhaps Germany would have never invaded Poland and Hitler would not be in the history books. 

It is impossible to know what outcomes might have been if circumstances were different. History does not work like that. What is known is that Germany resented the post-war world, and Hitler proposed retribution. While no one can know what would have happened if the Treaty of Versailles conformed to Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen points, it is a question worth pondering. If the treaty was different, could Hitler have been stopped, and could WWII have been prevented? It seems probable. If so, everything gained in the Treaty of Versailles was a very small price for the lives of a generation of young men who died in WWII and the horrors endured under the Hitler regime—it was a very small price.

1.  This quote is often attributed to Joseph Stalin, although no citation exists for that phrase’s exact wording ↩︎
2. Ralph Raico, “The Road to World War II,” (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, Mises Daily, November 9, 2012), par. 4. 
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3. Ibid, par. 5. ↩︎
4.  Ibid, par. 9. ↩︎
5. Ibid, par. 18-19 ↩︎
6.  Ibid, par. 25 ↩︎