1918: The Treaty of Versailles Ending World War I Was a Plan for a Second World War

German mass protest at the Reichstag against the signing of the Treaty of Versailles (the brutal peace). Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, May 15, 1919.

World War I did nothing for the people of the United States. It did not protect their sovereignty and, although the 1920s was a period of prosperity, it did not improve their lot in life. But it produced 21,000 new American millionaires, and the industrialists became even wealthier by supplying the Allies with necessary war goods and loans and, ultimately, the US war machine. Our allies in Europe were so depleted by war’s end that their gold reserves and industrial capacity were now largely dependent on the United States, which controlled almost all of it. As always, the war simply fed the nation’s wealth and power, while maiming and killing thousands.

George Creel, Chairman of the Committee on Public Information. US National Archives and Records Administration, 1918.

Although powers in the government were possibly quite influential in the yellow journalism of Hearst and Pulitzer, World War I was the first time that a government-sponsored effort controlled the mood of the population. On April 13, 1917, President Wilson used the power of propaganda to fuel public fear and hatred of the German people when he assigned yellow journalist George Creel to head up the Committee on Public Information to garner support for World War I. Roughly ten million Americans hailed from the Central Powers that the United States would be fighting, and millions more were Irish-Americans who hated the British. Wilson desperately needed a united America and ordered Creel to garner that support.

And he did, by placing pro-war advertisements in magazines, distributing seventy-five million pamphlets defending the war, and launching a massive campaign for war bonds. He had “four-minute men” excite audiences in theaters with war rallies and encouraged film-makers to produce pro-war movies. And once war broke out, attempts at suppressing German culture in US cities began. German newspapers were closed, and the German language was no longer taught in our schools. Lutheran churches stopped presenting their services in German. Musicians ceased playing Beethoven and Bach, sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage,” and the German measles became known as “liberty measles.” This fear and hatred of the German population spawned vigilante attacks, and the courts frequently found accused defendants of violence not guilty. St. Louis, with a large German-American population, was asked by one of its newspapers “to wipe out everything German in this city.”⁹⁶

The most hideous incident resulting from this anti-German propaganda machine was committed against twenty-nine-year-old German-born bakery employee Robert Prager. Accused of making “disloyal utterances,” he was arrested, and an angry mob dragged him out of jail and hanged him from a tree. Allowed to write a note just before being lynched, Prager wrote, “Dear Parents: I must on this, the 4th day of April 1918, die. Please pray for me, my dear parents.” During the trial of the perpetrators, the defendants wore ribbons of red, white, and blue, and a band in the courtroom played patriotic songs. The jury deliberated only twenty-five minutes before delivering a not-guilty verdict.⁹⁷

The reason given as to why World War II occurred is Hitler’s attack on Poland in 1939, and his determination to rule the world. Yet World War II almost certainly would not have occurred if the Allies had granted Germany an honorable peace, exactly as was given to Japan following World War II. Instead, Germany was left disgraced and in economic ruin, ripe for a despot to come along and sweep it away in his arms. Although there were twenty-seven countries represented at Versailles, the United States, England, and France dominated the peace talks. Yet they weren’t peace negotiations, since the Germans were refused a delegation in Paris, along with Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Hungary. The Paris peace talks were simply a list of demands drawn up by the Allies that Germany and the other belligerents had to sign or be invaded and torn apart.

Prior to the war, Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia, and the domino effect of defense treaties drew one nation after another into the conflict. Germany was certainly not an innocent bystander, and was the Allies’ dominant foe, inflicting millions of casualties both on land and sea, occupying France, and conducting countless bombing raids on the British Isles. Yet if the US, England, and France truly wanted a lasting peace as they did with Japan following World War II, they would not have devastated the German people with the demands the Treaty of Versailles made on its government:

• Under Article 231, Germany accepted sole responsibility for causing the war, even though it was Austria-Hungary that precipitated hostilities.

• Germany had to pay for all civilian damage caused during the war, with the final bill presented by the Allies on May 1, 1921. In the meantime, the German government had to pay $5 billion in today’s currency, with the remainder paid over thirty years.

• Germany would have to ship enormous quantities of coal to Belgium, France, and Italy for ten years.

• Germany agreed to bear the cost of the Allied occupation armies.

• Germany had to agree to the sale of German property in Allied countries to help defray their financial commitment.

• The German Army did not have to surrender, which would have signaled defeat, and was left intact. This was a calculated move.⁹⁸

The war reparations plank was written by John Foster Dulles, future secretary of state under President Eisenhower, causing untold harm to the German people in the years following the war:

• In effect, the German middle class was put on the road to destruction.

• The German mark became hyperinflated.

• It eased the way for a maniac to come to power who unfortunately had the know-how to end inflation like Adolf Hitler, whipping the German people into a nationalistic frenzy.

A member of the British delegation, famed British economist John Maynard Keynes stated, “The peace is outrageous and impossible, and can bring nothing but misfortune behind it.”⁹⁹ That misfortune turned out to be the Holocaust and World War II.

Even General Pershing could not understand why the German army was not forced to admit defeat. What was the ulterior motive of the Allies who conceived this plan? As it turned out, it was easy for Hitler to blame the Jews and Marxists for the war defeat and not the army or the war machine. He called the German politicians who signed the treaty the “November Criminals.” The treaty’s terms were so harsh they almost guaranteed there would be another war. In President Herbert Hoover’s biography of President Wilson, he quotes Ray Stannard Baker who oversaw Wilson’s Press Bureau, referring to the Germans signing the Peace Treaty: “If they do,” he wrote, “it will be with crossed fingers. I can see no real peace in it. They have tempered justice with no mercy.” Hoover further writes, “Even the president said to me, ‘If I were a German, I think I should never sign it.’”¹⁰⁰

The United States Senate never ratified the treaty.