World Wars One and Two

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The way the First World War ended left embittered and unresolved issues and disputes that would prove to carry on and would lay the foundation for the second World War two decades later.
The Treaty of Versailles can be said to be the single most important, indirect cause of World War II. It placed the blame, or "war guilt" solely upon Germany. Secondly, harsh reparations imposed by the treaty hampered the German economy by causing rapid inflation and caused people to support parties like the Nazis and the Communists. In Germany, the Treaty forced the country to limit its armed forces to 100,000, forbade it having an air force, demilitarized the Rhineland, a region in western Germany next to France, and placed the Saar region under the League of Nations' control. These restrictions not only restricted the growth of the German economy, but also created bitter resentment towards the victors of the First World War within Germany making it easy to whip up popular sentiment against the Western Allies. A part of that resentment was that many Germans felt that they had never been truly defeated in battle since the country had never been conquered; many felt that the German government had agreed to an armistice on the understanding that Wilson's Fourteen Points would be used as a guideline for the peace treaty. However, the Treaty of Versailles and the subsequent peace treaties disregarded the Fourteen Points in m...

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