#8217;s coal taken away, they didn’t have enough coal to power the populated industrial country. With industry destroyed there was no way they could pay the reparations. Germany had made proposals dealing with the territorial decisions and reparations; they were willing to give up Alsace-Lorraine (these provinces were reclaimed by France), the province of Posen and North Schleswig and to pay the full reparations if they could only retain their economically good merchant fleet and their colonies. The Allies ignored these proposals so they wouldn’t appear sympathetic to Germany. Germany’s only option was to print more notes, which resulted in disastrous inflation, creating unemployment and causing starvation. Furthermore, to add insult to injury, Germany hadn’t been invited to join the League of Nations. Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations was created, but Germany was not invited to join. Before Germany had signed the Treaty of Versailles, she had read Wilson’s published Fourteen Points, which had misled her into thinking she would be promised self-determination. She later found out that many Germans were now under foreign rule, as seen in the example of the Sudetenland, which was given to Czechoslovakia despite its vast German population. Later on, this German displacement would give Hitler reason to invade countries ‘in search of self-determination’. Germany’s future was not looking bright. The Allies had created impossible reparations to pay, (which had resulted in the invasion of the Rhur Valley by the French in 1923, adding to hate towards the French) they had left no industry to rebuild the economy with, Germany’s territory and population were greatly reduced, and there was tremendous resentment. All of these unjust clauses would make Germany prone to leadership from a strong fascist leader like Hitler.Germany’s democratic Weimar government, which had been set up by th...
