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Treaty Of Versailles

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The way that these atrocities were remembered especially helped to create the legacy of the war that each nation took ahold of and used for their own means. In the case of the French, the hatred that had built up during the war towards the Germans manifested itself in the Treaty of Versailles. The destruction the Germans caused to the countryside along the fronts as they pushed into France and as they retreated left villages and farms in ruin. This, as well as the immense slaughter of French troops, left Germany taking nearly sole responsibility for the war. In a war where blame could ultimately have been pointed at any number of other nations, Germany was pointed to as the cause with the “War Guilt Clause” of the Treaty of Versailles. To a …show more content…

Even though they still occupied French land at the end of the war, Germany was handed a very unfavorable peace that was largely unexpected. It resulted in a widespread resentment of the Treaty of Versailles and downright outrage. The humiliation of the treaty exaggerated the widespread sentiment that the German war effort was sabotaged on the home front. Many right-wing nationalist groups placed the blame squarely on those calling for democratic freedoms and non-German groups, particularly the Jews. The “stab in the back” and the betrayal that many soldiers carried back with them from the front line characterized the legacy of the Great War from the German perspective. The growing anti-Semitism and the humiliation of the peace fueled the memory that characterized Germany in the Inter-War …show more content…

The war continued in the other countries, Central and Allies alike for so long because it remained popular. Russia came across serious problems when their war effort began to be viewed widely among the soldiers as having no purpose. The people eventually turned their blame towards the leadership (generals, politicians, czarists) and Lenin harnessed this anger thus creating the Soviet Union through a long bloody civil war and violent purges. The Russian legacy of the Great War was one not just of mass death at the hands of the enemy, but one of mass death at the hands of their own people. The Russian Civil War claimed the lives of millions of Russian civilians who were caught in the crossfire between the Bolsheviks and the counterrevolutionaries commonly known as the “Whites.” The Russian Civil War caused significantly more damage to an already exhausted country, ultimately cementing Lenin’s control over the new Bolshevik Russia (Berghan “The Totalization of

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