“Among Americans the most notable was General John J Pershing, who (iirc) predicted in 1918 that unless the allies marched all the way to Berlin, the Germans would come back for round-two in twenty years.”
Yes, but how many predictions do people make that never pan out? Pershing, I doubt, could have anticipated why Germany would live to fight another day. There was the “stab in the back” thing, yeah. But moreso, it was the depression, brought on by France’s aggression and Germany’s stupidity. Then there was the insane ideologue dictator thing, brought on by the depression among other things.
There was a way to set Germany on the right path, and it didn’t involve killing thousands more of their citizens. That was to encourage their economy. Treat them like a friend. Like we later treated West Germnay. Help them grow their exports, which truly was the only way for them to pay their reparations (if they ever were going to pay them). No inflation, no depression, no political turmoil and leadership weakness, and there’s nothing for Nazis to exploit. Who cares about who stabbed who in the back when times are good?
Of course, all this depends on world leaderes knowing how to act, and they don’t. They would screw up their economies roughly as bad as Germany’s in short order. All I’ll say is that even if invasion was the only way to put down Germany’s bellicosity, you can always invade in 1938 anyway.
A lot of revisionists want us to think that World Wars One and Two were all about something other than German aggression. I'd say that's a bit like trying to claim that the Napoleonic wars were all about something other than Napoleon. In both cases, they just weren't.
And there were plenty of people at the end of the First World War -- not just US General Pershing -- who clearly understood that what the Germans were asking for was not "peace," but simply a breather for them to regroup, rearm and get ready for the next round.
Imho, the most important figure in this time -- the one name which best ties both wars together -- was German General Eric Ludendorff.
We first see him as a young general staff officer from 1905 through 1913, under first, Count Alfred von Schlieffen and then General Helmuth von Moltke the Younger.
Many historians say the "von Schlieffen plan" should more accurately be called the "von Moltke plan," which in practice means it was largely the detailed work of Eric Ludendorff.
In August 1914, von Moltke the Younger was THE key figure in pushing Kaiser Willy into declaring war on his young cousin, Tsar Nicky.
Point is, Ludendorff's planning helped launch the Great War, and in the end, Ludendorff called the shots in 1918, when Germany finally cried "uncle."
But Ludendorff was not in the least ready to abandon German imperial ambitions, and we see him again in 1923, in Munich, doing what? Do you know? ;-)
That's right, Ludendorff marched side by side with his then close ally, that firey young rabble rouser -- Adolf Hitler -- in the Munich putsch. When bullets were fired at them, Hitler fell or was pushed down. Ludendorff remained standing.
So there was an absolute continuity in German imperial ambitions from pre-WWI planning all the way through the Third Reich. This had little to do with Nazism, and everything to do with German militarism. The Nazis simply tapped into ambitions which were already there.
My point is: there were people outside Germany who well understood that German imperial militarism would eventually find it's leadership role, and then the war would resume where it left off.
So my argument is: Versailles didn't really matter, runaway inflation didn't matter, the great depression didn't really matter and even the Nazis didn't matter. The Germans were going to do what they were going to do, almost regardless of other circumstances. It was only really a question of when, and how.
In short, Hitler was simply an actor who best played the role imagined for him by the German body politic -- or at least by that military leadership which even in November 1918 wanted to call off the armistice, and go back to war.
And what is the proof of my theory? It's this: even in the 1920's, while Hitler was still a nobody, and the Weimar Republic was struggling along on loans from America, the German military was building, testing and exercising tank warfare, in secret, in Russia. It was also beginning to build larger warships than allowed by various treaties.
I say again, this had nothing to do with Hitler. Hitler simply put himself in front of the movement, and claimed to be its leader. What he did was dramatic, and it worked.