“History” is lived forward. Hitler was not inevitable; there are no inevitabilities. That is Hegelian-Communist nonsense.
The problem with the Versailles Treaty was not that it was punitive, but that it was absurdly punitive - it provided an excellent pretext for revanchism, no matter which party arose. Versailles was a rallying cry for Lenin, too, who considered it a “bomb beneath Europe waiting for one spark.”
The Soviet Union had a great deal to do with Germany’s ABILITY to wage strategic war by 1939. In 1920, General von Seeckt of the German High Command began secret negotiations with Soviet Russia to collaborate on military experiments on Soviet soil; in 1922 they formalized the relationship with the Treaty of Rapallo. Under that treaty, Germany for over a decade (until Hitler formally cancelled the arrangement in 1933 or 34) developed the air, tank and infantry tactics and weapons that would be used in the blitzkrieg. They even jointly developed a blitzkrieg doctrine - the Soviets called it “offensive in depth” or “deep penetration.” At home, the Communist Party of Germany was strong, and fed on similar resentments to the German Workers’ Party, which became the National Sozialismus German Workers’ Party in I think 1920. As I mentioned both groups somewhat mysteriously had the same day for a national revolutionary uprising in 1923. But furrther down the road, from 1928-33, the Communists and Nazis often collaborated against their mutual enemy, the establish German Social Democratic Party under Stresseman.
And of course we have the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which among other things provided for massive Soviet deliveries of strategic materials, including oil and metals, without which Germany was simply incapable of waging mass armored warfare.
To sum up, the Versailles=Hitler trop is not very convincing in light of a ton of other more important forms of cooperation between the USSR and the German Oberkommando between the wars.
And don’t forget that the Soviet NKVD and German Gestapo and Abwehr had contacts and began collaboration as early as 1938, over one year before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was
You raise some interesting points but nothing you say dissuades me from the idea that German defeat and the Versailles Treaty fertilized the ground for Hitler.
Hitler wasn’t just another run-of-the mill German militarist conspiring with the Soviets to build blitzkrieg techniques. He was a unique and terrible manifestation of pure evil that I don’t see happening had Germany won WWI or had there been an exhausting stalemate with no clear winner.
I just don’t see how Hitler comes to power in a victorious (or non-defeated) Germany.
I just don’t see it.
And though it’s obviously true that no one in 1917 could have predicted the rise of Hitler, it is absolutely true that people throughout the ages have warned of “unintended consequences” of going to war... and Wilson didn’t listen... and Hitler was one of those consequences, however unintended.