o acknowledged the legitimacy of the German government. The treaty was intended to provide security against a new German aggression, but it would only work with the cooperation of the German government. Taylor states: "The First World War left 'the German question' unsolved, indeed making it ultimately more acute" (Taylor 24). The Allies realized this early, and most of the next decade revolved for them around the still-alive German problem.
Many commentators see Germany as completely devastated by the terms of the peace treaty at the end of the First World War, however. The peace settlement has been described as punitive. It was signed at Versailles and stripped Germany of territory, shipping, and overseas colonies. It further imposed disarmament and a vast war indemnity and left Germany internationally isolated, with no fleet and with her great armed might disbanded. German power in Europe seemed shattered. Novelist Thomas Mann stated that the national existence of Germany was now to be condemned as guilty and erroneous: "Germany became the pariah of Europe; the German people were forced to adjust to a very different post-war world of political uncertainty and economic stagnation" (Overy and Wheatcroft 22). The German people were left with a deep sense of injustice that would scar an entire generation. Indeed, this generation was left with a desire to reverse the judgment of Versailles and to return to the steady upward path Germany had taken before the war. This would lead directly to World War II in 1939: "By that date Hitler had restored German power to a point where it could not remotely be contained within the existing international order, led as it was by the most embittered and radical veterans of German collapse in 1918" (Overy and Wheatcroft 22).
The surrender of the Japanese at the end of World War II was the impetus for the creation of the Republic of Korea. The Japanese surrender was also the start of ...