Touche and a fair point, I was an idiot and got different events confused.
What I meant was the combination of the Kurfurstendamm pogroms of 1931 and 1933 (the latter occurring the same night as the Reichstag Arson probably caused by the Communist van der Lubbe), along with the news of the opening of Dachau.
https://globalurbanhistory.com/2017/03/01/conveying-urban-history-through-apps-berlins-kudamm31/
I will now correct my previous post.
But my point remains: it is misleading and false to claim that the "jewish people worldwide" boycotted the Nazi Reich's products first merely because the April 1st boycott was the first to be national in scope and organized by the Nazis-as-National-Government. That ignores how the NSDAP had been conducting both paramilitary and (in the areas they had obtained control of regional government) boycotts or even pogroms against Jewish (and other 'undesireable') businesses for years prior.
Edit: I previously confused Kristalnacht (which did indeed happen in 1938 well after the Nazi boycotts, the Jewish-spearheaded global counter-boycott in March 1933, and the ensuing Nazi National Boycott on April 1st 1933) with the "boycotts" cum pogroms organized by the SA in the Berlin neighborhood of Kurfurstendamm in 1931 and early 1933. Cacciali Via corrected me, and so I leave this note.
Wrongo. The Nazis has been boycotting and destroying Jewish businesses in the territories they controlled (like Bavaria and East Prussia) since the “wilderness years” before they took power nationwide, https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/4_an/4_Anti-Semitism_September-October_1940.pdf
They did not implement a full, official national boycott of all Jewish businesses until April 1st 1933, but when you have angry brown shirted Socialists hanging around outside you usually don’t need to. And when said Socialist goons had a tendency to bash people over the head with improvised clubs or break up storefronts you have even less of a need to make an organized boycott.
And indeed, they had done this on neighborhood, city, and (in the places where they had control over a German State Government) regional level throughout the early 1930's .
https://globalurbanhistory.com/2017/03/01/conveying-urban-history-through-apps-berlins-kudamm31
The “Jewish” boycott you mention was triggered by one two punch of Nazi stormtroopers using the Reichstag Fire as an excuse to vandalize and boycott Jewish businesses (particularly around Kurfurstendamm, Berlin), and the announcement of Dachau being opened.
https://globalurbanhistory.com/2017/03/01/conveying-urban-history-through-apps-berlins-kudamm31
https://newspapers.ushmm.org/events/dachau-opens
Claiming the Jews boycotted Nazi Germany first is misleading and false because it involves ignoring at least three years of prior behavior by the National Socialist Party.
Damn, ain’t this telling? The Leftists spend as soon as they get it and it shows, because apparently they don’t understand the concept of having reserves on hand. Which is why they are perennially running deficits, both in their private campaigns and in gov’t.
How illustrative!
Nah, he’s a fag.
Mind you: I don’t know or particularly care who he’s shagging or where he’s shagging them. But he could be as celibate as can be and still be a fag.
Because fags throw up smoke and burn yah. Just like Fauci.
- Addendum:
And again, I'm not singling out the Germans for this as being unique (though I do think that a bunch of factors have made them more susceptible).
For instance, in a 1474 a tribunal convened by the Holy German Emperor, the defendant argued that the massacres and serial rapes he ordered were legitimate because they were ordered by his lord and his lord would back him up. The tribunal concluded "They're still indefensible even if your lord did order them, so Go Kiss Axe Now."
And in 1695 several German States (including both Austria- who was the Emperor- and Prussia, who would go on to form modern Germany) [got together with their wartime allies and condemned Louis XIV and his army for the bombardment of Brussels as utterly barbaric and unjustifiable.
So you can sort of imagine what kinds of pressures and molding went into taking people from that to "..(A)ll civilized nations recognize the principle that a subordinate is covered by the orders of his superiors." And to do it in even 200~ years, even factoring in the "convenience" of those cases being used against the enemy.
But what they did do wasn't just "following orders". They had deep-seated resentment and hostility against Serbs.
They also had deep seated resentment against the Turks for obvious reasons, but they didn't go to war with them. ANd considering the Austro-Hungarian government both declared the war and started releasing both extremely harsh "anti-Partisan" and "Pacification" guidelines while simultaneously releasing propaganda songs such as "All Serbs Must Die" and you can get the idea why- when mixed in with said animosity- a higher proportion of Serbs got killed in WWII than got killed in WWII.
I don't think using civilian ships to smuggle weapons is a new thing,
It's not a new thing, but neither is disguising your soldiers as civilians and waiting for the right opportunity to suddenly murder your enemy's troops.
That doesn't make it justified to pre-emptively start shooting every military age civilian you see. because they could be smuggling.
I mean that's the point of blockades, right? Don't let any through without a search, if you let them through at all,
Pretty much, but with a twist. Blockades are generally meant there to stop all trade with a faction, period. No point smuggling stuff in if your vessels can't even dock without being challenged. With the added benefit that it kneecaps other kinds of trade (for instance, food).
Which is why adding a bunch of asterisks and parenthesis to blockade law for "stuff we let through" was actually a rather late, mid-to-late 19th century and after thing.
It's also where I mention that U-Boat warfare opened things up a bit differently because it involved sinking ships in the middle of the ocean, away from areas of blockade (Which is one reason why the Germans accidentally sank a few of their Iron Ore transits from Norway and Sweden a few times- not many, but mostly when they were on the return journey from Dutch ports).
Previously, blockade law involved declaring a bunch of water out of limits and saying you'll challenge or sink anybody in it. And the Germans did that too (which is why they sent out ads warning the Lusitania's passengers and crew before its fateful and illegal voyage). But they also sank shipping outside of that- like in the Mid Atlantic.
There's also problems with countries possibly disguising ships as civilian and ambushing when they get stopped, which was the whole reason Germans just said fuck it and shot first, asked later.
No, the "fuck it and shoot first" came first (Though it was originally limited to certain types of cargo). "Fuck it, let's BTFO after shooting and leave the passengers" was the response to Allied perfidy like disguising subkillers as civilian ships- and not infrequently neutral civilian ships- and then attacking. (Periodically without even bothering to change things like lower the false flag and raise the real one without attacking).
I don't blame them for the latter; after all the Allied actions cruelly endangered the lives of their own and neutral sinking victims.
But it was a response to the extremely escalated German roes of engagement for what was on the sinking menu and what wasn't, as well as where.
And I mean, yeah, political persecution/abduction is pretty damn far from a world war? The Stasi did that too.
The Stasi were a totalitarian regime based on an ideology whose middle-arc goal was a world war (or at least a "global revolution", which in Marxist-Leninist 'logic' meant a world war). So that's not a strong argument.
Especially since the Gestapo and "Chekists" did it too, and we know what they did.
"Hey do you mind kidnapping some guy"
"Hey do you mind fighting on the front lines to invade Poland ? knowing full well that Britain and France vowed to defend it and this will almost certainly break out into another horrific war that might end up destroying your home and country?"
I could write a lot about how overconfidence plagues a lot of people on all sides, and how for the average German before both WWI and WWII could see their nation as being on a winning streak (and indeed Hitler and a bunch of others- both Nazis and non-Nazis- manage to con people and often themselves into believing they hadn't really Lost WWI militarily). But i'll skip back to what I said before.
They aren't similar to us, and even the totalitarian regimes in Germany recognized there was a difference between "arrest these people" and "Invade Belgium", or 'Invade Belgium" and "Shoot these children in a ditch" (which is one reason the SS gave so many pep talks).
But the reason for someone to obey was based on identical premises. "The State has decided this is necessary for the good of the State and the Volk/People, as is their job. Your job is to carry out the will of the state. So follow what the people in uniforms say."
You're thinking like a free citizen in a free country, who is actively involved in the state and helps determine state affairs.
You're not thinking like the average subject of an authoritarian state bound to their liege/lord/state, much less the subject of a totalitarian one who believes they will become one with the magic harmonious socialist Community-State pixie dust.
That doesn't mean that even the state could lie to itself and argue that it was equally easy to demand its people carry out every order. After all, I already pointed out how Armin Wegner carried out orders loyally up to violating the unwritten "Don't mention the fact that our allies and ourselves are committing genocide on an industrial scale" ones- because it's easier to get someone to patch wounded soldiers up than it is to get them to go along with mass murder of defenseless people.
But while they're not equally easy to get people to carry out, the state views them as equally just to order people to carry out. So that's one big ideological cornerstone of the totalitarian state demanding people do whatever already laid.
(I Hope I'm making sense?)
The vast majority of people don't say Yes to that just because someone tells them to. And they didn't, either.
Obviously, I agree.
And this was true in Germany at this time as well. If this hadn't been the case, the German regime- under both Imperial and Nazi versions- wouldn't have spent such exhaustive time trying to browbeat its people into accepting that orders are just because they're orders. And we know damn well, they didn't get it to work with many.
But that doesn't stop these regimes from trying.
And it also doesn't mean you can't break down the resistance of people- even "the vast majority of people"- with strategies. Such as generational cultural indoctrination, good propaganda, rewarding carrots, and threatening sticks.
It's a bit like boiling the frog, to use a common metaphor. And that's why I emphasize the dangers of this and how important the Second Reich's malfunctions are to understanding the Third. Not because the Kaiserreich was identical to the Nazi Reich or because Germans are uniquely and universally evil, but because this sort of stuff can be applied well outside of Germany.
So TL:DR, I'm not saying that "Because the guy with the Mustache said so" was the sole or even most important cause of all or even most of the Austro-Hungarian or German soldiers going to war. But it probably was for some of the soldiers. And it would be a useful influence on many more, mixed in with other appeals and strategies to gin up support and obedience.
And the state's leader telling what passed for the peoples' elected assembly that the army doesn't have to answer to them for a genocide because it only answers to the state's leader is a pretty damn nasty precedent to set.
They got trashed in the last war and whipped into a militarist frenzy for the last several years, complete with deep-seated hatred of all the "undesirables".
Naturally. And cases like Japan, Italy, and a bunch of others show that this kind of threat wasn't dependent on being whipped in the last war and then ginned up was strictly necessary to get a nightmare.
But it does mean that a bunch of the foundation stones were already laid and ready to be used. Not all, not by any means.
But again, Kaiser Wilhelm II was more than willing to tell the public "The Military and Colonial Governments answer to me- not you-, and I have no intention of punishing the Southwest African Colonial Military authorities or the local government for genociding entire ethnic groups."
This wasn't like the Holocaust, where Hitler ordered it to happen, but it showed that Wilhelm was ultimately responsible for it, because he endorsed it after the fact and continued to assert that he had control over the authorities that did it.
I'm not here to uniquely demonize the German people as inherently vile, because frankly the conduct of every faction's troops in the Boxer Rebellion was pretty shameful (with the Russians and Chinese probably being the worst of the lot due to their own private war in Manchuria). And I'm also not going to say that this speech turned every German soldier who heard it into a mass murdering brute (after all, the commander in chief of the combined relief armies was the German von Gaslee, and while he was no saint himself prisoners clearly were taken throughout the campaign).
But while for most governments circa 1900 mass atrocities and the killing of prisoners was a shameful thing best kept out of sight in the colonies if allowed to happen at all, Wilhelm glorified it in public. And that's a pretty stark issue. And a very powerful message to the average person, even without generations of trying to argue that an authority's command is all but holy.
Nobody here's saying "just following orders" is an acceptable justification for anything, both sides agree it's not.
Unfortunately while that's true for us and international law, some people actually have said that.
Not you of course, but like I mentioned: even in Weimar Germany they recognized that war crimes were explicitly acceptable so long as they were authorized by the state (hence things like poison gas).*
Just that Germans in WW2 aren't a good example of someone doing that, because there was far more to it in that case. Whereas the issue here is with cops who actually are "just following orders".
I disagree for different reasons. Because almost any example we use- including these cops- will have more factors than "just following orders." For instance, there's basic, not-raised-in-an-authoritarian-society inclinations to respect authority, and the tendency of positions of authority to attract those with ambition or the desire to use power over others.
Which helps explain why the Gestapo were originally the Prussian Police Department, where a mixture of good cops, bad cops, and meh cops got offered a leg up on the world.
That doesn't mean that your friend the police officer is going to get their jackboots on and drag you to the camps.
(But on the other hand, it might be worth contingency planning for it, unlikely as it is).
But it does mean that the wrong kind of climate, the wrong kind of system, and the wrong values can help "badden" people. And in particular offer opportunities for the bad apples in every society to exercise their nonsense on a grand scale.
Which is why a lot of the petty tyrants in the Prussian Police Department of the 1920's who went around arresting people with ancestral muskets for not having the right paperwork (Stephen P. Halbrook for excellent stuff on that) could get recruited into going into homes and shooting everyone dead when the right circumstances arose.
That's what we're saying. That's why it's a bad comparison to the shit cops do.
Problem is that just like there are shit cops and bad cops, and shit(tier) militaries and less shitty ones, it matters.
you said Austria-Hungary's government wasn't bitter. The people were, they're who rioted and actually carried out the resulting attacks against Serbs. I'm sure the government itself was jolly with the assassination because of that, turning the public's opinion more toward war.
The people were, but in the end the people were-above all- told to shut up and do what the government/man with the moustache/right uniform said. Which is also why they were able to pull people of all kinds of nationalities, ethnicities, and whatnot nd force them to act as one.
Armed forces are among the most authoritarian and "do stuff because I sa so" of any society including free ones (and hence why cops tend to LEAN towards authoritarian personality types; not all obviously, but a lot). Now fix that with broken systems that try to cultivate that, and you get issues.
a far cry from a world war, no?
No, not really.
For the same reason that the SS going around in uniforms (initially fake or stolen military or police ones in the early days before Hitler took power and later new ones) taking people into "protective custody" was not a far cry from world war.
Similar hierarchical logic. Similar hierarchical demands. "Follow what the man with the uniform /moustache says. Do what yu are told. Do not focus on the fine details if they get in the way."
Of course Germany would decide to defend the nation they were in a critical defensive alliance with.
Certainly. But that was because they had far greater ties than just that defensive alliance (hence why Italy was the third wheel on the bicycle and ultimately broke off; because in addition to anti-Austrian animus and "What do we get out of this?" they didn't have the same affection).
I'm not sure whether Wilhelm expected Russia to attack Austria-Hungary or if they thought they could get away with eating Serbia, but we know for a fact Nicholas knew Germany would defend Austria-Hungary.
Sinking neutral ships (which in our case we now know we were using to illegally smuggle weapons to Britain) is also a far cry from world war or genocide. Attacking trade, blockading, that's not very uncommon stuff.
That's the problem: you're thinking like a citizen in a free society rather than an autocrat's subject.
Because in our world- or at least the one we're Supposed to- you would be absolutely right.
But that was not the world Germans were forced to live in in 1916, or even 1909.
Because it wasn't a far cry from sinking neutral ships being used to illegally smuggle weapons to sinking neutral ships that weren't illegally smuggling weapons.
(After all, the crew of the ship had no way to know (unlike now) which one it is, nor did they really try to determine it, and they had notably begun sinking said ships long before their wartime enemies had played the scumbag card of using them for smuggling.).
To us, there's a far cry from sinking neutral ships engaging in illegal smuggling during a war or marching to defend an ally from starting a world war or engaging in genocide. Because we understand that the first set of acts ordered are just.
But the culture of Eastern European Autocratic Socialism (yeah, odd I know, but this had been a thing since Metternich), these things were just because they were ordered by the "right" authorities. Just like it was "right" to use poison gas in violation of the Hague convention and so on.
The common denominator was "Shut up and do what the man with the uniform says. Or else."
All of the governments did bad $hit, don't get me wrong. And every faction and army and nation had people who were demons, and those who were saints.
But this is an attempt to justify essentially anything the government did- up to and including exterminating people- "Because We Say So."
And it was one of the lessons that a young Corporal Shicklegruber would've been exposed to when inducted into the Bavarian Army of the German Reichswehr.
The Second Reich and Austria-Hungary weren't Nazis (except being both Nationalist and Socialiist, but you get what I mean). But they were a lot closer than people like. And that is why it was so hard to break out of the "programming" and resist.
Sounds like there was a lot more to WW1 than just people doing what a mustache man said, then.
Obviously there was, but there was also more to WWII than "People doing what moustache man said."
But that doesn't mean that the average person knew or could afford to care about it.
We're talking more about the sentiments of the people, or the soldiers, or just the guys who'd be following orders. We all know the rulers themselves don't need reasons to be shitty.
So was I.
And indeed, it's at this point in time that I find it's convenient to bring up a case in pre-WWI German history where it really DID boil down to "People doing what moustache man (or rather, officer-uniform-man) said.")
Namely, the Voight Affair.
Usually it's portrayed as a farce or a light hearted comedy (and sure, nobody got killed in it), but imagine an army unit coming in, arresting your mayor, and imposing martial law literally because some punk in the right uniform came out and yelled at them convincingly enough to do so. Which winds up getting you robbed blind.
Which is also why I feel it's worth noting that while what passed for German civil society and the Reichstag were justifiably horrified by this, Wilhelm II and the Imperial Cabinet were amused. And worked to both get the guy off lightly, and to squash any attempts to put the military under civilian oversight (something they also did when the Reichstag complained about German colonial troops committing outright genocide in Namibia).
Most likely because the problem- as far as German Imperial Law was concerned- wasn't that these actions were illegal or inhumane abuses of power, but simply that Voight wasn't one of the people who had the authority ito do them.
So the German Government itself believed that the proper role of civilians was to "follow whatever uniform guy does."
And suddenly, "Just Following Orders*" sounds a lot more familiar, no?
Austria and Germany had been in a defensive alliance for quite a while. I think it was Bismarck that set that up to secure some stability for Germany after it unified, right?
That you're right.
But the key word is, again: Defensive.
IE, it was officially not intended for an offensive war. Though it was used that way.
Austria-Hungary was commencing an offensive war, something the Treaty of the Triple Alliance very clearly said did not oblige Germany or Italy to go to war on its side. Not even in the event of a Russian offensive onto Habsburg soil in the event of a war initiated by the Habsburgs.
So Germany didn't go to war because of the Treaty, it went to war because it decided to.
On the other hand, there was no such pact between Serbia and Russia. Only Russian desire to keep its influence in the slavic Balkans away from Austria-Hungary.
Which is true. But this also means that Russia and Germany were on exactly equal terms regarding it.
i doubt anybody thinks any of the governments involved in these shitshows were acting honestly or benevolently. but actual people themselves don't become terrible without being given convincing reasons beforehand.
Firstly: a lot of "actual people" were already goddamn terrible beforehand (just as a lot of the actual people were saints). So there's going to be a certain number of monsters.
And secondly: that's why I mention the Voight Affair.
In other words, being a subject of an autocratic dictatorship that drills it into your head that your proper place and role is to "obey the guy with the right uniform" and sees no great reasons to implement safeguards to prevent this from being misused.
- It's also at this point in time that the whole "Just Following Orders" thing came up in the war crimes tribunals after WWI (particularly those of German sailors who were guilty of sinking neutral shipping, which the Allies- foolishly- decided to leave to the German legal authority.)
And unsurprisingly, just about every single one of them was acquitted without regard to their conduct or circumstances, because they were "Just Following Orders." Because after all, Superior Orders had been reinforced almost at the expense of everything else in German law and culture to the point where it helped mitigate the criminal liability of out right fraud and thief.
Which- to the extent that Nazi Germany respected any kind of jurisprudence or legal precedent (and the Fuhrerprincip means it really didn't)- that was the legal example that people would look back on and imitate.
so there was no enormous national animosity between Germans and French or bitterness in Austria-Hungary against Serbs for capping one of their royals?
Firstly: I didn't say there wasn't. However, in this case it didn't freaking matter.
Secondly: Austria-Hungary's government didn't really have much bitterness against Serbia for a Serbian terrorist* murdering Franz Ferdinand and his wife (both of whom were unpopular among the royal court for various reasons, like Franz's literla and figurative Slavophilia). They were bitter at Serbia for existing. Period.
The murder of Franz and his wife was just the first casus belli that the rest of the government figured would pass public muster.
Which ties n to the general paranoid panic that Berlin and Vienna had about rushing to war at some time in the near future due to panic about "Capitalist Encirclement" between the Anglo-French in the West and a rapidly developing Russia to the East.
Russians mobilizing at all against austria-hungary was an act of war regardless what they said,
Correct, but it was an act of war against Austria-Hungary, not Germany. And one justified by Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia and the corresponding Russian declaration against t.
So it was not a direct threat to Germany (no matter how indirect a threat it might have been). And since by any logic Austria-Hungary was waging an offensive war, Germany was not legally bound to follow Austria-Hungary to war (as the Italians pointed out explicitly when they stated this. Sure, they did it for less than alturistic or just reasons, but it still stands).
Which again is why the German government had to lie about Russian actions in order to turn them into a valid casus belli. And to conceal the fact that- against any goddamn logic- there was no difference between "The Plan to raise an army from the general populace" and "the plan to send the newly raised army screaming through Western Europe- including two neutral countries- and to do a lot of war stuff."
Which is what disgusts me about this, because if you've EVER objected to a government lying about something in order to get its people into a war, this is a key example.
but still, that was WW1. There was even more fuel for the fanaticism leading into WW2
Sure, but we don't intellectualize away the blame and responsibility for WWII like we pretend that Austria-Hungary and Germany's dictators stumbled into war like the others and just coincidentally wound up with Hitler the Beta Version ruling over them, complicit in half a dozen genocides that were muzzle by persecuting dissidents.
That doesn't mean Tsarist Russia (hah!) or the other powers were saintly. Far from it. But they didn't actively go trying to provoke a war of aggression like the Central Powers had for the past half decade (see: Tangiers, Samoa, etc).
And it certainly doesn't justify Unification or Death's terrorist campaign or use of the murderous dupes in Princip's Young Bosnia (think the short bus Jihadis that blow themselves up from group hugs) to murder a man and his wife and try to kill more.
But then Unification or Death never claimed to be legitimate. They were always illegal, murderous bumholes Should we really accept similar actions by governments?.
- With the secret and unauthorized-by-the-government support of the head of Serb Military Intelligence playing the Balkan Osama Bin-Laden on the side. Can you say "Deep State" outside of the rule of the King and Parliament because the Experts Know Best?
Unfortunately, you're right that Hitler won't be the last.
But a "hero"? He was physically brave, sure. And he was not the complete idiot he's usually made.
But even if you're retarded or ethically bankrupt enough to ignore his mass murder of millions upon millions of people- not just Jews, but also Slavs, Roma, prisoners of war, and so on- down to children, he was still a fucking monster.
The man murdered several of his closest and oldest allies in the Night of the Long Knives merely because they were Accused of planning to depose him. When he heard Rudolf Hess had flown to Britain in order to try and negotiate ap eace, he flew into a rage and demanded that Hess be executed if ever recaptured by Germany.
Oh, and then there's the whole "endorsing Mussolini's genocide of the Germans of South Tyrol" thing.
But go on Socialist Shill, please explain how Otto Strasser (no saint by any stretch of the imagination) was "brainwashed" by "rewritten history controlled by Jewish institutions" because he had his brother murdered without warning by Hitler.
And it gets worse. Because you have to understand, temperature recording has an even shorter span. Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin were all Dead White European Men (TM) who lived inside of 400 years ago.
But wait, it gets worse. Because Fahrenheit the system was invented in the 1720’s. Celsius the system was invented sometime in the 1740’s (ignoring how it wasn’t really only Celciusms system but kitbashed Separates by a bunch of people). And Kelvin?
First conceptualized in 1848, and really created in the 1956’s.
So we really have NO temperature records made using modern units that are older than 300 years ago. Now realize the lag that happened as it took a while for other people to adopt these systems in Europe, for them to go out into the world and be used there, etc etc.
And you will start to have three meagerest idea of how shallow our temperature record is.
That's exactly what happened in WWI. Indeed, the Austro-Hungarians had to ignore the Serbians capitulating to every single tenant of the ultimatum except one (the aone allowing police to sweep through their country and all but occupy it) because that was illegal. And the German government of KAiser BIll had to outright provoke and lie about this because they pointedly ignored the Russians outright stating that they were only mobilizing in the Southwest to go after the Habsburgs.
Even I won't say Wilhelm II or his ilk were as awful as Hitler, but lots and lots of Germans were willing to do way worse things than just start a world war because of stuff said by a dude in a moustache.
Underrated comment.
Nah, it's an overrated comment, but a well intentioned one. And as a history autist I can confirm it's pretty common.
Also underrated is the poverty and humiliation of Versailles and what that turned the Germans into.
The problem is that the indemnities of Versailles were not what caused the poverty Germans suffered. Indeed, they were less per capita than what Germany had imposed on France in the Treaty of Frankfurt in 1873 (and which France paid) and which it imposed on Russia at Brest-Litovsk (but which it never got because Lenin was a backstabbing bastard and Germany was defeated).
The difference is that the French paid up on time and in full because they realized it was a choice between doing that or fucking up their economy and destroying faith in their currency to the ruin of their people.
The German governments knew this, and they did it anyway. Paying for the war by hyperinflation at the start of 1914, destroying the value of their money because they knew that if they won (like they had for the past half century) they'd be able to loot enough to make it good, and if they lost they would be financially salting the Earth and giving the finger to their enemies and victims.
Germany almost went communist during this period (Bavaria briefly did). It's unfortunate that traditional right-wing conservatives didn't rise to the top instead of the 'Bohemian corporal
Germany almost went Communist during this period because it was already a totalitarian socialist dictatorship under Erich Ludendorff called "War Socialism" ("kriegsocializmus"), and so a lot of the "traditional right-wing conservatives" like those serving the Kaiser were about as rabidly socialist, anti-capitalist, and totalitarian as Engels. (And it's at this point that I like pointing out how the German government had propaganda speakers going around blaming "international finance" for the war and declaring that the German race had to fight for it....at around the same time that Hitler was a F'king new guy Corporal).
So the saner and more righteous heads like Konrad Adenaur and the Centre party got swept up by the competing socialists and outmatched, while the Internationalist Socialists fought with the various strands of Proto-National Socialists.
Versailles is underrated and over-blamed. Versailles was a lot more generous per capita than the Treaty of Frankfurt imposed on France in 1873, much less the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the German Empire imposed on Russia after putting their fellow socialists the Bolsheviks in power in Russia.
Versailles didn't stop "War Socialism" from emerging in the German Empire (and being lauded by the usual bunch of socialist idiots like Woodrow Wilson and Upton Sinclair...at least before WWI). Versailles wasn't necessary to explain how the German Army had engaged in reprisal killings and industrial slavery in order to crush resistance prior to it. Versailles didn't prevent colonial management from outright genocide in Namibia or from Wilhelm II stepping in to neuter any attempts to punish its perpetrators It didn't stop the German Government from covering up the genocide of Germany's allies the Turks and Austro-Hungarians in Armenia, Pontus, and Serbia (and persecuting the ethical and loyal Germans- such as Armin Wegner- who sought to cast a light o nit).
Frankly, I think the Treaty of Versailles was too generous for its own good, but I can believe I'm wrong.
But what is clear is that Versailles was more important as a lie- a totem of blame- than an actual cause. Hitler was just an almost uniquely awful metastasize of stuff, but it was of problems that were already there and needed to be cleaned out.
Hitler and his ideology made things worse, but things were already quite bad in Germany, to the point where even the "Democratic Republic" destroyed its own economy through hyperinflation in order to get out of paying reparations to the slave laborers they conscripted from places like Belgium. And acted like a gun grabber par excellance.
There were already saints and good people in Germany before the war, people like Konrad Adenauer and Armin Wegner. But they were easily muffled or silenced.
This is what you get when you take Free-Range Male Feminists and keep them indoors.