Can you provide some sourcing on that? I hadn't really heard much of that prior to Germany's resumption of USW, the Lusitania not withstanding. Of course there was some ill-will in the US over Germany's behavior in Belgium and over the first round of USW, but I hadn't read about much overt hostility to German-Americans and their culture in the US prior to the Creel Commission and the resumption of USW in 1917.
Wikipedia, admittedly, but with citations at points. See
here,
here and
here.
People like Theodore Roosevelt were already denouncing 'hyphenated Americans' before the war even started. German-Americans felt under sufficient threat that there was a backlash against their persecution in favour of German identity, with people celebrating Wilhelm II's birthday and pointing out Germany's rightness in the war.
One can presumably attribute much of this to the oft-exaggerated stories of the Rape of Belgium (horrible though it was, it wasn't quite as bad as the Entente powers were saying in wartime) which the British were feeding to the American press.
OTOH it didn't make St Germain, Trianon or Sevres look like slaps on the wrist.
A fair point, but Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire already had the precedent whereby the Entente powers in particular (in the former's case) and almost the whole of Europe (in the latter's case) were already widely disposed towards thinking that their collapse was inevitable (the fairness of this assessment of theirs can certainly be disputed but the reality that they had it cannot). Brest-Litovsk was the dismemberment of one of the strongest great powers in the world: the removal of its most valuable parts and the loss of titanic amounts of its natural resources, population and industry. Entente treatment of Germany (which would be analogous to France or Russia or the UK in terms of being regarded as a stable, first-class great power) was incredibly lenient in comparison, hence my point.
Basically weren't all the WW1 peace treaties pretty much of a muchness? Afaik they all followed the same pattern, of stripping off the areas populated by ethnic minorities. So Russia lost more at BL than Germany at Versailles because more of it was inhabited by minorities, while Austria, Hungary and Turkey in turn lost more than Russia had, because they had more "minority" areas still.
Liberation was a useful excuse, yes, but I don't think it was the primary motivation, due to looking at other examples. It's a less chronologically close example to CP WW1 victory than the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, but Alsace-Lorraine in the Treaty of Frankfurt wasn't a case of ethnic minorities, it was opportunistic nationalist expansionism for the sake of placating German nationalists in spite of the people being there (German nationalist claims to the contrary) preferring to be French than German. And Prague, though further away still, was similar in regard to extreme annexations and dismemberment of the empires of first-class great powers (strictly in this case, a sphere of influence rather than an empire).
My contention is that the
Kaiserreich displayed a tendency for sweeping annexations and dismemberment of the empires of first-class great powers beyond what the British, French and Americans did. (The qualifier 'first-class' sounds weaselly but I think that the international attitude of in particular Christian powers to the Ottoman Empire in particular was sufficiently different from attitudes to other great powers that the distinction is worth drawing.)
From what I can gather, a defeated France would have lost Longwy-Briey, possibly Belfort and/or other small border areas, and probably a colony or three. Germany might also have wanted naval bases in French territory, which might or might not have involved annexation. No doubt the French would have been unhappy, but is that really so much worse than Versailles?
Source? Is this the
Septemberprogamm, issued very early in the war at a time when hatred hadn't build up to such a great extent and no-one realised how devastating it was going to be and how much money would be needed to repair damage and pay the cost of the war?
My statement that the Germans would have treated France much more harshly than Versailles is derived from the OTL behaviour of the German Empire and its predecessor-state at Brest-Litovsk, Frankfurt and Prague, in addition to the
Septemberprogramm, the power of the German Army's officers in decision-making and the simple observation that both hatred and the spending of money built up over time.