Did Germany suffer a bigger national trauma after World War 1 or 2?

[Snaut]

In the context of Germany, 1945 was certainly a liberation, especially for those sitting in the prisons and camps, but also for the general population finally set free from the horrors of war. Of course, that liberation was accompanied by new hardships and the violence of occupation, but that wasn't comparable to what had preceded it.

It may have been an improvement. But to me it's not a liberation if the population can't consider itself free after it is done.

But why then separate Danzig from Germany, if not to f*ck Germany over a little bid more?

The Weimar Republic had difficulty accepting any changes to the 1914 border and began an economic conflict with Poland soon after the war ended. This would have been more successful than in OTL if Germany had also had the option of blocking Poland's baltic trade. Maybe the best solution for everyone involved might have been for the treaty to have mandated a plebiscite in Danzig 25 years or so down the line.

 

[Curtain Jerker]

WWII. The country literally ceased to exist for a few years. And that was after millions dead, cities destroyed, women raped, populations expelled, and all the other traumas people have mentioned already post WWII.

 

[JanWellem]

Well... I wonder why this wasn't possible in "complicated" areas like Elsass-Lothringen. Maybe it was less about Wilson's idealism and more about France wanting to regain Elsass-Lothringen no matter what, even against the wishes of the Alsatians and Lorrains?

In 1918, after being fed up with how they were treated by Imperial Germany, a majority of Alsatians wanted Alsace returned to France. In Lorraine, which unlike Alsace had been and, with the exception of Metz, where the military and civilian administrators and their families sent there from the rest of Germany had tilted the balance slightly in favour of German after 1871, remained overwhelmingly francophone throughout the 1871 - 1918 period, the desire to be returned to France was never even in question. In Alsace, which had always been overwhelmingly germanophone, the heavy handed Prussian civilian and military administration had turned the population clearly pro-French by 1918, but the Third Republic's heavy handed policy towards minority languages, i.e. the enforcement of the use of standard French, quickly soured any enthusiasm about being French again after 1920.

Ww1 to me. Ww2 more death, more destruction and clearly they were responsible for the war and the crimes committed. However psychologically I believe ww1 was a greater trauma because they really believed they would win and losing was unfathomable. Ww2 most Germans did not have expectations of victory or they jubilance they want into the First World War, it was a night and day how they viewed them going in

After the experience of 1914 - 1918 the German population was understandibly less eager to go to war in 1939 than it had been in 1914, but after the initial successes of 1940, many were pretty much convinced, that victory was just around the corner, a notion, which didn't start to show cracks until Stalingrad in early 1943 and was only shattered through the quick advance of the Allied armies in France after D-Day and the quick Soviet advance after the launch of Operation Bagration in the summer of 1944.

Yes, there were those who indeed considered dismembering Germany. Foch wanted to annex the Rhineland (and was told to shut the heck up by his civilian bosses) and the French did attempt to support separatist groups in the Rhineland in the 1920s, only to find that there weren't really any separatists.

There was Rhenish separatism, the problem was, that the French mistook the term for meaning Rhinelanders, who wanted to be completely seperate from Germany instead of just Catholic Rhinelanders, who had never really been happy to have fallen under prussian rule in 1815, and wanted to be seperate from the state of Prussia within Germany.

 

[Alcsentre Calanice]

In 1918, after being fed up with how they were treated by Imperial Germany, a majority of Alsatians wanted Alsace returned to France.

Well, it wouldn't have been problematic to hold a fair plebiscite then, or would it?

In Alsace, which had always been overwhelmingly germanophone, the heavy handed Prussian civilian and military administration had turned the population clearly pro-French by 1918, but the Third Republic's heavy handed policy towards minority languages, i.e. the enforcement of the use of standard French, quickly soured any enthusiasm about being French again after 1920.

That's the tragedy of the Alsatians...