If it had dragged on for two years, Germany would be deep in a famine with centralized power likely breaking down.
No, the easiest way is for France to realize that it must secure German acceptance of the new security order.
Okay, I'll bite. The treaty of Frankfurt, only mirrored the treaty of Tilsit, imposed by Napoleonic France, which utterly humiliated Prussia. Not to mention, the 19th century was the age of nationalism, plenty of German statelets, now part of the German Empire, did have their scores to settle with France. So no, the treaty of Frankfurt didn't come out of thin air either. IIRC the reparations demanded of France, mirrored the reparations France demanded at Tilsit...
WW2 started by Napoleon! Always knew that guy left a mess behind him.
Well, in my scenario, they would have never recovered to get revenge, though.
Which would help France if these 4 Afghanistans/Yugoslavias are busy fighting a civil war - and having completely opposite ideologies would have prevented them from reunify peacefully. Imagine fighting a civil war in the middle of a famine and a starvation?
The thing was that Germany was going to be ready for a round 2 regardless of who took power. If there was anything the Hohenzollern legitimists, National socialists, Liberal democrats, Socialists and Marxists agreed with at the time, it was the conspiracy theory that there was a vast conspiracy out to get the German people, and that conquest and military might was the one way to counteract that conspiracy. Hitler didn't get to prepare the German army for WW2 without prior help from different parties, the German panzer and warplane program started long before he got into power, infact some companies didn't even wait 3 years after the war before producing more chemical gas and armaments for the future war effort. Interwar Germany was fractured sure, but there was bipartisan agreement, only problem was that it was the worst possible bipartisan agreement, that Germany should conquer other territories lands and terrorize the people and ethnic minorities there, foreigners be damned.
And of course, there is still a Russian Empire which would be more willing to enforce the treaty in such a scenario, especially as Tsar Nicholas II does not have to answer to the electorate the same way his British or French counterparts need to. Heck, simply having Russia be non-communist of some flavor or another, be it via no Russian Revolution at all, Kerensky hanging on, or the Whites winning, would probably make the treaty stricter or at least more thoroughly enforced.
The French would be more willing to enforce harsher treatment since they were the ones closest to the action and saw the most horrific German atrocities. The problem with the UK and the US' stance on war was that neither nation has actually had suffered invasion and genocide at the hands of a xenophobic enemy, leading to beliefs that are to be frank, naive views on how the world works. France and Belgium have suffered invasion and subjugation, hence why the common people there weren't as willing to be lukewarm and why they would infact see a more lenient peace as being out of touch with the common man's reality.
Though even in France the will to enforce soon faded. In 1924 the government which had occupied the Ruhr fell from power, and the following year France adhered to the Locarno Pact.
Even so, that was because france was
I'd put it down less to lack of will, and more to lack of ability to enforce it in the presence of economic hostility from both Britain and America for said enforcing.
Well we could simply have pushed news and information for the the British and Americans to not dismiss the German atrocities as Entente propaganda. Though knowing the fact that even to this day crimes like the crucifixion of soldiers and the rape of Belgium are widely denied, even with massive amounts of proof, that is easier said than done.
The crucifixion of soldiers has never been proven beyond doubt that I know of. It is possible it happened in at least one case (Sgt Harry Band) though even that is based on very limited evidence and may be completely false. The Rape of Belgium definitely happened but propaganda generally depicted it fairly differently than the actual atrocities. The reality was a callous and often cold blooded oppression and murder of civilians while the propaganda depicted the deviant acts of the violently deranged. The difference between propaganda and reality tended to make people sceptical of the whole affair in the post-war world. Especially those with less direct experience of the real thing.
As I said before, with the Germans actually trying to be the 'Horrible Hun' in Belgium, why make shit up?
