1) Not really. Bismarck wanted a stable position for Germany.
Yeah right, look at how he went about getting that and stable has been a euphemism for a lot of stuff for a long time. I'm actually reasonably fine with Bismark, by the standards of the day he kept within reasonable bounds knowing when to push and when not to.
2) You completely fail to grasp the dimension of National Socialism. How is "I want colonies and being a respected Weltmacht" equivalent to "lets colonize Eastern Europe and murder everyone"?
Because (again) my point it's not about the deliberate genocide it's about "we want what we think is owned to us, and we'll take it" as the running theme. I get why you latching on to "your calling them nazi's" (although again I'm not) but my point of comparison is not how murderously racist they each where but how Hitler was while saying other things saying some of the same stuff. If it makes you feel better that stuff is not uniquely German either!
All Great Power where thinking in terms of expanding their influence and control. Using your reasoning Winston Churchill fundamentally said the same things Hitler did.
Winston said a lot of shitty things, and yeah in general terms of race, racism and racial superiority a lot of them were similar, what he didn't do is initiate a war that killed first 20m people and then another 40m
Sorry but that just oversimplifies things to an absurd degree.
And saying that the Silent Dictatorship pushed the policies it did, because they feared losing control is another oversimplification. There were numerous reasons and ignoring how Luddendorff and his authoritarian designs basically failed, reveals that you are just making this argument for the sake of crude parallelism between the Kaiserreich and the Third Reich.
The point is it doesn't matter they still did it. How their schemes failed is irrelevant in terms of what actually happened. Also unless you are going to claim their schemes did not involve increasing German hegemony in central Europe and holdings outside Europe, I'm not even sure the parallels are disproved anyway?
3) It proves that France and Britain were acting in the same way that you used as a reason for constructing inherently problematic German traits.
Who talked about specific German traits? Also France invaded Germany in 1914 did it? Also given you just accused me of retroactively justifying WW1 because of WW2, you just did the same because of the Maus-Maus?
4) Are you serious? Being allied with Russia and Serbia is a perfectly good explanation for WW1?
Are you? So it's France's fault and Germany had to invade it via neutral countries, because there's some natural law that's states its unfair or wrong for a county to be in an alliance with another (but of course nothing wrong with Germany being in alliance with A-H).
You are aware how WW1 started?
Yes?
Also you failed to adress how Germany exactly is at fault. You mentioned intent to dominate Europe.
Lets start with invading its neighbors including one it didn't even have a problem with, and go from there. Now you can blame the treaty system if you like for making it worse, but nothing forces Germany to invade. More relevantly to the point Germany invaded with full knowledge of the alliance system (it's why it invaded France first*) it also seemed pretty sure it would win even knowing the alliance repercussions.
*we can talk about Germany deciding to go with the Schlieffen plan, a plan already obsolete but also guaranteed to bring in everyone, but also the only one they had. But remember this is a plan that is inherently created knowing that Germany is going to to go to war with France and Russia at the same time
and needs to break a third parties neutrality (so likely bringing in Britain) to have a chance of knocking out the former before the latter get going.
I honestly see the same intent in permanently crippling Germany. Basically what Germany wanted to do to France.
Right only France did so in Versaille by limitation in response to Germany having a damn good go actually doing so by force, so you can see why France might have been keen to ensure Germany didn't get another chance? Also I don't accept that the the "Crippling" of Germany by the 14 pts of Versaille is equal to what France had gone through in WW1.
You just ignore the German perspective, until this point it had been France who regularly invaded Germany and had grand designs to annex German lands.
Napoleon, this 1830/1840s talk about the natural borders, 1871 where France declared war etc.
1830/40 Germany doesn't really exist so the context is somewhat different. 1871? Yes because that was
all France. Either way 1871 did not end with either side being crippled or in fact anything like the repercussions of WW1. Eitherway Germany/Prussia was happy to take its winnings in 1871 wasn't it? Where's the concern for French resentment? France and Germany/Prussia fought, France lost, Germany/Prussia won. Germany pretty much dictated the terms from a position of strength although as the conflict had been limited relative to WW1 the terms were as well.
On German perspective, I don't ignore it I just don't rank it up there with the perspective of the people it invaded.
Finally on France and 'Napoleon' (albeit an earlier one), seems to me there was a previous europe wide war where we ended up levelling a pretty harsh treaty including reparations, territory losses, the loser funding an occupying army on it's territory for a while etc, etc
Also seems to me that might have something to do with that French chat about natural borders 25 years later etc.
5)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Points
Oh yeah sure, paying reparations for decades, being demilitarized forever, invading the Rhineland and crippling the German economy had absolutely no influence on the failure of Weimar.
Explain to me how this is supposed to be a viable basis for a democracy? I don't think it is at all surprising, that being treated like an enemy eventually lead to hostile people being elected. No one denies responsibility for German actions but not acknowledging that the ToV structurally fucked over the fledgling democracy is pretty bizarre.
Honestly, 'give up your territorial claims, lose some territory, have a small defensive army', it's not nice but well too bad. As to making democracy impossible? Bollocks, others have done better with less. What's it's not is an instant "goto fascism" command.
And I think it is ironic, that you dismiss German wishes as unimportant and say that carving up Germany wasn't "such a bad idea" because Germanly had only been united for nearly 50 years at this point. To me this attitude reeks of the same things that you accuse Germany of.
Selling a peace on the basis of national self-determination and then ignoring that for reasons of power and influence.
No my point was the loss of German territory was to be frank quite a lot of stuff that hadn't been Germany for very long anway, like it or not there were claims and counter claims and WW1 didn't leave many looking to fight or back Germany's claims too hard. But it's not about German territory in particular it's about when you lose wars you tend to lose territory. Again given what Germany was going to do with Brest-litov it's hypocrisy to complain about alsace lorraine and the sudetenland. I also wasn't selling the peace on self determination? And again yes I rank German wishes as less important than others in this context. This seem to be point you keep making, do you think German wishes should be given equal standing?
6) Nice misrepresentation of what I said!
your words where: "I mean Germans weren't enthusiastic when WW2 started, they were tired off war too", shall we count how many countries they invaded 1938 - 1940?
You are aware that Hitler's foreign policy exploits gave him the political capital for WW2? His democratic predecessors, who tried to negotiate a peaceful solution for the unsustainable borders rotted in a concentration camps.
So again we come back to the main point German's resentment of the treatment that was dictated to them after they lost a war they started that cost 10m lives, and 4 years of destruction so therefore there's no choice, all that follows must be? Only why do we have to pander to Germany to avoid its resentment under threat of then doing the same again? Maybe Germany should just not start world wars, and accept the fact that when they do people will be pissed and there will be negative repercussions.
There was also peaceful solution to the borders, and that was don't invade over them! The borders weren't inherently unsustainable*, Germany didn't like them, those are two different things.
*for instance Czechoslovakia seemed to somehow be making them work
7) Its rich that you just ignore how France decided to throw in their lot with Russia and Serbia.
Was there some human rights/democracy reason I am not seeing here or did France bears the responsibility for escalating the situation too?
Did France invade Germany? Is there some rule that France can't ally with Russia? But of course its obviously fine for Germany to ally with A-H? (hang on I've typed this already)
tl,dr: You constantly accuse Germany of stuff that you defend the Entente for. You constantly ignore the German perspective, for example constant French agressions in the past.
I'm guessing you're referring to the 1871 again? (see above). But yeah poor picked on Germany invading France through Neutral countries.
You constantly demonize German people as inherently aggressive and warmongering.
Oh Please, ironic though since your point seems to hinge on the claim that Germany's only possible response was to invade everyone.
I think it is astonishing to not see, how forcefully trying to reduce a Great Power into something close to a failed state, could backfire spectacularly.
And I think you are massively underestimate what a big deal WW1 was and why everyone was as pissed off at Germany as they where. I also think you exaggerating with "Failed state", there's a middle ground between "Great power" and "Failed state". But you know what yeah maybe if Germany hadn't decided to try for Great power status at the expense of it's neighbours we'd all have been be happier (including Germany).
Would Germany has been treated as a Great Power that has lost, instead of trying to cripple it forever, Hitler would have never risen to power.
This comes up a lot, but I think it's really just part of the claim that Germany was particularly hard done by because it was Germany. I'm not sure what you think another great power would have been treated like, that wouldn't be that different from Versaille? Lose of territory, reparations, curtailment of military and economic power this was all pretty standard stuff, and frankly history has seen far, far worse. This fantasy that if it had been not Germany but another country, the rest of the world would have been given them a let, is quite odd and based on no supporting facts that I can see.
I don't demand that a French mother had to understand that in 1918, but in 2018 it is fairly obvious.
Honestly I think its more that 'Versailles was unfair and led to no other possible outcome than Hitler' has become a historically meme that has been far too internalised, and Germany not liking Versailles is not the same as Versaille being unduly unfair or harsh
or tl;dr
Germany: "I don't like Versaille"
Rest of the world: "your not supposed to"
Germany: "well don't blame us if Hitler comes along using it as a rally cry because we don't like it and goes for round 2"
Rest of the world: "if that happens we will blame you, because you not liking a thing doesn't remove your agency, and your like or dislike of a thing is not the sole arbiter of it"