How did the Treaty of Versailles punish Germany after World War I?

The Treaty
of Versailles stripped Germany of a considerable amount of territory, slashed the size of the
German armed forces, and imposed massive reparations payments on the postwar German government.
All of this was based on a so-called "war guilt" clause in the Treaty in which the
Germans accepted full responsibility for starting the war. The terms, which were imposed upon
the new Weimar Republic that governed Germany after the war, were humiliating for the Germans,
and contributed to a toxic politicalin postwar Germany that facilitated the rise of political
extremists like the Nazis. Moreover, the reparations payments were ruinous to the German economy
in the short term. The German government struggled to make the payments, and France actually
occupied the Saar Valley in order to enforce them. Runaway inflation set in that brought the
economy and the Weimar government to the brink of collapse in the mid-1920s. Above all, the fact
that the Treaty was signed by the Weimar government (the Kaiser having abdicated at the end of
the war) made it very unpopular across the political spectrum. 

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