After four years of fighting that left millions dead on both sides, the Central Powers were finally at the mercy of the Western Allies. Britain and France sought to solidify their victory, continuing the blockade of vital supplies until their former enemies agreed to demilitarize, give up vast territories, pay vast war reparations1, and acknowledge sole responsibility for causing the war. As a result, the new German government was weak, impoverished, and unpopular, rendering it unable to put up much resistance to extremism that was in turn made all the worse by the treaty’s harshness. The rest is history: Hitler gets elected, another war starts, Allied powers are subjected to much harsher occupations than before, and millions more die, the exact outcome the Allies were trying to prevent.
After years of poverty and humiliation at the hands of the Western Allies, having lost much of its territory, Germany elects a leader whose primary aim is to restore these losses and bring the German nation to heights as yet unseen. The government revitalizes the economy by building a vast war machine, demanding unceasing concessions from their neighbors until they finally enter another war with their old foes. At first this goes shockingly well, as the wealthiest areas of Europe fall one after another and their territory grows larger than it has ever been. But after declaring war on the Soviet Union and the United States, victories turn into stalemates and eventually defeats. By the end of the war, German lands are the smallest they have been in centuries and the people suffered under even more horrible conditions than they started in.
After another six years of fighting that left tens of millions dead on both sides, the Axis powers were at the mercy of the Allies2 once again. Britain and France were even more economically spent than before, leaving the U.S. as the most powerful of the Western nations. This time, however, lessons were learned from the past. Instead of leaving weak governments ruling over impoverished and resentful citizens, the U.S. offered economic aid to its former foes, including Germany, Japan, and other nations it had just fought years of bloody war against. Many were outraged and sought terms more akin to the ones following the First World War, if not even harsher. But this turned out to be so incredibly successful that the Western Allies’ enemies remain among their most faithful friends even eighty years later.
So what can we learn from this bloody cycle and how it was ended? There are more specific and practical takeaways, especially emphasizing Machiavelli’s point that “Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot.” But in a larger sense, it is a call to step back and carefully consider the effects that your actions will have on the future. This can be hard to do, especially after a major war where so many sacrificed so much, but ensuring that you are embarking on the right course of action can prevent an even greater amount of suffering in the future. And if you find yourself about to repeat actions that previously led to disaster under similar circumstances3, it is worth trying your best to find another way.
Footnotes
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which Germany didn’t finish paying off until ninety years later in 2010. ↩
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this time joined by a victorious Soviet Union who wound up on their side despite some complexity at the start of the war. ↩
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for you or others. ↩