The Treaty That Sparked a Second World War

Exactly five years after the assassination that started World War I, European powers gathered in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles to sign the official peace treaty. Instead of fostering long-term stability, the document imposed crushing financial reparations and deep territorial losses on a humiliated Germany. Economists warned at the time that these harsh conditions would break the country's economy, unknowingly creating the exact geopolitical resentments that would allow Adolf Hitler to rise to power two decades later. #worldwar1 #politicalhistory #worldwar2 #treatyofversailles #shorts