German Forces

The Peace to end Peace.

Guardian newspaper (UK) (collection).

German soldiers dismantling a tank, originally British but captured and turned to German use, Berlin 1919. The humiliation of forced disarmament under the terms of the Versailles Treaty (however understandable from an Allied viewpoint) was one of many that contributed to the rise of the radical Right in Germany. The National Socialists came out on top of the radical Right-wing pile - and the next great war beckoned. The comic historians of England, Sellar and Yeatman, writing in the 1920s, described the Versailles Treaty as "the Peace to end Peace." Prescient. Best regards, JR.