> They took the lessons from Versailles
what lessons? The Allies didn't occupy Germany at all. Germany would have resumed the war if that was what the Versailles conference came up with, and the Allies had no stomach for more war.
what lessons? The Allies didn't occupy Germany at all. Germany would have resumed the war if that was what the Versailles conference came up with, and the Allies had no stomach for more war.
Of course we did [1]. The ACC was far more intrusive than the American occupation of Japan; we formally stripped Germany of its sovereignty.
EDIT: the lesson from Versailles was that we had to rebuild Germany. To rebuild required occupation. Occupying Germany after WWII was one of the lessons learned from Versailles.
> Germany would have resumed the war
Germany was in no position to keep fighting.
in the past no occupation led war again a generation later, so the second time around occupation was opted for.
OP said we learned from Versailles. That’s why we occupied Germany after WWII: to rebuild it.
> Germany was in no position to keep fighting.
No one was in 1918 and everyone was exhausted, but "defending the homeland" is a more powerful motivator than anything the Allies had. Germany asked for an Armistice "on the basis of the 14 Points" which did not include occupation.
The US had just entered the war after the Zimmerman telegram, and so Allied powers had more man power and more industrial strength. The Central powers were the ones that were exhausted, especially after the Hundred Days Offensive.
The British and French were equally exhausted. Their casualties combined were about the same as Germany's:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties
You're right that Germany was whipped, but the persistence of the "stab in the back" theory in the 20's and 30's demonstrated that they hadn't quite internalized that. After all, they hadn't been invaded, and "news" back then was so heavily censored that the Germans didn't all know the real situation.
France lost 4.3% of its population. The USA lost 0.1% of its population. I wouldn't call that equally exhausted.
Even so, the UK lost 3/4 million from 45 million whereas France lost 1.1 million from 39 million .. so that's kind of order of magnitude roughly ballpark from a distance, but France got hit harder.
The "lessons of Versailles" is a dumb phrase. Germany only asked for an Armistice "on the basis of the 14 Points" although Wilson didn't manage to pull that off over England and France's objections.
So we have two counterfactuals, neither of which can be settled:
1) Wilson doesn't propound his 14 Points. Perhaps he loses the election of 1912.
2) He does and the Armistice happens as it actually did, but the Paris Peace Conference declares that the Allies are going to occupy Germany and reshape its government, or maybe Germany is to be dismembered.
It's #2 that this phrase seems to imply. I'd claim that if that happens, no peace treaty is signed at all, similar to the way that the Korean War is technically still going on. The Allies would not have invaded Germany. Russia was already out of the war.
Occupy while you rebuild?
You are correct that the punitive nature of the Treaty of Versailles made for good grist for the mill when those same agitators to point at the "unfair" consequences of the betrayal.
After WWII there was no one who could possibly say that Germany had not been completely and utterly defeated (and the Allies, at least the western ones with respect to western Germany) did invest in rebuilding the country.
The lesson for WWII was that as shameful it could be for Japan to surrender inconditionally, it was needed to shut those sectors of the society that would think they could had won the war if only...
This was more a problem with Japan than Germany in the WWII: Germany never (seriously) wanted a negotiated peace, and specially the soviets didn't want any of that. It's know that Hitler and friends wanted either victory or the complete annihilation of Germany. But Japan actively tried in the last couple of months of the war to achieve a conditional surrender.
Hitler knew that he'd be hung when the war was over. He knew what happened to Mussolini. He was never going to allow a negotiated peace.
The idea behind the officers' plot to kill him was that then Germany could sue for peace. Failing to kill Hitler meant the war was going to continue to the bitter end.