> There would be no WW2 if not for Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.
I was taght in school that the reparations the Germany had to pay to the winers of WW1 were the cause of WW2.
Proof: Marshall plan after WW2.
I was taght in school that the reparations the Germany had to pay to the winers of WW1 were the cause of WW2.
Proof: Marshall plan after WW2.
German here. It's partially true, partially wrong. The NSDAP jumped from 2.6% (barely relevant) in 1928 to 18.3% in 1930 [1]. The cause for this is widely assumed to be the 1929 Great Depression leading to an ever growing number of unemployed people that together with the reparations issue made it ever more difficult to pass a budget bill [2].
(Side tangent... it's not surprising we've seen a revival and subsequent surge of the far-right ever since the 2007ff financial crisis.)
> Proof: Marshall plan after WW2.
The Marshall Plan came to be after the Western Allied Powers realized that they shared a somewhat similar worldview but the Soviet Union did not, and that Germany might be needed as a "buffer zone" should the Western-Soviet relations completely collapse.
Up until then... the plans for Germany that circulated were much different, getting to as radical as proposing to completely "salt the earth" aka Morgenthau plan [3].
[1] https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/190456/reichstagswahl...
The USSR did its part, stripping out select industries and moving them to Mother Russia.