Was the Treaty of Versailles too harsh, or not harsh enough?

Both, depending on who you ask, and that is the real answer: the Treaty of Versailles was a compromise that left no one satisfied. Signed on 28 June 1919, it ended the war between Germany and most of the Allies. It took 65,000 square kilometres and 7 million people from Germany, capped its army at 100,000 men, and in Article 231, the "War Guilt" clause, made Germany accept responsibility for the war's loss and damage. Germany was not even allowed to take part in the negotiations.

Two famous critics drew opposite conclusions. The British economist John Maynard Keynes, who had been at the conference for the Treasury, called it a "Carthaginian peace" and believed the reparations were many times more than Germany could pay. The French marshal Ferdinand Foch thought it far too lenient: "This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years."

The treaty's real flaw may be that it did neither job. Germany was not pacified, not reconciled, and not permanently weakened. Germans saw it as a humiliation, and Hitler built his speeches on blaming it, which is why it is often named as a cause of World War II, which began in September 1939, barely twenty years later.

Historians still argue. Some point out that the small army saved Germany enough money to afford the bill, and that the Great Depression, not Versailles, killed German democracy. The last payment arrived in 2010.