[Section Leader]

The blame for WWII lies with the allies after WWI, if the reparations enforced on Germany hadn't been so harsh it's unlikely that Herr One Bollock would have taken power in the first place. Hitler was indeed one of the most evil men of the 20th century, but, as Oswald Mosley wisely said before his arrest and internment, that war was not in Britain's interests. The Third Reich would almost certainly have torn itself apart in a bloody power struggle after the death of Hitler because ideologies such as Nazism based on racial utopian bullshit invariably turn on themselves once they've defeated all their enemies. Winston Churchill should be regarded as one of Britain's worst traitors, not one of its greatest heroes, not only was he a warmonger, but he bankrupted the country and turned us into Washington DC's bitch.

[colliric]

Japan was fully responsible for warfare in Asia and the Pacific. Their invasion of Manchuria was the real beginning of World War 2 as a major war between Japan and Nationalist China was an inevitable certainty after that. Japan was inevitably going to attempt an invasion of all of China, so for me personally this was the first real action of WW2. Hitler's invasion of Poland was quite similar to japan's invasion, so I wonder if he was watching it closely.

[Smilin' Dave]

The blame for WWII lies with the allies after WWI, if the reparations enforced on Germany hadn't been so harsh it's unlikely that Herr One Bollock would have taken power in the first place.

Highly dubious. Germany's war time reparations had been significantly reduced both in amount and in the pressure to pay them well before the rise of the Nazi Party. The Great Depression was much more relevant in the success of the Nazi Party, and the impact of the Great Depression doesn't really owe a lot to reparations either. While reclaiming lost 'German' areas was part of the party platform, I don't think it was significant in Nazi success either since a whole range of parties backed this concept.

[Okonkwo]

Germany's war time reparations had been significantly reduced both in amount and in the pressure to pay them well before the rise of the Nazi Party.

The reparations didn't even constitute a massive economic disadvantage as the then-prevalent propaganda would have us believe. As you've already pointed out, the main problem with the Versailles settlement did not lie in its actual execution but rather in the effect it had on German society as a whole. The fact that both the left and the right political parties decried it as "shameful"/"imperialistic" and the thereby damaged relationship with France did much more harm than the conditions of the treaty themselves.

The blame for WWII lies with the allies after WWI, if the reparations enforced on Germany hadn't been so harsh it's unlikely that Herr One Bollock would have taken power in the first place.

The economic crisis that allowed Hitler to take power was the worldwide Great Depression. It was unemployment, the disintegration of the middle class and overburdened state welfare that caused the Weimar Republic to fall and made it possible for Hitler to be proclaimed Chancellor of the Reich by President von Hindenburg (he didn't "take power" at all, there was no coup involved. Hitler rather waited for power to simply fall into his hands)

The direct responsibility for the Second World War clearly lies with Germany. A tradition of expansionism and excessive nationalism made the Nazis annex Austria and Czechoslovakia, the invasion of Poland (that was based on false premises) may have been the last straw for the Allies, for the German leadership it only represented one step further towards "Lebensraum" in Eastern Europe and the fulfilment of the Nazi ideology.