ABSTRACT
Many Europeans and Americans who witnessed the creation of the Treaty of Versailles predicted that its provisions would make a second world war inevitable. Those critics who survived until 1939 no doubt felt vindicated in their judgment. They saw Germany use the Polish corridor that the Allies had carved out of East Prussia as the excuse for the invasion of Poland that triggered World War II. Germany already had raised international tension to an intolerable pitch by successfully sweeping aside the other hated provisions of the Versailles settlement—reparations, disarmament, the demilitarization of the Rhineland, the prohibition against German-Austrian union, and the border with Czechoslovakia.
