Comment by panick21_

You are just repeating the same old story, that was pushed by Waimar and Nazi propaganda, that has long been overturned by modern scholarship.

Germans didn't love authoritarianism. Well over half the population voted Communist, Social democrat or with the center party. And usually far more, only in the middle of massive economic depression did the Nazis gain ground. Arguable the communist are 'authoritarians' but they don't think of themselves that way. And many who did vote for the Nazis weren't authoritarians either. Germany had the largest social democratic movement in the world.

The whole 'bled the country dry with reparations' is just weimar/nazi propaganda. Germany reparations were not that extreme, and specially when you compare on what reparations Germany forced on its enemies. Germany could heave paid the reparations without much issue. All the claims that poor little Germany couldn't handle it is Waimar propaganda that the Nazis continued and intensified. Somehow they can spend 20+ of GDP on building a military, but the reparations are somehow impossible.

> Nazi figures like Goebbels who was constantly broke, struggling to pay bills and ranted about financial enslavement of his people.

What if I told you that there are poor people in all nations? And people struggle in lots of place. Germany in 1920 did better then most nations on the plant. And Goebbles was likely in the Top 1 of global population. And you are literally quoting the propaganda minister, of course that is the impression he wants to give.

> The excessive treatment made them see themselves as freedom fighters. Of course, that's not what people are taught in school in Britain or France, it's an inconvenient narrative.

Except that's exactly what people are thought in school. The whole 'extreme reparations' nonsense is the standard view. Its only in the last couple decades that this was seriously questioned by economists and historians.