There are much worse crimes done against people than simply killing them. Defeat the enemy, kill them, assimilate them but get off their back after the battle. Forcing them to live a hopeless existence after the fact is the real crime.
Keynes said it best with respect to the "Treaty of Versailles".
"The economic strain put on Germany was probably the single most important factor in increasing hostility of the Germans towards Britain and France. The Germans by 1921 had paid off almost half of the $5,000,000,000 charged by Versailles. Then the reparations committee finally met and determined that Germany should pay another $25,000,000,000, plus other costs, bringing the total up to $32,500,000,000 to be paid by 1963! (3) This demand, however, was ridiculous. Germany had hardly enough money to pay the entire original fee. In 1918, the German Reichsbank had only $577,089,500 dollars. (4) This demand would crush the German economy, and many experts predicted it could even cause the starvation of the German people. Leading economist of the time John Maynard Keynes said of this, "The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable . . . . Nations are not authorized, by religion or by natural morals, to visit on the children of their enemies the misdoings of parents or rulers." (5) Very ironically, Keynes made this observation in a book in 1920, a year before the reparations committee officially added on the new $25,000,000,000 fine!" |
