A controversial and important work of revisionist history that rebuts the accepted version of the role of the Versailles Peace Treaty in the rise of Nazism and the unleashing of World War II. In this authoritative, Jurgen Tampke disputes this commonplace view. He argues that Germany got away with its responsibility for World War I and its behaviour during it; that the treaty was nowhere near as punitive as has been long felt: that the German hyper-inflation of the 1920s was at least partly a deliberate policy to minimise the cost of paying reparations; and that World War II was a continuation of Germany's longstanding war aims.