WI: Defeated Germany Had its Own Talleyrand at Versailles Talks in 1919

[Frodo]

I was reading over Ben's 2010 thread on how Talleyrand essentially saved France from undue punishment during the 1815 Congress of Vienna towards the end of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

It made me wonder -what if a defeated Germany had its own Talleyrand after the end of the First World War?  How would the terms of the Treaty of Versailles been altered?  And how would it have affected the course of world history (i.e. 'butterflies' as they call it in the AH forum) to the present day?  

[politicus]

The Versailles treaty was actually pretty lenient in most aspects with reparation payments and the humiliation of losing German cities and demilitarizing the Rhineland as the main exceptions.

If Germany hadn't had to pay reparations their economic situation would have been much better.

If they had kept Memel +Danzig and didn't needed a referendum in Saar and demilitarization of the Rhineland national pride wouldn't have hurt that much.

In short the Weimar republic would have had a better chance of surviving and the main challenge to it would have come from less radical circles than the Nazis. I think the Third Reich would have been avoided, but Weimar was never a popular project in the German bourgeoisie and some sort of challenge from authoritarian Conservatives were bound to happen.

[GMantis]

A Talleyrand can only help if he is allowed to negotiate. Since the German delegation to those talks was never actually permitted to do so, it's irrelevant how skillful their negotiator was.