I'm opposed to the Treaty of Versailles on the grounds that it was punitive and inflicted economic misery on the German people. This is pretty indisputable. As far as I'm concerned, arguments about the causal link between the Treaty of Versailles and Hitler are irrelevant: it's a fact that the Treaty of Versailles damaged the European economy and caused unnecessary pain and suffering on the party of working class Europeans. I'm opposed to economic reparations or sanctions being used instruments of retributive justice. There are very few cases in which economic penalties or sanctions successfully disincentivized the resumption of conflict.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_PeaceOn another note, I'm proud to be an American whenever I remember the Marshall Plan. After World War II, we had every reason to plow over Berlin and Tokyo and sow the soil with salt. Instead, we helped create a fair, egalitarian and stable framework for future generations. Germany and Japan are imperfect but they're also testaments to the success of a more humane economic/foreign policy framework. It's a shame that we forgot about this remarkable success within the span of a mere generation...
I disagree with bedstuy's claim that the success of Nazi German economic policy is "a myth". Nazi economic policy was certainly successful in comparison the economic strategy employed during Chancellor Bruning's tenure. Nazi economic policy was certainly successful in comparison to other European nations. Does this mean that Nazi policies delivered the benefits of this growth to the German public? No, of course not! In this regard, they were as evil as you'd expect them to be. That doesn't change the fact that Nazi Germany provides us with an inadvertently strong argument in favor of counter-cyclical spending. I don't see why that shouldn't be a takeaway from the 1930s: the bad guys were more innovative than the lackadaisical good guys. This is why macroeconomics
matters.
(PIB is GDP in French)
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