WW1 question....

Because they just lost the war and the winners decide

They started it

There were other countries that started the conflict and other guilty parties. Germany picked the wrong alliances. I just can't understand why they were punished and humiliated so so badly.

They wanted to keep them down of course

Of all the Central Powers (in WWI) they were the biggest threat to the Entente as a united country and because of their geographical location

didn't punish them enough imo

wasn't long before they were having another go

At Versailles the French PM Clemenceau really saw it as an opportunity to ensure French safety for years to come and the British PM Lloyd George, despite wanting to follow Wilson's ideas had to follow British public opinion who wanted to "squeeze Germany till the pips squeak"

In fact canaryboy you couldn't be more wrong, generally accepted that because Germany was so heavily punsished at Versailles, that the Weimar Republic couldn't cope, which gave birth the extremist politics...and therefore the Nazis and then WW2

couldn't we have banned them from having an army?

The German Empire was definitely the main catalyst for WWI. They pressed Austria-Ungary (who wanted to wait longer) to immediately declare war on Serbia.

The Versailles Treaty was absolutely shortsighted and a breeding ground for several new conflicts across Europe.

I think their armaments were severely reduced.

They didn,t end up paying most of the repatrations but they also ended up with hyper-inflation which didn,t help their political system.

canaryboy

There were a lot of military restrictions for Germany. Some of them were violated and under Hitler they didn't really care about it anymore.