Another game of "what if" and my unoriginal blog titles

As we've learned more and more about the German people's reactions to World War I, my perceptions of events during that time period have changed a great deal. The more that we learn about this, the more I begin to see that after World War I the German people still couldn't see that they had done anything wrong (most German citizens at least). All of the political turmoil going on throughout Germany based on the outcome of the war makes it seem as though many of them look at the ending of the first war to be one of the most insulting things that could have happened to their world. In my opinion, if I had been around at that time the results of Germany’s actions would have been obvious. Where I understand that the German’s saw things like Article 231 as an insult designed to humiliate them (which in many ways it was), the fact that they reacted to it in such a way is beyond me.
For a military society, the loss of territory, no navy, and limiting the army to 100,000 soldiers would have been a devastating blow. However, the sheer number of deaths brought on by their actions seems to have meant nothing to them. I guess it’s just beyond my comprehension that people could not understand how the actions of their government hurt people all over the world in such a way that made their personal honor meaningless. While Article 231 was probably a little bit overboard, I think the fact that many Germans refused to even negotiate made the Article that much more necessary. The concept of Fulfillment should have been something the Germans attached to as the best option available to them for what they had done. I understand that they fought the Article because they saw it as an attack solely to hurt their pride, but couldn’t they see that it wasn’t the responsibility of the rest of the world to clean up the mess they had made? I guess not.
Another thing that I’ve been thinking about is Gustav Stresemann. If he hadn’t died young (or more likely if he had lived in another time in German history) could the things he did be more widely appreciated. He seems to have been another voice of reason and good for the German people if they had only listened to him. From the Dawes Plan, to the Treaty in Locarno, to the Berlin Treaty, it seems as though Stresemann had been setting Germany back on a path that was getting it back onto the world stage without the negativity that went along with the name Germany. I realize that I am constantly thinking of history as the “what of” of my last blog, but if Stresemann had had more time to make changes and attempt to fix some of the fissures within German society, would people have begun to see things his way over the course of time? In all likelihood probably not. If given more time, the people would have probably ousted him and gone about with the things the way they turned out. The German people were just too bitter and angry about how things had turned out for them after the War to end all Wars. Things could have gone along the exact same time line that progressed into WWII even if the Treaty of Versailles hadn't been as heavy handed or Stresemann had never attempted to fix things with German relations throughout the world.