I was always taught that the terms imposed by the Western Allies on Germany after World War I had a humiliating and destructive effect on the German economy and civil society but after reading some of Gerhard Weinberg’s A World At Arms: A Global History of World War II this view has been challenged. He writes: “that Germany had been terribly crushed by the peace settlement, that all manner of horrendous things had been done to her, and that a wide variety of onerous burdens and restrictions imposed upon her by the peace had weakened her into the indefinite future” is really a “popular delusion”. So is the traditional view a myth? If so, how did it become so entrenched in popular knowledge and, finally, what role realistically did the terms of the settlement play in the rise of Nazi Germany?