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I was told that in college also. I disagree. While the treaty in question required reparations [in gold] from Germany; the world wide depression had more to do with bankrupting Germany than did the Treaty of Versailles. As I recall the German economy was doing all right until the late 1920’s.
As to the U.S. deliberately targeting civilians I do take issue with that statement. Read History the U.S. engaged in daylight bombing of Germany [as opposed to the British who carpet bombed at night] this was done so as to improve bombing accuracy and help limit civilian casualties. The British tried to get us to change our method over to theirs [night bombing] many U.S. bomber crews were lost in daylight raids over Germany in this effort.
While much of this information comes from books, my father has also verified these facts [he flew B-17’s over Germany]
The bombing campaign in Japan had to be conducted differently since Japanese manufacturing was spread out in small machine shops throughout the city; it was different than bombing the industrial Ruhr Valley of Germany. In addition the Japanese were not going to surrender even after it was apparent to their leadership that they had lost the war.
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