The new German government, more democratic than any previous one, accepted the Treaty of Versailles because there really was no alternative. Most Germans hoped for the day when the terms of the Treaty could be broken or reversed.
J.M. Keynes, the British economist, comments in 1920 on the decision to make Germany pay for the war:
"It is evident that Germany's pre-war capacity to pay an annual foreign tribute has not been unaffected by the almost total loss of her colonies, her overseas connections, her mercantile marine, and her foreign properties, by the cession of ten percent of her territory and population, of one third of her coal and of three quarters of her iron ore, by two million casualties amongst men in the prime of life, by starvation of her people for four years, by the burden of a vast war debt, by the depreciation of her currency to less than one seventh its former value, by the disruption of her allies and their territories, by revolution at home and Bolshevism on her borders and by all the unmeasured ruin in strength and hope of four years of all-swallowing war and final defeat."
Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf in 1925 comments on the Treaty of Versailles:
"Peace treaties whose demands are a scourge to nations not seldom strike the first roll of drums for the uprising to come. In the boundlessness of its oppression, the shamelessness of its demands, lies the greatest propaganda weapon for the re-awakening of a nation's dormant spirits of life."