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The Worst Avoidable Disasters In World History

Khalid Elhassan March 15, 2023 33 min

Disaster - The wrecking of the White Ship — The wrecking of the White Ship. Normandy Then and Now

A Demilitarized Zone That Helped Keep the Peace in Europe

The demilitarized Rhineland after World War I. Wikimedia

The 1919 Treaty of Versailles forbade the defeated Germans from stationing armed forces in the Rhineland – a region in western Germany that bordered France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The treaty expressly specified that a violation “in any manner whatsoever… shall be regarded as committing a hostile act“. The demilitarized Rhineland was the single greatest guarantor of peace in Europe. It made it impossible for Germany to attack her western neighbors. Simultaneously, because it left Germany defenseless on her western borders, it made it impossible to attack her eastern neighbors.

So long as the Rhineland was defenseless, if the Germans attacked their eastern neighbors, they would be open to attack from those eastern neighbors’ ally, France, on Germany’s unprotected west. While a demilitarized Rhineland was a positive for European peace, it was a humiliating negative for German pride. One of Hitler’s most popular campaign promises as the Nazis rose to power was to remilitarize the Rhineland. In 1936, he decided to send German soldiers into the Rhineland – a huge risk. In what turned out to be a disaster for the whole world, he was allowed to get away with it.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.