Diplomatic Relations of the United States and Germany, 1919-1925
When the holocaust of the first World War had been consummated by the Armistice of November 11, 1918, the skeletal "wreck of Europe" was indeed likened by contemporary historians to a patient sorely in need of immediate medical attention. A blood transfusion, signifying the critical need for food and supplies, was imperative if the prostrated patient was to survive the overwhelming disasters that had befallen him. The anaemic patient in this figure personifies, more than any other European nation, postwar Germany. Although much less encumbered with physical ravages of the appallingly destructive war than those sustained by her triumphant mortal enemy—France—it was the inexorable fate of Germany to witness the collapse of' her government, to behold the defeat of her armies, to wear the yoke of Versailles, and to suffer the pangs of hunger. If France was a crippled patient, Germany was a mentally deranged one; if France was to grieve for her painful wounds, Germany was to know the tortures of the damned.
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