How punitive policy toward Weimar Germany could become self-fulfilling

This is an argument about how a peace settlement is enforced, not a claim that later aggression should have been ignored. Repeated financial pressure, occupation, and humiliating rhetoric made the Weimar Republic appear unable to defend German interests. That weakness reinforced the stab-in-the-back myth and encouraged elites seeking an authoritarian answer to communism and political instability. Controlled participation in the naval-treaty system might have restored some status while still keeping German strength below France's. In this interpretation, French policy tried to suppress renewed militarism but helped discredit the democratic government most capable of avoiding it. The argument is explicitly counterfactual, but it explains why naval diplomacy mattered to the wider European security order.