Opinion | Russia has to pay a price for Ukraine war, but Europe must avoid crippling its economy and stoking hatred

EU sanctions could leave Russia in ruins if Putin’s brutal war drags on, drawing worrying parallels with 1930s Germany

The mistakes of the Treaty of Versailles offer a warning on how economic punishment can give rise to extreme nationalism and expansionism

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Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, speaks on the sidelines of an EU meeting on May 20, where member states adopted a sixth package of sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Photo: EU Council/DPA

Published: 3:30am, 7 Jun 2022Updated: 5:00am, 7 Jun 2022

In 1920, as the terms of the Treaty of Versailles started to bite, a British woman in Germany wrote a note in her diary. Evelyn, Princess Blücher – English wife of a German aristocrat – was already certain that Germans would seek vengeance on the foreign nations imposing crippling punishment on them for Germany’s actions in World War I.

“An undying hatred will be smouldering in the heart of every German,” she wrote, “over and over again I hear the same refrain, ‘We shall hate our conquerors with a hatred that will only cease when the day of our revenge comes’.”

A century later, we must ask whether Western states are in danger of creating the same dynamic in Russia in response to its appalling aggression in Ukraine.

The treaty, signed on June 28, 1919, formally ended WWI by placing all blame for the war on Germany. The Germans agreed to largely demilitarise, give up their empire, and pay the cost of all damages – 132 billion gold marks, equivalent to more than US$260 billion today.

The entire German navy’s surface fleet sailed to Scotland to be surrendered; after a tense stand-off, German commanders scuttled the fleet, sending 52 of the 74 warships to the sea floor.

Economist John Maynard Keynes also warned of the folly of the Versailles settlement, and that the economic crippling of Germany would do the Allied Powers no favours.