The idea that one can punish a country so severely that it can never make war again is an idea about as criminal in intention as whatever that country itself may have done during the last war.

In any case, the German's main sin in WWI, a war into which all the involved powers enthusiastically stumbled through being entangled in binding alliances, was this: the Germans lost it. They also had fought very effectively and had almost won it. That made them the official "bad guys" when it ended....the official scapegoat for everyone's collective woes.

If they'd won it, someone else would have taken the blame and been "punished" for the whole thing, I'm sure. Probably France and Russia.

Russia, of course, was punished too after WWI because of their Communist revolution. The Allies fielded armies in Russia and assisted the White Russians against the Reds for some time, but the Reds won in the end regardless.

Thus was set the stage for future eventualities such as the rise of Naziism, the Russo-German invasion of Poland in '39, the Russo-German non-aggression pact which so shocked the West in '39, and the whole ensuing bloody conflict of WWII.

Revenge is never a good political policy....