The idea that there is a straight line between Versailles and Hitler, its a tidy narrative. But do we believe that Hitler wouldn't have tried to gain power anyway? He was a white supremacist, genocidal anti-Semitic demagogue and megalomaniac. His agenda wasnt avenging Versailles.

Hitler's beef was that Germany lost and he believed that they lost because of the old stab in the back. Then, and i think this is where the meat is, he had all these complex racial theories about aryan supremacy and a lot of hateful nonsense about Jews, Slavs and Marxists.

Versailles did not create Hitler, Germany losing is was set him off. That and a bunch of racist stuff you can read about if you care to, buyer beware.

All this to say, perpetuating the Versailles=WWII narrative is helpful to a guy like Putin because it makes an American and Western world order look like a disaster waiting to happen. But you certainly have to overlook a lot of major factors. Putin's analysis is a bit shallow.

What, more than anything, created WWII? In my view, racism and ethnic nationalism, and that narrative is somewhat less helpful to Putin.