How did the terms of Germany's surrender in World War I lay the groundwork for Hitler's rise to power and ultimately World War II? The terms of Germany's surrender in World War I laid the groundwork for Hitler's rise to power and ultimately World War II because of the controversial Treaty of Versailles and the Weimar Republic.
             To begin, the Treaty of Versailles, derived at the Paris Peace Conference, ended World War I. The four nations that controlled the punishment of Germany, known as the Big Four, were the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy. The leaders from The Big Four were Woodrow Wilson of the United States, David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy. President Wilson, prior to the end of the war, had already written a treaty to end World War I. Wilson's treaty was called Wilson's Fourteen Points and would be used as the bases of the Treaty of Versailles (Versailles, OCLC).
             The League of Nations (Articles one through twenty-six), point fourteen of Wilson's Fourteen Points, would unite countries across the globe to stop all future wars (Fourteen Points). The League of Nations had little power in regulating countries because the United States failed to join the League. The introduction of the Treaty of Versailles dealing with the League of Nations states "THE HIGH CONTRACTING PARTIES, In order to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war by the prescription of open, just and honorable relations between nations by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among Governments, and by the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one another Agree to this Covenant of the League of Nations (Schoenher...