Why was the war guilt clause in the treaty of versailles the most difficult term for germany to accept?

The treaty concluded at Versailles to end the Great War of 1914 - 1918 has been widely blamed for fostering the subsequent emergence of National Socialism. The treaty’s indemnity and reparations clauses are cited for causing the successive financial crises that destabilized the Weimar Republic. Its requirement that Germany assume sole responsibility for the conflict, the "War Guilt clause," is seen as an insult to national pride permanently discrediting the Republic that accepted it. Yet, at the same time, Versailles left the essential elements of German power intact and maintained Germany’s existence as an independent state. The result was a peace that fell between two stools. Neither conciliatory nor punitive, it fostered the confusion and destabilization on which the Nazis thrived.

An alternative approach to developments in Germany after 1918 sees the source of the country’s economic crisis not in the Versailles treaty but in the economic policies adopted to fight World War I. This view interprets Germany’s rejection of the Republic in antidemocratic attitudes and ideas deeply rooted in German society, exacerbated by a comprehensive, officially encouraged effort to present Germany as a victim of Allied vengefulness. The amount of reparations was less significant than Germany’s determination to do no more to fulfill its obligations than it was compelled to do.

Scholarly reassessments of the Versailles treaty increasingly depict it as the best possible compromise given the existing circumstances. Its framers regarded it as a work in progress, with the simultaneous tasks of solving the immediate problems arising from the war and establishing the framework of an enduring international system. The treaty was subject to revision and modification in both principle and practice. It gave Europe over a decade of stability and provided a workable basis for negotiations between Germany and its former enemies. Had the Great Depression not struck Europe when it did, the process of peaceful adjustment under the mantle of Versailles might have gone even further.