The thing is, the leaders knew well that the treaty was abusive, but they made it that way because the people wanted Germany to pay. For example, David Lloyd George (England) made the Germans pay not because he wanted to, but because that's what the people wanted to listen. They said they wanted Germany to be "squeezed like a lemon". They had lost a lot of men in the war. France had been destroyed during the war, both its economy and land. The people wanted money to repair their country. Clémenceau knew that it was too much, but he let it that way because he wanted to do what the people wanted. The US hadn't really been affected by the war. There was very little that happened there (relatively speaking). Woodrow Wilson wanted a fair peace, but that couldn't happen because of the other 2. Basically, the treaty of Versailles was a political clusterfuck with terrible consequences.