Why were the French and the Habsburgs such bitter rivals?
I'm currently reading All Quiet on the Western Front and it got me generally curious about relations between the French and Germans before/during WW1, as well as why the treaty of Versailles punished Germany so heavily for their part in the war. Doing some light googling and reading Wikipedia, I understand that relations between the French and the Germans had been pretty back and forth since the late 1400s, but then even before that the French and the Habsburgs were beefing for control of Europe for a couple centuries before that. I guess my question would be, why did it take until the formation of NATO after WW2 to bring the two together as allies and why did they never come together before that? So many people died in the intervening centuries, and when viewed from a more globalist lens today it seems unnecessary. My understanding of the split between the East Francs and West Francs, at least linguistically, is pretty weak.