The First World War

Chapter 1 begins by summarizing the enormous costs of a war that did not, in the author’s opinion, need to be fought. It claimed the lives of 10 million people, traumatized a generation, and laid the groundwork for a second and even more destructive world war a mere 20 years later. It brought about violence and suffering on a scale and scope unprecedented in European history. The untold number of corpses left on the battlefields gave rise to the concept of the “unknown soldier” as a symbolic figure of national renown, and Hitler would describe himself as an unknown soldier in his rise to power. Even though no large cities were destroyed and the suffering of civilians was relatively mild (certainly compared to the Second World War), and European populations eventually returned to prewar levels, the war inflicted incalculable damage on European civilization, giving way to totalitarian regimes in Spain, Germany, Italy, and Russia. It exposed wounds that festered long enough to plunge Europe into war yet again, often on the exact same battlefields as before. While the combatants of the latter conflict approached it with a grim awareness of what to expect, the people who went to war in 1914 had no concept of what they were about to endure.