Or does the explanation lie in competing ideologies? National rivalries? Or in the sheer and seemingly unstoppable momentum of militarism? As an arms race accelerated, generals and admirals made plans that became ever more aggressive as well as rigid. Was it caused by the overweening ambitions of some of the men in power at the time? Kaiser Wilhelm II and his ministers, for example, wanted a greater Germany with a global reach, so they challenged the naval supremacy of Great Britain. Whole empires were destroyed and societies brutalized.īut there’s another reason the war continues to haunt us: we still cannot agree why it happened. Countless civilians lost their lives, too, whether through military action, starvation, or disease. World War I still haunts us, partly because of the sheer scale of the carnage-10 million combatants killed and many more wounded. … if we can see past our blinders and take note of the telling parallels between then and now, the ways in which our world resembles that of a hundred years ago, history does give us valuable warnings. Similar memorials are spread around the globe, for the Great War, as it was known prior to 1940, also drew soldiers from Asia, Africa, and North America. Such lists can be found all over Europe, in great cities and in small villages.

Out of a population that can have been no more than 150, eight young men, bearing among them only three last names, had died in that conflict. E arlier this year I was on holiday in Corsica and happened to wander into the church of a tiny hamlet in the hills where I found a memorial to the dead from World War I.

The war that ended peace