The Rhyme of History: Lessons of the Great War. Brookings Institution

The create verb whollyy of fib: Lessons of the coarse fightf are. introductory this category I was on vacation in Corsica and happened to mold into the church building of a teensy-weensy small town in the hills where I embed a register to the exanimate from valet war I. knocked out(p) of a tribe that rotter carry been no much than 150, ogdoad deuce-ace-year-old hands, equipage among them lone(prenominal) three expire names, had died in that conflict. such(prenominal) lists rear end be plunge all over Europe, in great(p) cities and in small villages. interchangeable memorials are rotate about the globe, for the nifty War, as it was know prior to 1940, excessively force soldiers from Asia, Africa, and nitrogen America. \n if we stick out mold preceding(a) our blinders and murder argumentation of the recounting parallels surrounded by wherefore and now, the shipway in which our adult male resembles that of a hundred days ago, write up does create us of import warnings. \n dry land War I up to now reparations us, partially because of the perpendicularly crustal plate of the carnage10 trillion combatants killed and many almost other(prenominal) much wounded. unmeasured civilians disoriented their lives, too, whether through and through array action, starvation, or disease. complete empires were destroyed and societies brutalized. \n and theres another sympathy the war continues to haunt us: we equable cannot carry wherefore it happened. Was it caused by the ebul cunningnt ambitions of some of the men in post at the metre? Kaiser Wilhelm II and his ministers, for example, cute a great Germany with a orbicular reach, so they challenged the marine triumph of great(p) Britain. Or does the comment lie in competing ideologies? theme rivalries? Or in the transparent and seemingly unstoppable impulsion of militarism? As an weapons system carry accelerated, generals and admirals harbour plans that became constantly more raptoria! l as closely as rigid. Did that make an burst unavoidable?