The First World War is most notable for its wanton destruction of lives--almost 10 million killed, 20 million wounded. The staggering loss of life resulted primarily from the technological advances of modern warfare--including barbed wire, poison gas, the machine gun, and massive artillery--but no small part of the slaughter grew out of the blindness of military tacticians on both sides who continued to rely on huge infantry attacks, in which waves of soldiers burdened with heavy backpacks went over the top of their trenches to be mowed down on an open plain--no-man's-land--time after time.

But the Great War, as it was known, is even more notable for the catastrophic consequences that followed in its wake. World War II, despite its wider impact, remains not just a result of World War I, but an extension of it. At the roots of the Great War were developments that might easily have been avoided. Instead, with what appears to be in hindsight a kind of whimsical carelessness, the great powers plunged Europe into an abyss of suffering and misery, which was then compounded by the cynicism and self-interest that created the terms of the five separate peace treaties in 1919 that concluded the war.

The years preceding the outbreak were marked by relative peace and prosperity, giving the superficial impression of a civilization too advanced for war. However, as with the case of the Titanic, a ship thought too technologically sound to be sunk, there was shaping beneath the surface an iceberg in the form of military buildups fueled by national jealousies and fears. The Germans were envious of the English and French colonial empires in Asia and Africa. The English, in turn, feared Germany's naval development, designed to challenge British supremacy at sea, while the French, still smarting from their loss of Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, armed themselves in anticipation of a reenactment of that war. Meanwhile three imperial powers--Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire--all teetered on the brink of revolution within their borders, sparked by unrest within the ethnic minority populations they had mistreated for years. As a result, the major nations set up a series of alliances designed to ensure mutual protection. In 1907, Britain, Russia, and France formed the Triple Entente, which led Germany to feel both isolated and "surrounded." In turn, the Germans concluded comparable pacts with Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

Thus the fuse was in place; it was lit in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph, was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. Soon after, Austria declared war on Serbia, and Germany, Austria's ally, declared war on Russia and France, leading Great Britain to declare war on Germany. Joining the German and Austrian empires were the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. In 1915, Italy, following a failed attempt to cut a deal with the Austrians on postwar spoils, came into the war on the side of the Allies. In 1917, after considerable soulsearching on the part of President Woodrow Wilson, the United States entered the war, a move that had a decisive effect on the outcome. The war drew to a close amid political chaos and social upheaval. The Russian Empire was transformed into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), while the three empires on the losing side--the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman--were dissolved, transforming the map of Europe and the Middle East in a way that had, and continues to have, profound consequences for the stability of the continent.

The political and economic consequences of World War I were immense. In the popular view of the Allied nations, Germany would have to pay reparations for the enormous damage the war had created. Realists, like the English prime minister, Lloyd George, recognized that the war had so wrecked the German economy that the new German government would be lucky to survive the political upheaval that followed the war. Revolutions, some attempting to mirror the Bolshevik coup in Russia, erupted all over Europe, presaged by the mutinies of soldiers and sailors who simply wanted to go home.

These effects of the war were matched by the social disruption and psychological damage resulting from the 30 million casualties, the dispossession and relocation of ethnic populations, and the disappearance of an established order of life. In 1914, the vast majority of European territory had been controlled by four major imperial powers--Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Four years later those governments had disappeared and Europe found it had to invent itself anew. While that invention took a positive, democratic form in many countries, in Italy, Spain, and Germany, it veered in the destructive direction of fascism and, in the Soviet Union, communism. In Germany, in particular, the inequities of the 1919 peace treaties provided Adolf Hitler with fertile ground on which to sow his seeds of hatred and revenge.

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