Tragic War And Futile Peace: World War I, Part 3

Date:        1992

Conclusion

     For more than four years, the science, wealth, and power of Europe had

been concentrated on the business of destruction. Germany's rapid economic

growth, military buildup, ambitious foreign policy, and inability to control

its Austro-Hungarian ally helped bring the normally competitive European

economic arena to a crisis in the summer of 1914. By violating Belgian

neutrality and declaring war on Russia and France, Germany stood clearly as

the aggressor in the First World War, a fact for which it was severely

punished in the Treaty of Versailles.

     When the victorious Allies gathered at Paris in 1919 to settle the peace,

they did not have the luxury of time, distance, and power the leaders at the

Congress of Vienna had enjoyed in 1815. The 1919 peacemakers had endured the

most destructive war in history. In this total war, psychological methods were

used to motivate all the people of each of the states to hate the enemy,

during and after the war. In these conditions, the treaty settled at

Versailles produced a mere break in the hostilities. Some observers have

referred to the period from 1914 to 1945 as the "New Thirty Years' War."

     With all that the Europeans shared, World War I was a conflict that need

never have been fought. The Europeans threw away the advantages they had

gained since 1815 and set in motion a series of disasters from which they did

not recover until the second half of the twentieth century.