What followed went on to be the worst conflict the world had ever seen. Little did they know the sequel would be nastier and every war that came after it, like Police Academy.
World War I is such a horrible waste of lives but to me it proves a personal theory I’ve concocting since college; when a nation/people/whatever hasn’t been in an all-encompassing war for a generation or longer, the last war is rather romanticized. Therefore it’s not difficult to have the younger people sucked into participating with lies of how easy and exciting it will be. Plus the nation’s leadership tends to have chickenhawks at the helm too.
For example, the American Civil War. The US hadn’t been in a major, long-term conflict for almost 50 years. Everything after the War of 1812 had been brief and didn’t involve harnessing the nation’s resources indefinitely. Both sides figured the fighting would be over in a matter of weeks (and they would prevail) while numerous young men signed up for the adventure. It dragged on for four years. Rinse and repeat with the Spanish-American War.
With the Europeans, the last major dust up on their continent was the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. In the four decades afterwards they had turned their efforts on to Africa and Asia. The UK had a dress rehearsal for WWI with the Boer War in South Africa. The Russians learned nothing from the Russo-Japanese War, namely how behind the curve they were. World War I seemed to be inevitable. The various European regimes were walking around with their chests puffed out in a similar fashion frat boys do on Sixth Street when they hang with the bros. So when a nut-job kills the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, the dominoes began to fall because “Hey man, I won’t back in front of my bros, else I look like a pussy.” Reason evaporates as it’s replaced by force ignorant of the bigger consequences, especially by those who’ve never seen battle (Bush II, Romney and Cheney).
Brace yourselves for all the retrospectives looking back on the War to End All Wars. I had a preview during my childhood courtesy of my maternal grandfather. He was born in 1904 which gave him a removed, American perspective over what was happening and it was colored by him being only 10 when the initial events began.