It was called the Great War since the Second World War had not happened yet. Over ten million people died and it was the worse war in history. Until the second one.
Poison gas, machine guns, trenches, mud,mud, and more mud. If it was not for the atomic bomb, the First might have been worse the the Second. Not that both were anything anyone sane would want to go through.
As bad as the war was, the Treaty of Versailles did not end the First World War, it paved the way for the Second, holding Germany down to the point of crippling the country.
It was easy for the US to advocate letting Germany off the hook. We did not suffer the way our European allies did. France saw the northeast part of their country destroyed and Britain suffered horrendous casualties. Russia went through a twenty year cycle of revolution, civil war, and terrible mismanagement at all levels leading to the establishment of the Soviet Union.
The treatment of Germany after the war, some of it deserved, nonetheless led to the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. The good times of the 1920s might have ameliorated Versailles,but when the Great Depression hit, the opportunity for some right-wing lunatic arrived. If it was not Hitler, it would have been someone else.
Sometimes I think the First and Second World Wars were really the same war with a twenty year ceasefire and maybe it should be called the Great Twentieth Century War. The First clearly led to the Second and it is a miracle the Second did not lead to the Third. With the advent of nuclear weapons, a Fourth World War would have never happened.
A century later, we are still here,so there is some hope.
Once again, another reason for aliens not to make contact! :-)
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