Britain claimed that it was forced to act in 1914 to secure its borders and the Channel ports, but in reality its borders and Channel ports became less secure when it engaged Germany.
The Russians and Serbs had a legitimate gripe against Germany and Austria-Hungary, who in turn had a legitimate gripe against the Serbs for assassinating Archduke Ferdinand.
Drawing Italy, India, the UK, Australia, Turkey, and France into that war made little sense...dominoes of paper treaties costing millions of lives, and the intervention by Japan, Canada, and the U.S. made even less sense (though far lest costly overall for them, at least).
Worse, besides those geopolitical mistakes, countless tactical mistakes were made such as how to combat submarine warfare, gas warfare, entrenched machine guns, aerial combat, etc.
France suffered 64% national casualties from the above errors...its warrior class was wiped out and its militant culture changed forever, though it didn’t recognize that culture-shift until after WW2.
Argentina stayed out of that war and prospered by selling war materials.
China entered WW1 on the side of the Allies, but after the war all of the German ports and bases in China were instead given to...Japan.
This enraged the Chinese. Students such as Mao Tse Tung and Chou En-Lai rallied mass demonstrations in Tiananmen Square against the results of the peace treaty at Versailles, and formed the Communist Party in China when their demands were ignored by the Allies.
Worse, giving the Chinese ports to Japan merely stoked Japan’s territorial desires instead of enamoring Japan with its Allies.
Combined with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, one can quickly see that not only was entry into WW1 catastrophic, and not only was the execution of tactics in the catastrophic, but also that the conclusion of WW1 was so badly botched that civil war in China as well as global war such a short time later circa 1939 became inevitable.
Yes, I have always thought it accomplished nothing but get a lot of people killed, and assure there would be another war.
There is a new book out called “The Sleepwalkers. How Europe Went to War in 1914” by Christopher Clark. It is a detailed study of how European diplomats and government officials basically stumbled into the war. No one and no country comes out looking good, even less looking innocent. One of the most interesting parts of the book relate the political and economic advances of the Austrian and Slovak parts of the Austo-Hungarian Empire. It was an astonishingly modern state. It will probably be the definitive work on the subject from here on out. It’s available on Amazon and well worth the read.
We made pretty much these points in “Patriot’s History of the Modern World, vol. 1” The thing is, everyone, including the Brits, wanted the war. They were perhaps the least enthusiastic, but each nation saw advantages to a war, since none thought it would go on long. There is a good book on the German way of war that argues the Germany’s central position and lack of defensible borders dictated all strategy since Napoleon and emphasized the offensive.
Excellent summation.
Evrerything you said is true and rational, but the powers that be insist that moloch be fed. Even now.
French knew they had lost most of their warrior class. That’s why they build the maginot Line. They didn’t have enough troops to defend itself and hoped the forts would do it.