“Actually, Europe died in the mud of the Great War ... Verdun, Somme, Paaschendale, etc.”
True. Europe lost their desire to defend Western Civilization. They bled themselves white on those battlefields. Afterwards there was no desire to put themselves in a position where they may have to visit those horrors again, which gave Hitler an open avenue to institute the very thing Europe was trying to avoid.
Most people view WWII as the most important war, but in reality it was WWI. All else flowed from it even to this day.
Sir Edward Gray, British Foreign Secretary at the time, is said to have remarked, literally on the eve of the German invasion of Belgium in 1914, “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time”.
He was right.
Absolutely right.
Truth. The more you investigate WWII history the more you realize how important WWI was.