How WWI Produced the Holocaust
The First World War paved the way for the American Century, but in fact it was the losers who would dictate the course of history for decades to come.
During the first half of the 20th century European civilization embarked on a journey into the abyss: it moved from being the epicenter of sophistication, civilization, high culture, and knowledge, to become home to the most savage episodes of collective-barbaric-violence ever witnessed in the history of mankind.
World War I was a catastrophic turning point for humanity: 70 million men were mobilized to fight; nearly 10 million perished; communities were annihilated, and massive populations were displaced across Europe. The so call “war to end all wars,” paradoxically, created a more violent planet than what had existed before the first shots were fired.
Much of Europe in 1914 resembled a world of cosmopolitan tolerance, noble aesthetics, grand opera houses, and paternal kingdoms—which in some cases, but not all, ruled with benevolence, providing the subjects were loyal and obedient to their masters. By the time the Great War had ended just four years later, however, the sweep of democracies that had replaced the Tsarist, Habsburg, Ottoman, and German empires resembled something closer to Dante’s Inferno: a chaotic-hellish nightmare razed to the ground. And any semblance of normality that had previously existed seemed to have evaporated.
Many of Europe’s mothers and daughters were victims of extreme sexual abuse and violence, while its fathers and sons were among the scores of millions who lay maimed, wounded, and psychologically damaged for life.
These were the lucky ones who managed to survive.
So did this seemingly stable world, which inherited its rational values from key Enlightenment thinkers— who believed in the progress of humanity— tumble into chaos by mere chance? Or was there any truth to Leon Trotsky’s remark that while history offers no guarantees, it is not without logic.
Technology played an important role in helping to destroy the existing social order. In his 1901 book, Anticipations, the British science fiction author H. G. Wells predicted the decay of political systems across Europe, describing how the mechanization of warfare—which developed rapidly in tandem with modernity—would bring about unprecedented violent changes to the world.
Horrific suffering and horror emerged across both the eastern and western fronts during this period. And by 1918 there had been a tumultuous upheaval of the four dynasties that dominated East and Central Europe. Politics across the continent would never be the same again.
As early as 1905, French sociologist Emile Durkheim warned that while a war between his own nation and Germany would be the “end of everything,” an even darker force was presenting itself in the East: revolutionary socialism.
The United States emerged as the true victor of World War I in every sense. But America’s gain was Europe’s loss.
It would not, he predicted, create heaven on earth as envisioned in epic speeches and radical pamphlets that were being distributed by revolutionaries across Europe. Instead, it would return European civilization back to a period of darkness not witnessed since the Middle Ages.
Given what we what we now know about the heinous crimes committed in the Soviet Union in the name of utopian ideology, Durkheim’s predictions were fairly spot on.
World War I was an orgy of violence that Europe, and indeed the entire world, can still feel the tremors of today as we solemnly mark its centenary and pay our respects to the fallen. But when we grieve their loss, sadly, we now understand: they died for nothing.
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