World War I had a tremendous impact on Europe. By the end of the war the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires would collapse. The outcome of the war would create the modern world, but not without taking a devastating toll on those European countries involved in it. In John Keegan’s The First World War, we are given a battle-by-battle account of the war against a backdrop of European sociopolitical events and policies. Nationalism, technological progress, a lack of international law, and failed diplomacy are provided as reasons in Keegan’s analysis for the disaster that was World War I.
Keegan provides us with a description of the blunders, insults and perceived insults that led to World War I. The war was stupidly fought in general, and while the Allies won it was at a staggering cost with little lasting value. Basically the war planted the seeds of World War II because of the enmity, humiliation and demand for vengeance it left in its wake across a devastated Europe. Keegan also argues that advanced technology with respect to transportation and military weaponry, combined with flawed policy like the Schlieffen Plan were responsible for the enormous toll taken by the war. In his prologue entitled A European Tragedy, Keegan writes:
The First World War was a tragic and unnecessary conflict. Unnecessary because the train of events that led to its outbreak might have been broken at any point during the five weeks of crisis that preceded the first clash of arms, had prudence or common goodwill found a voice; tragic because the consequences of the first clash ended the lives of ten million human beings, tortured the emotional lives of millions more, destroyed the benevolent and optimistic culture of the European continent and left, when the guns at least fell silent four years later, a legacy of political rancor and racial hatred so intense that no explanation of the causes of the Second World War can stand with...