World War I : The Fiction of Guilt 9.7 million soldiers; 10 million civilians. Lives were given to the war; lives were taken by the war. Families were broken by the war. Lands were annihilated by the war. Hatred was nurtured by the war. Minds were, and remain, troubled by the war. The first world war, which was truly a global war, is a scar burned into human history. It is a jagged rock that, instead of skipping smoothly, bombed the water, leaving behind a ripple that continues to reverberate today. The European map was entirely redrawn. Treaties were signed to reveal the true winners and losers. Austria-Hungary dissolved into several smaller nations and Russian land yielded the new countries of Finland and Poland. And though these nation-states decomposed, many others grew; many others waned. However, both the winners and the …show more content…
Feelings of patriotism flourished and national pride grew overwhelming. National power and identity became a potent force. However, while some nation-states arose dominant, others evinced weak. Parallel to their countries, citizens proved pompous, or they grew resentful. It was through this accumulation of nationalism that the second world war surfaced decades later, leaving behind millions of corpses to accompany those of the previous. World War I was an earthquake felt throughout the globe; its tremors reached every country, either directly or indirectly. However, “the war to end all wars” ended in an armistice that affected one specific country greater than any other: Germany. The Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, forced the Germans to not only claim the utter guilt of the war, but to pay reparations to pay for the damages that “they” caused. This treaty left a permanent flaw in Germany’s national identity, which ultimately led to the second world war. This