How Did World War 1 Affect People's History?

Throughout recorded history there have been relatively few man made events which have so universally impacted the world’s history as dramatically as did the First World War on so many levels. It was such a pivotal event in bringing the world into the modern age and bringing about its emancipation from the old traditional ways and types of government, that some historians do not mark the changing of the century at 1900 but instead they use the end of the war or at least the Russian Revolution in 1917 as the real change between the centuries. The war resulted in the downfall of four traditional styled monarchies, the first in Russia in 1917, then Austria-Hungary and Germany in 1918, and finally Turkey in 1922. The other traditional European old monarchies that remained past the end of the war were left questioning what was next for them, many would need to be re-invented but all would be forever changed with their old power base collapsing underneath their

Additionally the war started the eventual breakup of the European colonial system which further led to the confusion as the old world fell apart so quickly while many nations were grasping to hold onto the old ways of life. The changes that would result within a generation would leave people that were old enough to remember the old ways to wonder if they had lived two lives with such vast changes occurring. Within this paper I plan to demonstrate where and why these changes may have started and how they effected the people within Europe and how they changed the world’s path and direction to address new realities after witnessing the true brutality that humans can inflict upon each other. Additionally how these changes were viewed and how these views changed over time when confronted with new