How did World War I change the global landscape? Why was it so destructive to the global community?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary but correct responses should include: World War I was a crucible in which the world seemed to dissolve, awaiting an alchemist to reforge it in a better form. The elites who had started the war could not control its course or its costs. The war destroyed states, elites, empires, and traditional ways of life. Almost 10 million men died in action. There were 25 million casualties in all. The war wiped out a generation of the natural leaders of Europe. That in itself ensured disruption and discontinuity in European history. The war ended by provoking political revolution or transformation wherever its armies marched. Twelve new sovereign, or virtually sovereign, states emerged in Europe or on its borders. Superstates were demolished, frontiers reshuffled, overseas colonies swiveled and swapped. The Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires were felled at a stroke. Even the United Kingdom lost a limb, when revolution and civil war broke out in Ireland in 1916 and ended with, in effect, independence for most of the island in 1922 . Huge migrations redistributed peoples. After the war, more than one million Turks and Greeks shunted to safety across the newly drawn borders of their mutually hostile states.