Four empires were removed from the map: the Imperial German, the Austro-
Hungarian, the Russian and the Ottoman. In place of being dominated by the shifting
relations among Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia, East–Central Europe suddenly
was populated by an array of new, weak states. These states, especially Poland and
Czechoslovakia, separated Germany from Russia. But they could not possibly serve a
serious barrier function once Germany or Russia, or both, recovered from their low
condition of the 1920s.
The war shifted global financial leadership from Britain to the United States.
Because of its devastation, intensity and duration, the war reintroduced ideology into
international relations. The Bolshevik coup of October 1917 introduced a regime whose
formal raison d’être, beliefs and behaviour were at least as fundamentally menacing to
world order as had been the ideology and actions of the first French Republic in the
1790s. In addition, the entry of the United States into the war, also in 1917, introduced
a popularly inspiring, but naïvely idealistic, liberal ideology into the statecraft of
peacemaking. Some elements of that ideology were widely shared in Britain.
The way the war was concluded, with an armistice and the subsequent settlement,
left the defeated states, and even some of the victors (e.g., Italy and Japan), vengeful and
determined upon revision. The victors did not seek to destroy Germany’s potential to
return one day to the ranks of the great powers. The peacemakers of 1919 neglected
the most fundamental rule of sound peacemaking: specifically, if a post-war order is to
endure and provide only for stable and orderly changes, it is essential that the defeated
parties should accept their defeat. They have to be granted a vital stake in the new
international order and, after a probationary period, gradually be reabsorbed into the
general and full working of international relations. The war should not be conducted
militarily, or concluded diplomatically, in such a way that defeated states are left with a
permanent sense of acute grievance.
The process of peacemaking revealed with crystal clarity the deep divisions among
the leaders of the victorious coalition. They agreed on almost nothing of great impor-
tance. The Alliance, plus its American co-belligerent, that had won the war dissolved
almost as rapidly as did the armies of its offshore members, Britain and the United States.
At root, the problem was that the war had not concluded with the destruction of Germany.
With good reason, France was obsessively worried about a future threat from Germany,
but Britain and the United States were all but indifferent to that distinctively French
concern, a concern that seemed absurd to Britons and Americans at the time.
The events of 1914–1 8 had a near-traumatic impact upon popular attitudes to warfare,
particularly in the Western democracies. It would be hard to overstate the war’s socio-
cultural reach. At least 65 million men in total had been mobilized, more than 9 million
had died, and the grand total of casualties was of the order of 32 million (killed, wounded
and POWs). World War I left a legacy of profound aversion to war among the peoples
who might one day be challenged to protect the international order that succeeded it.
Although not a direct consequence of the war, it is essential not to forget the great
pandemic of Spanish influenza which struck globally in 191 8 –19. This ghastly episode
was far more deadly than was the warfare of the period. It is generally estimated that it
killed at least 50 million people world-wide, with some suggesting the figure was nearer
to 100 million. And, as John M. Barry notes, the world’s population in 191 8 was only
- 8 billion, 2 8 per cent of what it is today (Barry, 2005: 452).
The twenty-year armistice, 1919–39 105