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The Vanquished Why The First World War Failed To End

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There were many well-accepted thoughts with respect to the Great War among historians. First, the victorious nations gained much more attention than the vanquished countries in general. Germany was an exception. As the only Western European Empire that assumed the leading role in the Central Powers, Germany commanded the same level of concern as its Entente counterparts. Even so, it was portrayed negatively as the sole war producer and therefore needed to be responsible for all the enormous losses and destruction that were caused by the war. Second, considering the far-reaching impacts the Great War exerted on the later historical process, it was regarded as a watershed moment. However, the Great War failed to solve unfinished contradictions among diverse empires and to become the war to end all wars. The postwar era witnessed a large scale of violence and tensions that continued to drain newborn nations, which included much of central, eastern and southern Europe that ascended from previous collapsed empires after the nearly-one-decade warfare and hostilities. …show more content…
By focusing on the situation of the vanquished and providing a detailed account of the conflicts and violence that caught a myriad of nations in the postwar period, Gerwarth hoped to draw people’s attention to these conflicts. They were not “the wars of the pygmies” as Churchill referred to, but played a significant role of connection (p. 8). On the one hand, these post-1918 conflicts were the extension of the Great War despite their various causes. On the other hand, they laid the foundations for a more violent and extreme wave of hostilities that swept Europe after 1939, which was based on ethnic and ideological

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