In Europe

at 11 a.m. on 11 November, 1918, the men and women who looked incredulously into each other's faces did not cry “We've won the war!” They only said “The war is over.”’
    In Berlin, Harry Kessler wandered through the empty rooms of the plundered imperial palace. He was amazed by the tasteless knick-knacks on the floor and the nationalistic kitsch still on the walls. ‘So it was out of this ambience that the world war was born.’ He was not angry at the looters, but above all amazed at the mediocrity of the rulers who had collected this rubbish and believed in it.
    After hearing the news, Robert Graves walked alone along a peaceful Embankment, ‘cursing and sobbing and thinking of the dead’.
    In a little more than four years the First World War, which had begun so airily in the summer of 1914, had put an end to at least half a dozen monarchies and two empires: the Habsburg and the Ottoman. The optimism of the Enlightenment, the silent hope that everything would gradually becomebetter, had been extinguished for good. The Western European democracies were put under heavy duress; totalitarian ideologies – communism, fascism and National Socialism – had free rein.
    The First World War was the product of a disastrous chemical reaction: the combination of a young, unstable and ambitious German nation with the unheard-of power of modern weaponry. It was the first industrial war, a war of machine guns, grenades, mines and gas, a war that was no longer seen as a heroic struggle but as a machine that could be stopped by nothing and no one. It was also the first total war, a war involving not only armies, but entire societies. In this new century, the military system proved to be fully intertwined with industry and peoples. Armaments and supplies were refreshed on the production line, the wounded and dead replaced en masse by new troops. Winning battles had long ceased to be enough; the whole enemy society had to be brought to its knees by blockades, starvation and other means.
    The enormous debts incurred in the war would sour international relations for decades. In France the war became a national obsession, a source of pessimism and insecurity. The British Empire, four years earlier the most secure and powerful realm in Western history, emerged from the war in financial ruins. As late as 1965, the British treasure was still reserving one per cent of tax revenues to repay the war loans it had received from America. Thanks to the war, however, a number of other countries saw their welfare and gold reserves significantly increase: America (by £278 million) and Japan (£183 million), in particular, but also Spain (£84 million), Argentina (£49 million) and the Netherlands (£41 million).
    More than 70 million soldiers had fought on the Eastern and Western fronts, 9.4 million (or 13.5 per cent) of them were killed and 15.4 million were wounded. It was a truly world war: more Australians, and almost twice as many Canadians, fought in it than Belgians. About 3 million soldiers had been brought in from throughout the British Empire, and more than 4 million from the United States. The fighting in Africa had been bitter as well: all of the British, French, German and Belgian colonies, all over the continent, were involved. More than 2 million Africans took part in the conflict, mostly as bearers of weapons, food and the wounded.
    In Europe, a whole generation was marked by the war: 13 millionyoung Germans fought in it (of whom 2 million – or 15.4 per cent – were killed), 7.8 million Frenchmen (1.3 million, 16.7 per cent), 5.7 million Britons (0.7 million, 12.3 per cent), 350,000 Belgians (38,000, 10.8 per cent), 15.7 million Russians (1.8 million, 11.5 per cent), 9 million Austro-Hungarians (1.1 million, 12.2 per cent) and 750,000 Serbs (280,000, 37.3 per cent). Of the 3 million Turks who followed the drum-beat to war, 800,000 – more than a quarter – never returned.
    In many European families, decades went by with no return to normal family life. Germany alone had more than half a million war widows, most of whom never remarried. In the average French village, one out of every five young men was killed in the war. For years, street life was characterised by what was referred to in those days as ‘broken faces’. The homes themselves were ruled by ‘destroyed men’ and ‘wounded patriarchs’. Only one out of every three soldiers returned more or less unharmed.
    I am reminded of the scene sketched by