Learn our lessons from World War I? No!

This article describes the World War I, politics, League of Nations, United Nations and the continuation of wars and conflicts. Did the world learned its lesson from the WW1? Many tried with the creation of League of Nations and United Nations, but the conflicts and wars are growing. The UN as organization is an absolute failure. The world as we know is slowly sinking in a pool of violence, genocide, war and passivity.

In an article “The Lesson our sabre rattling leaders can learn from the Great War carnage” at the online newspaper Dailymail by Dominic Sandbrook, he declared that English involvement in WW1 was a mistake. Why? England went from the ” … world’s biggest creditors to one of the biggest debtors“. They lost the “… position as world’s greatest economical and financial superpowers“.

True. His arguments are of course limited to the position of Britain only, before, during and after the WW1.

From my personal perspective, it’s a global disaster. The same question can be applied here, but with the perspective of “Can we avoid something similar as Word War I?”

Word War I

Some statistics about WW1. 16 Million people died (7 million civilians) and 32 countries were involved in the war. The war started at 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. There were two sides in this war:

  1. The allies – UK, France and Russia. Italy, Japan and the US were later added to the conflict.

  2. Central Powers – Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Ottoman empire and Bulgaria were later added to the conflict.

More then 70 million people were mobilized!

Politics

At the end of the WW1, four empires were destroyed: the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian. Millions of death. Many countries ruined. The formal end of the WW1 is declared during the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on 28 June 1919. However, the Americans opposed the treaty. Knox–Porter Resolution was signed on 2 July 1921 by President Warren G. Harding. Why? In the Treaty of Versailles, Germany supposed to pay 132 billion gold marks, which they could not pay and there was no declaration of war guilt from Germany. That caused several countries like France to plunder the industry of Germany and kept Germany poor for many years to come, laying the basis of the growth of the Nazis.The Great Depression in 1929 did not help the case at all.

And here is the core of the problem. War is the extension of politics, or “War is the continuation of Politik by other means” as Carl Philipp Gottfried defined it. The Treaty of Versailles with Germany on 28 June 1919 was an incomplete treaty, where major war parties left unsatisfied and frustrated (US and Britain), and major war parties (Germany) citizenry were being suppressed, causing the basis of the next war (WW2), with even more casualties. Take a look at the WW1 treaties. Take a look at the WW2 treaties. Take a look at the 20th century treaties. Take a look at the 21th century treaties. Hundreds of treaties and the majority failed. But on the other side, some of the treaties were justified pieces of work and avoided additional conflicts. All the treaties are the work of performing politics.