Today at 11:00 am the world will mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. The war killed over 20 million soldiers and civilians alike, and left more than 20 million others wounded, disfigured, and scarred for life.
On top of these already horrific numbers, the War led directly to the spread of the Spanish Flu, the single deadliest pandemic in history, which infected 1/3 of all people on Earth, and left another 50 to 100 million dead in its wake, killing more people in one year than the Black Death killed in 100 years.
The Great War saw the advent of industrial warfare, with aircraft carriers, tanks, long-range bombers, chemical weapons, submarines, and more. It also saw the advent of previously unheard-of crimes, such as the Armenian Genocide, the Assyrian Genocide, and the Greek Genocide, systematic killings so horrible as to be called crimes against humanity itself.
The war saw the fall of empires: Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottomans, and Russia collapsed, leaving chaos and further conflict in many of the regions, as well as a chance at liberation for millions of oppressed people, and giving hope to countless others living under foreign rule. However, in these collapses were hidden the seeds for not just the next war, but almost every major conflict since.
It must be noted that the end of the war did not mean the end of fighting. Civil war raged in Russia. Conflicts broke out in the Balkans over new territorial claims. Poland and Ukraine, only newly indepent, would find themselves locked in struggle. People previously under colonial rule would use the end of the war as a chance to gain independence. Some succeeded, others failed in blodshed and horror.
The Great War was the single most transformative event in the 20th Century, building the groundwork for the modern world in the ashes of the old, while creating even more unrest which would ultimately lead to a second, even deadlier war. The guns may have fallen silent a hundred years ago, but the legacy of the war is still very much alive today, in the form of incredible advancements and horrifying weapons; in powerful alliances, and deep enduring conflicts; in the heroes brought to near-mythical stature, and the monsters the war created.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
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