>Very strange how WWI makes almost no sense from today's perspective. Every country was damaged either directly by the conflict, or indirectly through its protr

>Very strange how WWI makes almost no sense from today's perspective. Every country was damaged either directly by the conflict, or indirectly through its protracted (and still ongoing) resolution. US won big in that war. WWI nearly bankrupted the British Empire, guess who it was loaning money from? (Hint: it's the US[1]). The only finally paid it off in 2015. WWI turned the US into a world power, and marked the end of many (other) Empires. As for the European powers, the war made a lot of sense before it started, as a lot of money was spent on making the shiny toys that killed so many people. Maybe not to the citizens of the countries that took part in the war, but surely to the profiteers. Finally, one can argue that the war made sense for Germany in the long run, in spite of all the losses. Before the war, Germany was surrounded by Empires: the Russian Empire, the British Empire, the French Empire, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman ones. Germany was allied with some of them, threatened by others, but the history shows how fickle the alliances were. Fast-forward to today, and Germany is still there, while the Empires are gone. WW1 effectively took down the Russian Empire, and was the beginning of the end of the British one (to say nothing of the others). I am being facetious here, but if the goal of WW1 was to establish a more friendly Europe for German ambitions, then that goal was eventually accomplished. That's to say, the war made sense for Germany because it was surrounded by states that stood to lose more (if you ignore human life). Of course, this argument doesn't make sense if you care about people to the slightest extent. But the people who start the wars rarely do. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_national_debt#World_War_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_nationa...