In the history of the world, there are many events that changed the world, and none is more important in the modern history of the world than the First World War.
What was the world like before World War I? There is one word that can be simply explained: the center of the world is in Europe.
In the hundreds of years since the great geographical discovery, Europeans have set out wave after wave to occupy the New World, turning the original civilized countries of Asia and Africa into their own colonies, not to mention the old colonial empires such as Britain and France, even small countries like Belgium can run to Africa to colonize.
By colonizing the world, Europe gained enormous wealth and economic, cultural, and technological power far superior to that of other regions.
Needless to say, the economic powers that could be called economic powers at that time, except for the United States, were concentrated in Europe, and even Japan, which was not as economically as good as Italy at that time. Even the United States, although it was known as the first industrial power before World War I, actually relied on European capital, and when European capital sneezed, the United States collapsed.
Not to mention science and technology, most scientists were concentrated in Europe at that time, and the United States is now known as the first power in science and technology, but there were no decent scientists at that time, only engineers or technical experts like Edison, even in technology, the United States is far inferior to Europe, and the quality of American products is not as good as that of the United Kingdom, even the German goods, so although the United States products are the first in the world in terms of quantity, they are far from enough in terms of quality, in today's words, they are industrial powers rather than industrial powers.
This is the case in the United States, not to mention other countries, not to mention in terms of culture, Europeans, especially Western Europeans, consider themselves to be the most civilized and noble race, their own civilization is the highest, and other civilizations are inferior civilizations, inferior to Europeans, and even think that other races are inferior to whites in IQ and physical strength, before World War I, this was not the patent of Hitler in Germany, but the consensus of many white Europeans, they just regard other races as inferior races, and civilization as inferior civilization.
Take Western Europe as an example, Britain, France, and Germany regard themselves as the centers of civilization, Eastern Europe, Slavs, Poland, and Tsarist Russia are slightly inferior white people, and the white people born in the New World in the United States, Australia, and Latin America are also inferior whites, and mixed race is even lower, and then there are colored people, yellow races, black Arabs, and Indians.
In the eyes of Europeans at that time, the world revolves around them, they are the center of the world, and the world seems to continue to run around Europe in this way. At that time, no one expected that the power of the world would be transferred so quickly.
Of course, there is no shortage of people of insight in the world, and some scholars have predicted that the future will be the world of the United States and Russia, after all, industrialization has begun, and only countries with a large enough population, a large enough area, and no shortage of resources will keep up with the pace of industrialization, and among these countries, India is still a British colony, China has just experienced the blow of the eight-nation coalition, and it is out of breath, and in their opinion, China and India are not white after all. And Russia and the United States, although they are inferior whites, are still members of the white people after all.
Of course, even these scholars did not think that the United States and Russia would turn over immediately, after all, the United States is still dependent on European capital, and Russia cannot even beat a small country like Japan.
Indeed, according to the normal path of development, the United States and Russia will certainly not be so quick to become the two poles of the world according to the future development, but the outbreak of World War I completely changed all this.
The First World War smashed the entire European civilization, France died a generation of young people, Germany suffered heavy losses, lost a large area of land and colonies, Britain's finances collapsed, the colonies were crumbling, the Tsarist Russian Empire was destroyed, the world seemed to have not changed, but it has begun to tilt towards the United States and the Soviet Union, the two major powers, World War II is actually the pattern of the beginning of the First World War to really stabilize, in fact, even if there is no World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States will inevitably replace Britain, France and Germany, these European countries, which is inevitable, something that was determined after the First World War.
This is evident in the pattern after World War II, Churchill also desperately tried to carve up the world among the three powers of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, and also tried to provoke the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and Britain reaped the benefits of the fisherman, but the fact is that the United States and the Soviet Union easily disintegrated the two colonial empires of Britain and France after the Cold War.
The First World War was not only that, the colonies also woke up after the First World War, and the various colonies were looking at the decline of Europe, India was ready to become independent after the First World War, and Japan also began to be restless after the First World War, as for China, the First World War was also an extremely critical node.
Before the First World War, China's traditional knowledge has been defeated by the invasion of China by the Eight-Nation Alliance, and the main ones who came to power were new intellectuals, most of whom had a background of studying abroad or new studies, and at first they had illusions about Europe, and China joined the Entente in the First World War, as the victorious country, it was hoped to regain some of its sovereignty, but the Paris Peace Conference shattered their illusions in Europe, and the rise of the Soviet Union made them accept communism, without World War I, These intellectuals will also fall into the illusions of European civilization for a long, long time.
Going back to Europe, not to mention the impact of the First World War on Europe, before the First World War, Europeans were optimistic about the future, although most European countries were actually monarchies, and the main European countries were republics, namely France. (So when Yuan Shikai was called emperor, it was right to say that the monarchy was the mainstream, when the First World War did not break out, and the most important European civilization at that time, the mainstream was also the monarchy).
Although ordinary people in Europe have a hard life, for example, the living standards of ordinary workers are even worse than those in the United States and Argentina in the New World, but they are still worry-free under their efforts, and they also have the opportunity to go to the colonies to fight to be a superior person, and there is a so-called opportunity to be motivated, so ordinary people in Europe are still pressed by the nobles and capitalists above on the one hand, and on the other hand, they are still addicted to the illusion that they are European civilized people, after all, no matter how they are in Europe, they are superior to others when they arrive in the colonies.
Because of this, before the First World War, there was a serious sense of nationalism in Europe, and from top to bottom, they wanted to fight against other countries, because nationalism and racism were actually inseparable, and since they would despise other races, they would naturally despise other peoples, and thus fight against other peoples.
In addition, before the First World War, there had been no large-scale war in Europe for a long time, and even the Franco-Prussian War ended very quickly, and ordinary people did not experience war, and even if they thought that the war would have ended quickly, they would have continued with their previous happy life.
Ordinary people are like this, the rulers of various countries are thinking about another thing, at that time the world has been basically divided, the only big countries that have not been completely divided are actually two, one is Ottoman Turkey, the other is China, China is too far away from Europe, after the eight-nation alliance, Europe found that it is not realistic to carve up China, and can only retain China's status, and Ottoman Turkey's Eastern European and Middle Eastern European lands all want, Germany wants to build a railway connecting Eurasia through the Middle East, avoiding the British shipping power, Austria-Hungary and Tsarist Russia wanted Eastern Europe, France supported Tsarist Russia against Germany, and Britain wanted the Middle East to keep the flank of India, the core of its colony.
Among them, Germany and France were mainly national disputes after the Franco-Prussian War, Tsarist Russia and Austria-Hungary were disputes over the interests of Eastern European territories, Britain and Germany seemed to have no disputes on the surface, and the Kaiser once wanted to avoid war with Britain, but in fact the contradictions between Britain and Germany were the most intense.
As mentioned earlier, the most developed in the context of industrialization are the United States and Russia, but in fact, it is not necessarily the case, Europe can also produce such a vast territory, large population, rich resources of the country, such as Germany swallowed France, such as Germany and Austria-Hungary merged, it can be said that Europe can have another or even two Russia like the same power.
But why didn't it appear, that is, Britain refused, Britain has always engaged in a policy of balancing power on the European continent, and it is impossible to allow a continental power to challenge it to appear, although as an island country, he cannot transfer the power to Canada, Australia or India to be reborn, nor can he stop the rise of the United States, but it has always been vigilant against the rise of power in the near future, for example, for Tsarist Russia, he has been restricting the development of the Far East and Central Asia, and has suppressed France for hundreds of years. For Germany, the original little brother, it has long been on guard.
After the rise of Germany, the science and technology economy have surpassed Britain, although its industry is inferior to the United States, but the technology is higher than the United States, in fact, Germany is the real industrial power at that time, its commodities for Britain formed an all-round challenge, Britain only relies on colonial and maritime advantages to restrict, but the conflict is inevitable, and this conflict of interests is much more unsolvable than national disputes and territorial disputes, so the Anglo-German contradiction is the final core contradiction of the First World War, if there is no Britain, France and Russia are not at all opponents of Germany.
It was also because of Britain and Germany that the First World War was so tragic and lasted so long.
In the war at that time, Tsarist Russia was the first to fall, although Tsarist Russia still had an advantage in the war against Austria-Hungary, but Tsarist Russia's industry and Germany could not be compared, and Germany was repeatedly defeated and warn, and there was no way to dig trenches like the West Station, the Tsarist army suffered huge losses, and there was no intention of fighting for a long time, so the Tsar wanted to fight, the Russians overthrew the Tsar, and the Russians overthrew February**, it was really too many people who died, and there was one point that was very critical, Because Russia stood on the side of Germany, the Ottoman Empire was actually blocked from the southwest to the sea, and the transportation in the north was not smooth, so it was difficult for British and French material support to enter Tsarist Russia.
As for the French, it is another situation, the French shipping has not been affected, and the material is okay, but the French ** team does not treat the soldiers as people, and desperately let the soldiers do some certain battles, which is equivalent to letting the French go to death, so that the soldiers' anti-war sentiment is serious, which greatly dealt a blow to the nationalist sentiment in France at the beginning, even if the French lost a lot of industrial power in the early stage of the war, and the French rulers were eager to attack Germany and obtain the fruits of victory, but ordinary French people have no fighting spirit, This was until World War II.
Although Britain did not suffer any losses on its own territory and maintained material goods by sea, a large number of young people died, and domestic anti-war sentiment was serious.
And Germany is another matter, Germany was actually in the armistice, the front was still outside the borders, whether it was the eastern front or the western front, the enemy did not hit Germany, but because of the British blockade of shipping, Germany's lack of materials, and the United States entered the war, ordinary people could not see the hope of victory, so they were forced to armistice and surrender on relatively equal terms, but the Treaty of Versailles made their ordinary people's national sentiment rise again, which was also one of the factors of World War II. The Germans never thought they had really lost.
In any case, the First World War basically abolished Europe, and also stripped off the cloak of civilization, and everyone saw that Europe was just a group of barbarians, not noble enough to go to the world, so that either Japan and the United States began to try to replace Europe, or China and India were not willing to resist the oppression of Europe, and the civilized world of Europe began to decline, of course, for other civilizations, it was the beginning of a revival.