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Originally Posted by milo
What do you mean by 'useful'
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Did it change the way the world was? Did it have any positive effect on the countries directly / indirectly involved? Social change is a big one, I suppose military change could be taken into account, to a lesser extent.
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Originally Posted by milo
but i suppose you could argue it had major knock on implications in terms of social revolution (russia for example or the role of women in society in britain).
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Well, even Lenin said that the Bolshevik revolution would not have been possible if Russia had stayed out of the war. But was this a useful change? Russia was a pretty backward country at the time but I'm not sure if the revolution helped it too much in the long run. Sure, Russia made great strides in for example the space race a few decades later but even now Russia is still feeling the side effects of communism and probably would have prospered anyway what with all the natural resources it has at its disposal.
As for Britain, Lloyd George did implement some wide reaching changes (eg universal suffrage) soon after the war ended but the 19th century saw a lot of reform in these areas and I don't think there was much sign of this stopping during the early part of the 20th century. I guess you could say that the war acted as a catalyst for change.
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Originally Posted by s|k
I don't know about useful but basically it had something to do with the end of the German Empire and the German monarchy, the league of nations, the Weimar republic,
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As for the German Empire (such as it was) didn't the areas under German control just change hands? Not much of a change for the people involved surely.
The Weimar republic did appear to be a positive step at the time but I think the fact that the Nazis destroyed it soon after kind of nullifies that point.
And the League of Nations, well, it wasn't particularly useful while it lasted and did nothing to stop World War II coming about.
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Originally Posted by s|k
the end of the Ottoman Empire,
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I'll give you that one
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Originally Posted by s|k
the end of traditional warfare and the beginning of mechanized warefare, a new era of navy vessels (via the dreadnaught), introduction of air combat,
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Not to mention the introduction of tanks. But military innovations would have happened regardless, it didn't take 8 million casualties for that to happen.
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Originally Posted by s|k
the rise of facsim & nationalism, the importance of industrialization (for military and economic purposes)...
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Well, I'm not sure about facsism, I think the Great Depression probably had more to do with it than WWI. But I don't think it was a particulary useful step anyway.
As for industrialisation, didn't Ford invent mass production before WWI even started?