Title: 100 Years after WWI: The Lasting Impacts of the Great War | Syracuse University News
Headings: 100 Years after WWI: The Lasting Impacts of the Great War
Media, Law & Policy
100 Years after WWI: The Lasting Impacts of the Great War
Q: What were some of the biggest impacts of World War I?
Meredith Professor and Professor Emeritus David H. Bennett
Q: How was the United States shaped by the war?
Q: How are the problems in the Middle East traced back to World War I?
Q: What is the biggest misconception about World War I that people may have?
Q: What do you want students to understand about the Great War?
For the Media

Content: What do you want students to understand about the Great War? A: I try to convey to students how important it was and how difficult it is to understand why it began. There is enormous historiographical debate still going on today about why WWI started. What also is interesting, because I teach military history, is the way in which the war was fought. The war was dominated by defensive weapons, which made it impossible for either side to break through once troops were dug in. That’s why it was a killing match, a war of attrition, with enormous weapons and spectacularly high casualty rates. The town crier in Contrexeville, France, heralds armistice and the end of WWI. From the Edward S. Van Duyn World War I Collection, courtesy of the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University
It was the casualty lists and the death toll, including the soldiers who were mutilated in the war, that almost predetermined the outcome. It would be a victor’s peace insisted on by the victors because they had lost so much.