Not just Europe, but the world. Would we have Socialist regimes in this hemisphere--or any, for that matter, had Stalin never come into power? The slaughter of 100 million people...Would Hitler have come to power if there had been no communists to fight in the streets, making his party attractive?
The Cold War might never have happened, and neither the atomic weapon nor its delivery systems as a tool of mass destruction...
While that second war may have been rendered inevitable by the terms of Armistice of the first, would it have happened the way it did, with the people who rose to power? Or might a less violent and far flung alternative have occurred?
The repercussions of the First War are with us to this day, with generations programmed with who our enemies are--others of similar stock--who might have allied differently to face different threats, instead of the confusion and distrust which will persist into the foreseeable future.
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Many decades ago, a French Jesuit began our Latin Class w/this story:
>>>>>
In his Commentaries to the Roman Senate, Julius Caesar never failed to reference the ageless and enduring enmity between the Tribes of Gaul and Saxony, as the reason for the cost and duration of
the warfare necessary to secure the borders of their Empire.
After Rome fell, Clovis 1 became King of France in 509 AD, yet it was not till 1870 that Germany was unified under the Hohenzollern Monarchy.
During those 13 centuries France treated the Germans as it pleased, led by the likes of Martel,
Davout, de Coligny, Richelieu, Napoleon, among many.
Then Von Bismarck and Von Motke emerged crushing the French in the Franco-Prussian War; the Treaty ending the conflict being held in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.
The Marshall's of France were kept standing and waiting by Bismarck who then entered the room w/a table and chair, sat down and told the French that Alsace-Lorraine was now German, that War Reparations of 5 billion marks had been imposed and that they would never step on German soil again.
The French were apoplectic, seething w/rage as Gallic hubris could/would not bear the affront.
Almost 50 years later they sought their revenge and the rest is history.
Indeed, Europe and the world are far worse off for the catastrophic impact of the Great War.