Political Effects of Wwi

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Although World War I may have solidified ideologies, whether new or old, on the value of democracy, the respondent political effects of WWI in the environments of Europe revealed a potentially clandestine response to what was clearly a Western invasion and upset of long-held political tradition and sentiment, the preparation and development of which would inevitably demonstrated in World War II. Nonetheless, the most significant effects of World War I would come from the following:

• A postwar recognition of who aligned with whom
• A clear outline of what countries had allied with other countries in response to the war

World War I Alliances and Treaties

Pre World War I European alliances and treaties led many countries into participation in a war that was either unprepared for or destined for postwar repercussions. For Britain and France, the political effects or repercussions were generally mild, a scenario and relationship that would manifest itself later in political and military history. In the case of Russia, it had strived to form some modicum of agreement of alliance with Great Britain before the first world was on the minds of world leaders.

The Enlightenment and WW I

Throughout Europe, the period following World War I was a period of irrationality by contrast to the period from the Enlightenment through the Napoleonic Era and the rest of the 1800s. The Enlightenment era enchanted Europe with modern science and drove man to a heightened state of euphoria in his own importance, as illustrated by Napoleon's drive to conquer the world. Havel writes of the inevitable destruction involved in rationalism and the enlightenment by stating "modern rationalism and modern science, though the work of man that, as all human works, developed within our natural world, now systematically leave it behind, deny it, degrade and defame it - and, of course, at the same time colonize it". The reason embodied by the Enlightenment which had bound the nations of Europe, in a way even in their differences which at times led to war, had proved to be ineffective in limiting the carnage of World War I or establishing a durable peace. The balance of power based on the idea of reason of the Enlightenment and Europe's historical experience was not in effect as each nation focused mainly on its own internal problems and tried to deal with them in a way which seemed rational to it, but was leading to a second World War.