Results of the War

The war, with its immeasurable costs in lives and property, had far-reaching effects on the postwar world.

The world's economy was in ruins. The Allied powers of Europe had obtained from the United States loans totaling more than $11,500,000,000. These nations, creditors before the war, were transformed into debtor nations as a result of it. The center of world finance shifted from Europe to the United States.

The War was the underlying source of many of the problems that led to World War II. Many Germans were embittered by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles and felt betrayed by the new government's willingness to capitulate. This bitterness was the foundation of the "stab in the back" theory that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party would use to help propel themselves to power in Germany.

The human and economic cost of the war exacted such a great toll on the French that their leaders were unwilling to repeat the sacrifice when threatened with another war. Though France had built a powerful army to prepare for the threat of renewed German aggression, The French collapsed in the face of Germany's invasion during World War II. As a result, France suffered through four years of Nazi occupation.

The carnage and suffering caused by the war led to widespread discontent with the old institutions. There was a growing distrust of political leaders and a dislike for industrialists, who, many people suspected, had profited from the war. The strength and militancy of labor unions grew. Marxist-Leninist socialism, buoyed by the success of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, flourished. Woman suffrage movements became more aggressive; In the decade after the war, Women won the right to vote in more than 20 countries, Including the United States (1920) and Great Britain (1928).

The war and its effects on society provided themes for a number of writers, including Erich Maria Remarque, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Dos Passos. (the term "lost generation" is sometimes used to describe these writers.) In art, the war led to the birth of the nihilistic but influential movement known as Dadaism.