The Vanquished: Why The First World War Failed to End, 1917 - 1923

The reader of this book is asked to consider the true legacy of the Great War. Gerwarth proposes that it was not so much the fighting, especially on the Western Front, that proved so ruinous to the future of Europe, but the devastating aftermath, as countries on both sides of the conflict were wrecked by revolution, pogroms, mass expulsions and further major military clashes. Millions more died across, particularly, Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe before the USSR and a series of rickety and exhausted small new states came into being. Gerwarth develops this theme and links these events with the rise of the Third Reich and the resumption of conflict world-wide.