When the Lamps Went Out

No single government or nation deserves blame for World War I. But the question remains: How could such a calamity have occurred?

March 22, 2013 4:57 p.m. ET

The historian Fritz Stern described World War I as "the first calamity of the twentieth century, the calamity from which all other calamities sprang." It takes only the barest knowledge of the war to grasp his point. The war and its appalling slaughter strained combatant nations to the breaking point. By the end, it had overthrown dynasties, shattered empires and reconfigured the map of Europe—unleashing all sorts of political forces and intensifying sympathies and resentments that would themselves wreak havoc on history. In various ways, as we now know in retrospect, World War I helped to bring about the...

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