Long Shadow

David Reynolds shows how the common perception of the Great War as futile slaughter has been molded over time.

Reynolds addresses the explosive effect that the Great War had on European politics, giving birth to an age of turbulent mass democracy. Monarchies toppled and iconic leaders like Lenin, Wilson, and Mussolini emerged with competing visions of power. But in Britain, centrist political coalitions ruled the day.

David Reynolds argues that the Great War made national identity a stark either-or issue, a matter of "us" versus "them." He traces recurrent struggles and nationalist uprisings due to empire-building by Hitler, Stalin and, latterly, the European Union in the century since 1914.