The Great War: The Global Conflict

The First World War or Great War, as it was known before 1939, destroyed the world’s first global order because countries had to abandon the core components of that order—free trade, the gold standard, and the balance of power—to fight the war. The War also dissolved the nineteenth-century global order by revolutionizing the place of Russia and the United States in world politics and beginning to undermine imperialism. By helping the Communists under Lenin to take over Russia, Germany removed its only enemy on the Eastern Front and thus was nearly able to defeat Britain and France on the Western Front. Nationalists worldwide saw the Communist revolution in Russia as an inspiration for revolutions in their countries that would end European imperialism. By unleashing submarine warfare against the United States, Germany brought the United States into the War and ensured its defeat. U.S. money, armaments, finance, and troops ended the stalemate on the Western Front and forced German leaders to sue for peace. With Russia in turmoil, the Allies exhausted, and Germany defeated, the United States emerged from the War as the world’s most powerful nation and the potential arbiter of the future.