"Okay," Josh said, glancing up at the ceiling every now and then, "today we talk about World War I. Technically speaking, this was a war that was pretty Europe-centric: the United States didn't come into it until the Europeans had been killing each other on the Western Front for three years before the Americans declared war in 1917. We didn't actually get our troops there in any useful numbers until 1918." He cleared his throat. "So. It counts as a world war if you include all of the colonies around the globe that the European powers still controlled at the time."
He pointed to a map. "The Allied Powers: the UK, France, Russia and us when we finally got there, defeated the Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire." He looked at the class. "Practically speaking, World War I redrew the map of the world. It caused the collapse of four empires: the German, the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian, and the Ottoman. The failure of the Russian war effort led to the fall of the czars, which led directly to the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republicans--the USSR, which were a group of initials that terrified children for decades and that you, dear God, are too young to remember. More on the USSR later."
"After World War I, Fascists came to power in Italy, Nazism took over Germany and we'd all be back and fighting another war in twenty years. But that's a different class."
Josh continued lecturing about
World War I, covering Archduke Ferninand, trench warfare, Woodrow Wilson, and the terms of surrender inflicted on the Central Powers. It was fascinating.
Really.
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