The death toll for the armed forces in World War One was appalling. Around nine million soldiers were killed, which was about 15% of all combatants

of British war veterans, for example, 41,000 lost a limb in the fighting

Such was a particularly appropriate phrase for the situation in France, where 20% of those between the ages of 20 and 40 in 1924 were killed.

at least a further 20 million died worldwide in the Spanish flu epidemic in the winter of
1918-9.

By 1918, the USA had lent
$2,000million to Britain and France; U-boats had also sunk 40% of British merchant shipping.

Throughout the 1920s, Britain and France spent between one-third and one-half of their total public expenditure on debt charges and repayments.

France suffered particularly badly, with farm land (2 million hectares), factories and railway lines along the Western Front totally ruined.

As Niall Ferguson wrote ‘the war led to a triumph of republicanism undreamt of even in the 1790s’

Even before the war ended on 11 November 1918, revolution had broken out in Germany against the old regime. Sailors in northern Germany mutinied and took over the town of Kiel. This action triggered other revolts, with socialists leading uprisings of workers and soldiers in other German ports and cities.

In Bavaria, an independent socialist republic was declared

socialist leader Friedrich Ebert became the new leader of the Republic of Germany

Russian experienced two revolutions in 1917. The first overthrew the Tsarist regime and replaced it briefly with a Provisional Government that planned to hold free elections. This government, however, was overthrown in the second revolution of 1917, in which the communist Bolsheviks seized power