Almost everyone knows that the seeds of the Second World War were sown in the First. Shared experiences of both wars allow the historians to relate the two in a very direct sense. More than 30 historians have linked both wars because the second war was led by men who had fought in the first and whose sons met combat in the second. The editors of “The Great World War” have tried to put more solid flesh on the idea that the links between the two conflicts are tangible and important. The result is more a compendium than a unified history.
On the issue of leadership in war, there is a greater problem. Comparing Lloyd George with Churchill, or Marshall Foch with General Eisenhower, is not very helpful. The real problem with treating the wars as part of a single great conflict is that the second was not an inevitable or even necessary consequence of the first. The turning point was the decision taken on January 30th, 1933, when Field Marshal Hindenburg, hero of the Great War, called Adolf Hitler, the villain of the next, to be German Chancellor. By chance, the war that had passed and the war in the making were briefly united.