Hindsight creates only the illusion of choice and is the result of a history which does not capture the reality of the times. This is probably because no such argument can be made - history shows that the decision made were the only decisions that were ever possible to make, given the people and the circumstances involved. She writes that the Great War was not inevitable but provides no credible counterfactual argument as to how the war could have been avoided. Yet MacMillan is largely unconvincing in some key arguments about the war’s origins and offers no new reinterpretation of events the lead up to the war. In The War That Ended Peace, Oxford University historian Margaret MacMillan traces the causes of the First World War through a synthesis of the various forces that lead to the First World War. How could Europe descend from unprecedented time of peace, prosperity - an age of unprecedented scientific and technological gains - to abject savagery that decapitated four empires of Russia, Germany, Austia-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire and left millions dead? The conflict had remade Europe, destroying empires, setting the stage for Fascism and Communism, the tragedy of World War Two and the Holocaust and the decades of the Cold War. Next year will mark the 100 th anniversary of the start of the Great War.
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