ABSTRACT
On 1 August 1914 the tensions of European society exploded into war. The First World War was the great watershed of the twentieth century from which all major subsequent developments in Europe flowed. The rise of fascism and Nazism are directly related to the experience of war and to the Bolshevik revolution that was the major legacy of the war in Russia. Of course, neither fascism nor communism was solely a product of the First World War. But the war had the effect of greatly accelerating and intensifying the major trends of the preceding decades.
