ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an international perspective on remembering the First World War. It assesses some of the differing national contexts in which remembrance has been shaped and investigates the impact of the two global events that have prompted intensive efforts at re-conceiving the First World War for contemporary purposes: the Second World War and the denouement of the Cold War. The last quarter-century since 1989 has seen an international surge of interest in the Great War and those who fought in it, and this requires explanation. The end of Cold War offered space for seeing the First World War afresh in its own terms, though still refracted through the politics and preoccupations of the moment. The Liberal Cabinet's reluctance to go to war was overcome both for politicians and the public at large by Germany's invasion of Belgium, whose neutrality Britain was pledged by treaty to protect. The radical shifts naturally occurred in Russia and the former Soviet states.
