In Dismembering the Male (1996), Joanna Bourke states that the most important thing about the First World War is that the male body was “intended to be mutilated.”

This title of Bourke's book--and the statement above--provide a summary of the meaning of the First World War, based on more than ten-million pieces of empirical data. This is where research on First World War begins: with the recognition that nation-states were sending your (young) men to be slaughtered--and that this was intentional.