Jay Winter, Dean of World War I studies, concludes his video series, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century (1996) as follows:

“The war solved no problems. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.”

This is perhaps the most succinct summary I've ever read summarizing the effect and impact of the First World War. A completely useless struggle taking the lives of nine-million men and ruining the lives of many more.

But the war was not "meaningless." Precisely the opposite. The purpose of the First World war was to demonstrate that there is a transcendent domain of reality separate from ordinary, mundane reality. This transcendent domain consists of “nations”—in the name of which human beings are willing to die and kill.

What are these killer nations? Why do these entities cause such massive destruction? And the bottom-line question: Why do human beings worship these objects that are the source of such massive destruction? For all the books written on the First World War, historians have barely addressed and have not yet answered this fundamental question.