The most prominent historian of the First World War, Jay Winter, concludes his extraordinary video series, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, in a tone of bewilderment, summing up forty years of research:

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.
 

Endless battles, in short, produced no significant results—apart from the monumental wastage of human lives.

One might conclude that the monumental wastage of human lives was the purpose of the First World War. Homage paid to the Western god, the nation-state.
 

Richard Koenigsberg