WW1 ended ambiguously in an armistice after millions lost their lives. There certainly were no winners and the militarists in Germany mythologized about being betrayed by liberal politicians. The Weimar Republic had little chance in a nation with no experience in democracy. The Great Depression comes along, sowing the seeds for the attractiveness of a strong man solution. That strong man capitalized on the humiliation of WW1. While the western democracies of France and GB did not succumb to authoritarianism by way of the world wide economic collapse in the 1930s they were too politically weak to effectively prevent the rise of Nazism.
To illustrate the continuity, in the town of Treviers, France there stands the Monument du Morte, originally dedicated to 44 Frenchmen killed in WW1. On June 9,1944, the statue was nearly destroyed as the town was liberated in a battle between American and German forces. The town decided to place the damaged statue back in its place to now serve as a memorial to TWO wars, just 20 years apart.
[Post edited by Chuck Taylor at 03/26/2024 11:35AM]