World War one left a completely battered and bitter world filled with cynicism due to a number of reasons. These reasons have a competence of ongoing issues with the modern world and can be seen as an act of violence that is condemned internationally, even by states who sponsored it and by states that weren’t even involved at all.
The World War one, as we know it, gave way to a whole new era of cynicism because there was way too much distrust among people of different races and cultures. No one could actually look at one another without realizing that they could be spewing up another land invasion on each other. After what Germany had done to begin its war, people lost faith in humanity as dead bodies began piling up one after the other without reprehensible change in casualties. People had become so disillusioned with power that they didn’t care for any loss of life. Both sides that had actively fought in the war were equally devilish in their acts and equally destructive if not the sources of anarchy. Cynicism also grew day by day with increasing amounts after world war one because Germany was treated extremely poorly after its defeat. No one cared about what went in Germany and the sanctions that were relayed upon Germany by the victors of World War one only made things worse for Germany in respect with Germany’s poor economic conditions and poverty. This rose doubt in the hearts of neutrals as to really take in what they were witnessing. Right then and there, it was imminent that another war would follow as Hitler saw this cynicism as an idea to wage another war and bring back the glory of Germany. Had the victors handled Germany better off, there would be no cynicism and there would be no World War two. Moreover, the League of Nations that was formed after World War one was inadequate to handle the world and mistreated various states and world order between World War two’s initiation and World War one’s finale. This situation created more cynicism as states believed that they could not trust the League of Nations and began doubting the founding political nations of this particular league in whole. Such severe distrust continues after World War two and has never declines since wars kept coming and never stopped eclipsing the world order, not even once .
The world became a bitter world after World War one for almost all the reasons that caused mass Cynicism after World War one. Mistreatment of nations, treating human lives as body dump and waste that merely portrayed sacrilege would never create a wonderful picture of harmony. It only created a chaotic landscape of terror and invasion, one after the other, form one nation to the other and the trend is still alive. The taste for resources and the pure arms race that increased year after year were the single most devastating reason why the world has continued to grow as a bitter one after World War one .
Cynicism and bitterness in the world is portrayed vastly through religion as the three largest monotheistic religions began to dismantle one another at one time or the other ever since the dawn of World War one. Since states doubted each other and every nation was after resources and active in the arms race, it was only a matter of time before the religious parts of such nations would take this cynicism and bitterness to their advantage and begin using it to exert more force and achieve more power as much of the time as possible. Christianity saw America and European nations fight for resources and land while Judaism saw a war with Islam that still continues to this day in Israel and Palestine, both claiming the land they live on to be their very own .
Cynicism and Bitterness is also portrayed through visual arts that were created after World War one and solely in a bid to express such feelings towards the world after and during World War one. These feelings can see taking place in various war movies and war novels through the hatred and doubts that are emotional carriages of lead characters and how they stop to believe in their enemies at all. One soldier is shown to kill another neither for the love of his land nor in spite of remorse. These soldiers are shown killing one another because of distrust and bitterness filled within them. American and British soldiers are shown killing Germans because they hate Germans to the core while they Germans are shown to kill Jews because they don’t trust the Jewish population or its religion. Such acts of bitter faiths and characters as well as cynicism apparently visible throughout each portrayal only solidify the cynicism and bitterness that has ravaged the world with time after World War one. Some movies even show the nations of the world starting to feel bitter by the end of World War one as they doubt that peace will establish and have a bitter feeling that war will be upon them sooner than later .
Works Cited
Fieldston, Sara. "War, Memory and the Politics of Humor: The Canard Enchaine and World War I ." Journal of Interdisciplinary History (2012): 169-173.
Graves, Robert. Goodbye to all that. 1929.
Mathieu, Sarah-Jane. "Great Expectations: African Americans and the Great War Era." American Quarterly (2011): 409-417.
Sanborn, Wallis R. The American Novel of War: A Critical Analysis and Classification System. McFarland, 2012.
