90 years

As I wrote earlier, it is today 90 years since cease fire of World War I.

Reading the news today, it is obvious that this haven't made the headline news. World war II is much more interesting to the general public.

Wars never makes sense but perhaps the reasons for WW1 are harder to understand for the general public. When I read about WW1 during High School they talked about the shooting in Sarajevo, but how could that result in a world affecting war?

I see similarities with the recent Balkan wars - it was really hard to grasp what the real reason was. WWII had Hitler to blame but there is no clear villain in the Balkan Wars or WW1. And we love stories when you know who the bad guy is. In these other wars everyone seemed bad or good at different occasions. And we don't like that.

Perhaps it all boils down to how effective the winners were writing history: the allied during WWII made a lot of effort making it clear that they were the good guys after the war ended Probably the increased tension between the winners made this important. I don't know.

But I still recommend each and every one reading something on WW1. Being a Swede, I have the fortune to be able to read the Swedish historian Peter Englund's brilliant book.