All through my life as a JW, I have had it pounded to me that WWI was a negative turning point in history, and that "things were so much better
prior to 1914" blah blah blah.
I put it out there that there were some positive things about the War and it's aftermath.
The disruption of the established Class system in Europe.
The erosion of the powers of the different monarchical governments (particularly in Russia)
The rise in the assertiveness of the working and middle classes demanding better conditions and better pay.
When one ponders it, prior to all this, life was GREAT if you a White, upper middle class-or-higher male. Everybody else "knew their place" (which was second-place, or last-place).
Yeah, their were a lot of horrors commited and witnessed in the Great War (big surprise! War is never as clean and bloodless as "The Empire Strikes Back"), but this time, the sides were a little more evenly matched, making the mayhem more distributed.
A few lines from the final episode of "Black Adder Goes Forth" spring to mind about why WWI was considered so specifically "horrible":
George: You know, that's the thing I don't really understand about you, Cap.
You're a professional soldier, and yet, sometimes you sound as though
you bally well haven't enjoyed soldiering at all.
Edmund: Well, you see, George, I did like it, back in the old days when the
prerequisite of a British campaign was that the enemy should under
no circumstances carry guns -- even spears made us think twice. The
kind of people we liked to fight were two feet tall and armed with
dry grass.
George: Now, come off it, sir -- what about Mboto Gorge, for heaven's sake?
Edmund: Yes, that was a bit of a nasty one -- ten thousand Watusi warriors
armed to the teeth with kiwi fruit and guava halves. After the battle,
instead of taking prisoners, we simply made a huge fruit salad. No,
when I joined up, I never imagined anything as awful as this war.
I'd had fifteen years of military experience, perfecting the art of
ordering a pink gin and saying "Do you do it doggy-doggy?" in
Swahili, and then suddenly four-and-a-half million heavily armed
Germans hoved into view. That was a shock, I can tell you.
I am not saying that WWI was totally good or anything like that. The end results did give rise to people like Hitler and Stalin, unfortunately. But I believe that it also was the beginning of the end of a lot of negatives as well.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong...