1 May 2021 • 5:00pm
The Thiepval Commonwealth Memorial, which commemorates British and Commonwealth soldiers killed in the 1916 Somme Offensive
Credit: Francois Mori / POOL / AFP
Could the First World War have been brought to a negotiated peace before the armistice of November 1918? Could the Armageddon on the Western Front possibly have been ended without victory on either side in late 1916 or early 1917, and the Great Powers return to peace, with millions of young lives saved? In other words, imagine a world with no Battle of Passchendaele, perhaps no Bolshevik Revolution, maybe even no Hitler. It is one of the great what-might-have-beens of modern history.