Why was there so much fighting in trenches along the Maginot line between france and Germany in WWI?
Unlike in WW II where the aim was to defeat Hitler’s Nazism to make the world safe, WW I has no such broad aim. Four Euro-centric Empires (German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian & Ottoman) were in a stalemate for the past years with all kinds of treaties and ententes in which two others with Overseas Empires (British & French) too were party. Shortly before WW I Serbia fought its way out of Ottoman Empire. It had the intrinsic support of Russia on pan-Slavic sentiment (still there today). The irredentist and vigorous Serbia always wanted to include the other Slavs in its fold. It made Ottoman Empire (though Asian) ‘the sick-man of Europe’. Many (European) ‘nations’ in these Empires were straining at the leash to break free. America wearing its anti-colonial (pro-nationalist) credentials on the sleeve was a positive influence on nationalism, that has become the new European political creed with ‘national self-determination’ the slogan. We can manufacture this as the aim of WW I. The delicate
