MEANINGLESS SACRIFICE
T IS COMMON TO CRITICIZE the victors of the First World War for their failure to recognize the menace of Nazi Germany and strangle it while it was still in its early stages. It’s true that the statesmen of the Allied nations miscalculated badly, but underpinning those miscalculations was a pervasive belief that the Great War had been a massive mistake that destroyed a whole generation of youth to little purpose. No popular work of art illustrates this mindset more, released in 1930 to great acclaim—including the Academy Award for Best Picture.
