The Harlech man

Which world war had a great impact on the world today, in my view WW1 is where the changes started, WW2 just speeded those changes up by around 40 years. The British were losing there grip on British India, the US was the biggest economy and the USSR had the biggest military budget.

bartieboy

I agree, ww1 changed just a bit more...

JoeGlidden

I wonder which war had a greater impact on the physical characteristics of the European landscape? Germany and many areas of Russia were pretty well destroyed by the end of the war.

But, I agree. WWI played an important impact many events that happened years after the war was over. Had the powers of Europe listened to Nguyễn Sinh Cung (the young Ho Chi Minh) at Versailles, the events of the 1950s, 60s and early 70s may well have played out very differently.

Fourteen

Yes, I prefer the First World War.

viking

To answer this demands a very long essay but I doubt many would read it.
In short terms WWI began a massive change in world society and the centres of world power. However, as Clemenceau remarked the end of WWI was only a twenty year truce before WWII ;they were the same war.
Society in Europe changed fundamentally. Not only were the countries emotionally and financially exhausted, the very thinking of people changed. This is most notable in European women. They had done men's work and then were asked to resume women's work, but where were the men? There was a whole missing generation. Not only dead and physically wounded but suffering from what we now call post traumatic stress disorder but something not even thought of then..
Colonies saw, for the first time that their masters were not invincible. these changes gathered momentum in that long truce.
Did Germany even consider the Fatherland had been defeated?
So for me there were not two wars

bartieboy

In terms of landscape the effect was greater in ww1 but in ww2 there was a LOT more urban damage