The war both revealed profound divisions and opened new ones—between veterans and noncombatants, those on the right and those on the left, the young and the old, those seeking to create a new world and those wishing to restore their idea of an old order. All societies became not only more impoverished but also less cohesive, less hopeful, and more unsettled. Their economies had been shattered (with the exception of the United States), and the societies themselves and their values had been shaken to their very foundations.
