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DYNAMIC OF DESTRUCTION: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War, Alan Kramer, Oxford University Press, UK, 2007, 434 pages, $33.95.
At the beginning of me 20th century, Europeans saw themselves as the leaders of a great march of progress that had made their continent the center of civilization. Their empires covered most of the globe and their cultural hegemony was perhaps even more dominant than their political and military power. Yet, two decades later, much of Europe's confidence and optimism had been replaced by cynicism and despair. The shift, writes historian Alan Kramer, was a product of the Great War, which saw the mobilization of radical nationalism that supported a European military outlook mat demanded the...