Questions swirl about the long shadow of “the guns of August” that erupted in August, 1914. Would there have been no Holocaust without WWI? Probably yes, but that is only one lesson of many that we should consider from the WWI-WWII nexus. Would it been better if the outcome in WWI were different? Niall Ferguson’s “The Pity of War” argues that the British, in particular, would have been well-advised to have appeased the Kaiser though not Hitler. Further, he suggests that a German victory would have been better than what occurred. These are serious arguments, but they do not address the folly of those around the Kaiser who ignored Bismarck’s advice never to risk a two-front war, and alienated Germany’s traditional ally, Czarist Russia, as well as ultimately making enemies of Italy, the U.S., and even Japan! Also, Fritz Fischer’s classic book on Germany’s WWI aims argued convincingly that German victory would have resulted in transforming Eastern Europe including a large chunk of Russia into a German latifundia—not entirely different from Germany’s WWII aims—which in fact were the terms of the Treaty Brest Litovsk between Germany and the Bolsheviks that resulted in Russia’s withdrawal from WWI. A postwar Europe like this would probably not have been a pretty picture for European nationalities and minorities including the Jews. However, German WWI aims contained no suggestion of anti-Jewish genocide. In fact, recent revelations suggest the Germans were instrumental in persuading their Turkish allies not to carry through on their plans to purge allegedly “pro-British” Jews from the Holy Land. I see other linkages between WWI and post-WWI and the present. We now have a fluid multipolar world, but with the potential of the U.S.-EU and Russia-China forming hostile blocs, with Iran allied with the Russians and Chinese the way that Turkey was with Germany in WWl. This is an ominous parallel with the developments that gave us the Great War. Historian Deborah Lipstadt has recently remarked that the current moment feels more like 1934 than 1939. I would stress similarities with 1936 when the Western powers allowed Germany and Italy to fight a proxy war that destroyed the Spanish Republic, much like Israel is currently under attack by Iran’s proxy Hamas. Of course, then came 1938. With the UK and Spain considering imposing arms embargoes on Israel, France demanding an “imposed” settlement, and the U.S. no longer a reliable Israeli ally, we could be headed for another Munich moment. I realize that the Czechs might have fared differently—if they had a nuclear deterrent. As to the Holocaust, it never would have occurred without the outbreak of a new war in 1939 and—even more decisive—the German invasion of the USSR in June, 1941. Hitler and his regime became obsessed with exterminating European Jewry, but I suspect that there will be future historians who—viewing the Holocaust in the context of the wider catastrophe of WWII—will see the Holocaust as “collateral damage.” Of course, Jews never will and never should look at it this way.