The Great War was not only about acquiring territories, it was also about political beliefs, juridical norms, economic interests, within but also outside Europe, in a world still largely dominated by the major European powers. This chapter discusses the largely competitive and mutually influenced definition of war aims on both sides, and the secret and complex peace feelers and clandestine diplomacy which took place during the war. The immediate influence of Wilson, through the immediate weight of US economic power and its financial aid to the Allies, and the prospect of a serious military contribution from 1918, forced the warring nations to take Wilsonian principles into account in their definition of war aims. An inter-Allied conference in London at the beginning of December 1918 had settled the location for the Peace Conference and the broad lines of the programme, generally following the proposals of French diplomacy.

This chapter focuses on war finance in the two principal allies of the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, the two financial powerhouses of the Entente, Great Britain and France, and two neutral countries, the United States and the Netherlands. It discusses the impact of mobilisation on national finances, financing the industrial war effort, demobilisation and impossible return to the pre-war financial order, and the financial legacy of the Great War. Mobilisation for war transformed the peacetime financial systems of the European powers. Financial demobilisation in Germany through inflation and stabilisation put an end to war finance, made reconstruction easier and reduced debt. Financial demobilisation following the Great War led to uncertain and therefore temporary stabilization of social policy and the political system itself. The weakness of parliamentary governments, and the attractiveness of totalitarian alternatives, arose in part out of the exigencies and consequences of war finance.

In August 1914, the European powers had gone to war with rudimentary air services and embryonic aviation industries. Once airplanes proved themselves as a means of reconnaissance and, most importantly, of artillery spotting, air commanders required more of them to conduct effective aerial operations and prevent enemy aerial reconnaissance. The second aim led to armed aircraft and then the development of specialised pursuit, or fighter, aircraft. The battles of Verdun and the Somme forced the codification of aerial combat tactics and brought home the importance of mass. Military aviation did not determine the outcome of the First World War, but the airplane did establish its very real significance in support of the army and especially the artillery on the battlefield. Theory and wishful thinking after the Great War focused on strategic aviation and nearly drove the lessons of tactical aerial importance and success from the minds of post-war observers.