Small consolation ...
I think many Americans fail to comprehend how costly the Great War was to the English. An entire generation of Brits vanished in the muck and mire of the trenches. That and the Blitz have to be the biggest scars modern-day Great Britain bears.
an entire generation of frenchmen died as well. if the french of 1936, when hitler rolled into the rhineland, had been more like the french of 1914, hitler would have been stopped.
of course, if the french of 1939 had been the norm in 1914, the germans would have taken paris and won the war.