For some totally mysterious reason, my alma mater has decided to reproduce a World War I trench on its grounds.
Every war sets up the next one, and World War I was no exception. The Battle of the Somme was a failure for both sides, and after that the war settled into the miserable, years-long stalemate of trench warfare. The war ended with the punitive Treaty of Versailles, which fueled many of the grievances that Hitler exploited.
For a full, if sometimes self-aggrandizing, account of what happened, read Winston Churchill’s The World Crisis.