Defeat perception and the problem of ending World War I

The video pauses the carrier scenario to ask what a belligerent must experience before it accepts that a war has been lost. Postwar German rejection of defeat, the stab-in-the-back myth, and hostility to Polish independence are connected with the fact that Allied armies had not fought their way deep into Germany. The disturbing counterfactual is that prolonging World War I long enough to make defeat unmistakable might have reduced the risk of a later war, even though doing so would have cost more lives immediately. This remains a dilemma in war termination and deterrence, rather than a proven route to preventing World War II. The caution concerns hindsight: policymakers cannot know in advance whether additional coercion will secure peace or merely add casualties.