WWI affected countries in many ways, including financial hardship and technological and medical development, and it also changed people’s ideology. WWI left the most extensive European monarchies such as Turkey, Russia, and Austria-Hungary in debt and made the US the wealthiest country in the world. National currency devaluation affected countries as people rapidly increased the price of their businesses that were low during the war. Germany was affected the most because it had to pay enormous bills for reparations it caused.
Another significant impact of WWI was the improvement of technology and medicine. Technological development affected people all over the world and changed the way people communicated and traveled. New weapons were developed that caused even more destruction and deaths years after WWI. Planes were one of the types of transport that were affected by changes. When the war started, engineers started working hard to develop faster, more powerful jets that could be exploited under the hail of bullets. The battle was fought not only in the air but also on the ground and in the sea. Thus, the tanks were exploited for the first time, special radar was invented to detect German submarines, and masks were invented to avoid being poisoned by gas.
As a result of these destructions, medicine had to be improved as well. Medical professionals had already dealt with wounds and injuries, but they had to deal with the number of patients during that time. Doctors started using blood transfusion, and the first blood bank was created. These advances improved medical administration and helped to save more people.
The war also changed people’s ideologies, making them more nationalistic. After WWI, colonialism came to an end, and people in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa started revolts against colonialism. Seeking better life standards, people also sided with other ideologies such as fascism that was arising in Germany and Italy and Bolshevism in Russia.