All of the great wars of the 20th century are perfect examples. WW1 started when an assassin with Serbian state backing assassinated the heir (to an 80+ year old Emperor) of Austria-Hungary. Austria-Hungary demands Serbia effectively let them carry out an investigation and enact consequences at their discretion. Austria-Hungary refuses. So Serbia invades them. This causes Serbia's ally Russia to move in on behalf of Serbia. This causes Austria-Hungary's ally Germany to move in on behalf of Austria-Hungary. This resulted in Russia's ally France joining in on the war, and so on.
Soon enough you had Brits killing Germans because a Serbian assassinated an Austro-Hungarian royal. The most messed up thing of all though is that everybody had a very strong pretext of 'just' behavior on their side. It was just like an avalanche of justice that resulted in tens of millions of dying and things not only failing to get better, but getting much much worse.
Since the winners won, and the losers lost, the winners must be right. So they decided to brutally punish the losers for being wrong, Germany among them in this case. The consequences imposed on Germany were extreme to the point that the entire state was bankrupted and driven into hyperinflation and complete collapse. And this set the stage for a young vegetarian from Austria with an knack for rhetoric and riling up crowds to start using the deprivation the state was forced to endure to rally increasingly large numbers of followers to his wacky cause. He was soon to set Germany on a path to proving that WW1 was not only NOT the war to end all wars, but rather was just the warm-up act for what was really about to happen.
Soon enough you had Brits killing Germans because a Serbian assassinated an Austro-Hungarian royal. The most messed up thing of all though is that everybody had a very strong pretext of 'just' behavior on their side. It was just like an avalanche of justice that resulted in tens of millions of dying and things not only failing to get better, but getting much much worse.
Since the winners won, and the losers lost, the winners must be right. So they decided to brutally punish the losers for being wrong, Germany among them in this case. The consequences imposed on Germany were extreme to the point that the entire state was bankrupted and driven into hyperinflation and complete collapse. And this set the stage for a young vegetarian from Austria with an knack for rhetoric and riling up crowds to start using the deprivation the state was forced to endure to rally increasingly large numbers of followers to his wacky cause. He was soon to set Germany on a path to proving that WW1 was not only NOT the war to end all wars, but rather was just the warm-up act for what was really about to happen.