Much to my surprise, the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible.

Much to my surprise, the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible.

Apocalyptic expectations ran riot in 1917, and had a major influence on Allied policies towards Palestine and the Jewish people. The propaganda of all nations was amazingly religious and apocalyptic - ghosts and visions, crucifixions and sacrifice, crusaders and holy warriors.

. If you believe that your nation is divinely ordained to rule Europe, and you must struggle to establish its supremacy, is that a religious doctrine or a nationalist one? In Germany especially, the whole super-nationalist ideology of the post-1871 empire is heavily imbued with religious teaching, chiefly Lutheran, and frankly viewing the new empire as the germ of the kingdom of God on Earth.

Just because many modern academics are very secular does not mean that we should ignore those factors in earlier generations - and by that, I don't just mean five or six centuries ago.

When the war started, religion and superstition (whatever the difference is) permeated the lives of ordinary soldiers, who lived in a thought world not too far removed from the seventeenth century.

It is also amazing to find just how religious and occult-minded some of the leading political and military players of the war were, from von Moltke and Ludendorff to Brusilov and J F C Fuller. Each, in his way, was deeply involved in what we would today call the occult, spiritualism, and visionary religion.