What was the worst year in Human History?

 (My answer on Quora)

I am going with 1914. It saw the onset of the First World War which cost millions of lives and reshaped the political landscape of Europe. It was from unresolved WWI issues that the thew even greater cataclysm of WWII came forth and the later ideological battle that was the Cold War. WWI sowed the seeds for the twin terrors of Fascism and Communism.

Oswald Spengler saw WWI as a key turning point and who can blame him. I believe that the German thinker was on to something. The destructive nature of Total War was unprecedented in Western history and brought about the end of the Russian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires.

It also drained the resources of Britain, France, Italy and Germany sinking each of these countries into an emerging cycle of debt while creating a post-war reality with territorial divisions that sat on explosive tinderboxes.

If all this wasn’t bad enough the war helped spread, through troop movements, the devastating flu of 1918.