What happens to a country after it loses a war it was told it could not lose?

That is the question Russia will face when the war in Ukraine ends — or freezes, or becomes impossible to sell as victory.

And to understand the danger, we need to look at another European country a little more than a hundred years ago.

Germany after the First World War.

History never repeats itself perfectly. Russia is not Weimar Germany. Putin is not the Kaiser, and the twenty-first century is not the 1920s.

But societies do have patterns.

When a country modernizes quickly, becomes proud of its new strength, then enters a war expecting triumph — and instead gets humiliation, economic stress, dead soldiers, returning veterans, and no satisfying victory — the public often does not become wiser.

It looks for a story that protects its dignity.

In Germany, that story became the betrayal myth: we did not really lose, we were stabbed in the back. That lie helped open the road to Hitler.

Post-war Russia may be heading toward a similar trap, because the ingredients are frighteningly familiar: wounded pride, imperial nostalgia, censorship, veterans returning from a brutal war, a public trained to worship past glory, and a regime that can never honestly say: we were wrong.

Today, I want to show you why post-war Russia could fall into the same emotional and political trap that once helped create Hitler — and what the West must understand if it wants to avoid the next revenge cycle.

Here’s our roadmap:

• Hunger for Respect — why progress can produce resentment instead of confidence
• The Greatness Machine — how propaganda turns ordinary people into fans of empire
• The Short War Illusion — why leaders begin to believe their own patriotic theater
• The Victory Bubble — how censorship makes defeat feel impossible
• The Betrayal Myth — why people prefer “we were betrayed” to “we were wrong”
• The Veteran Problem — how war comes home through men who learned to kill
• Dignity Without War — what the West must understand to avoid the next revenge cycle

Hunger for Respect

Before the First World War, Germany was a rising power with fast-growing industry. The edge it had in science, engineering, education, and manufacturing gave Germans real reasons to feel proud.

But at the same time, Germany had become strong enough to compare itself with Britain and France. And comparison is a dangerous sport. Britain had the biggest empire. France had old prestige. Both had colonies, sea routes, global reach, and a place at the table that Germany wanted.

So German nationalism grew out of a strange emotional mix: achievement and grievance.

“We have done so much. Why are we still treated as second rank?”

This is exactly the kind of feeling that later appeared in Putin’s Russia.

After the chaos of the 1990s, many Russians really did feel that life had improved. Cities looked better. Shopping malls opened. People traveled more. Oil and gas money filled the budget. Moscow became rich and shiny. The state paid salaries on time. The humiliations of the Soviet Union collapse seemed to fade.

But again, that improvement produced a new question: if we have recovered, why are we not feared and respected like before?

That is the key word: respected.

In Russia, it still has the old imperial meaning and translates as: obeyed and feared.

This is where the early-twentieth-century Germany and today’s Russia begin to resemble each other.

Both countries had real progress, but their political cultures turned their real achievements into craving for more. The more they gained, the more they felt deprived. The state did not say: “Look, life is getting better, let’s build a normal future.” It said: “Look how strong we are becoming. Now the world must make room for us.”

And when the world did not move aside politely, resentment deepened.

In Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II wanted what was called Weltpolitik — world policy. His plan for Germany was: build its own fleet, seek overseas colonies, and show that it belonged among the great imperial players.

In Putin’s Russia, the language was different, but the hunger was familiar. Russia wanted a sphere of influence. It wanted neighbors – Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, or the Baltic states – to obey its gravity and the West to stay away.

The tragedy is that both societies confused dignity with domination.

A person with dignity does not need to force everyone at the table to admire him. But imperial resentment treats someone else’s freedom as an insult.

That is why Ukraine became so unbearable for Putin’s Russia. Ukraine was not only a neighboring state but a living alternative. It showed that people who speak Russian, share Soviet history, and know Russian culture could still choose a different road. I have a dedicated video about how and why Ukraine was able to break free from the imperial dream while Russia stayed trapped

The Greatness Machine

How does the state turn ordinary people into fans of empire?

It gives them a story where their boring life is secretly part of something enormous.

This happened in Germany before the First World War. Generations grew up with the memory of victory over France in 1870 and 1871. That victory helped unite the German Empire. It became emotional property passed down to children.

The next generations did not defeat France themselves. But they could feel as if they owned the glory.

That is the trick: the state takes an old victory, polishes it, and hands it to people as identity.

Putin’s Russia did the same with the Soviet victory in the Second World War. Victory Day stopped being a day of mourning and memory and became a lavish public celebration with parades and school rituals, all of which taught the same lesson: we are the heirs of the great victorious people.

And if we are heirs of victory, then anyone who resists us must be a new fascist.

The same mechanism worked through culture. In imperial Germany, patriotic art, theater, music, monuments, and newspapers fed a young nation with images of heroic ancestors and national destiny.

In Russia, the state sponsored its own version: films about heroic security officers, imperial maps, Orthodox-patriotic ceremonies, endless documentaries about Western plots, and school lessons where war became the center of civic identity.

The message was: your life may be small, but your country is great.

And for many people, this message is addictive.

Imagine a man whose life has no visible victory. He works a dull job in a gray town and has very limited options to make his future better. Then the television tells him: you belong to a civilization that defeated Nazism, conquered space, frightens NATO, and carries a sacred mission.

He sits on the couch, but emotionally he stands on a parade square.

This is why patriotic propaganda works even when it gives people nothing practical. It offers them something more valuable: status and purpose.

The Short War Illusion

Germany entered the First World War with confidence. Its military planning was built around speed: strike fast, defeat France, then turn east and solve the problem before the country’s weak points became fatal.

Because Germany did have weak points.

It had brilliant industry, but fewer global resources than the empires it challenged. Germany could win only if the war stayed short.

That is always the trap.

A country that needs a short war starts telling itself the war will be short.

Russia did the same in Ukraine. The Kremlin looked at its size, its army, its missiles. Then it looked at Ukraine and saw a much smaller country, divided by language, tied to Russia by family history, and supposedly ruled by weak politicians.

So the plan was built on contempt. On the assumption that Kyiv would fall in a few days and the government would run.

This is how propaganda becomes strategy. For years, Russian television said Ukraine was not a real state. Ukrainian identity was artificial. The government was controlled from outside. So when the invasion began, the Kremlin was attacking the cartoon of Ukraine it had drawn for itself.

Germany had its own cartoon. It imagined a war where discipline, planning, and national energy would defeat the messiness of its enemies.

But the enemy did not behave as expected.

Belgium resisted. France did not collapse fast enough. Britain entered the war. The German plan began to crack – just as Putin’s plan in Ukraine did.

In an authoritarian system, the leader can never admit a mistake. If they ever do, that’ll be the end of them. So instead of backing off, they double down.

Germany’s short war became a war of exhaustion. Russia’s quick operation became a long grinding conflict. What was supposed to prove greatness began to consume it.

The Victory Bubble

Censorship does not make a country stronger.

What it does is make bad news arrive late.

That is one of the most dangerous similarities between Germany in the First World War and Russia in the war against Ukraine. Both societies were fed the version of war they wanted to believe.

In Germany, patriotic newspapers, military communiqués, school culture, and public rituals kept the nation inside the idea of endurance and eventual victory. People knew there was suffering. They saw wounded men. They felt shortages. But the official frame told them the sacrifice had meaning and the army remained strong.

This is how a society can be exhausted and still shocked by defeat.

Russia’s version is more modern, but the mechanism is the same. Television says the army advances. Officials report captured villages. The goal is to make the public feel that Russia is still moving forward.

The real battlefield becomes almost irrelevant for the average viewer. They want not the truth but whatever makes them feel good and right. And the state TV gives them exactly that, reinforcing the same emotional message: we are under attack, but we are winning.

This is why Z-bloggers are so important in the Russian case. They are strongly pro-war, but some of them see enough from the front to understand that the official picture is false. They complain about fake reports, useless assaults, failed logistics, and commanders who hide reality from Moscow.

They are still trapped inside imperial thinking. But they are also poking holes in the victory bubble.

When that bubble breaks, people feel robbed.

They remember years of “we are advancing,” “the enemy is collapsing,” “the West is tired,” “victory is near.” Then suddenly they face a poorer country, dead sons, returning veterans, and no grand triumph.

That moment creates rage.

The Betrayal Myth

After the First World War, millions of Germans could not accept that their army had been beaten by exhaustion, blockade, bad strategy, and stronger opponents. They had been told for years that Germany was brave, disciplined, and destined to prevail. Then the empire collapsed, the Kaiser disappeared, and the new republic had to sign a humiliating treaty.

For many, the mind refused the obvious conclusion.

If we were so strong, how did we lose?

The answer came quickly: traitors.

The “stab-in-the-back” myth claimed that Germany had not truly lost on the battlefield. It had been undermined from within by socialists, liberals, republicans, Jews, cowards, profiteers, and anyone else useful as an enemy.

It was false. But it was emotionally perfect.

It told defeated people they did not have to feel stupid. Their sacrifice had not been wasted by bad leadership and impossible war aims. Their country had not made a catastrophic mistake. No. They had done everything right and almost won but someone dirty had stolen victory from them.

This is the story post-war Russia may be heading toward.

A rational explanation of the war will be unbearable for many Russians. It would require them to say: we invaded a neighboring country, destroyed cities, killed people, believed lies, and ended up poorer, weaker, and hated.

That is too much truth. So another story will be received better: we were betrayed.

The generals lied. The corrupt officials stole supplies and failed the soldiers. The cowards ran to Georgia and Armenia.

Some of these accusations will contain pieces of truth. That is what makes the myth dangerous as it uses real rot to hide the central fact: the war itself was the crime and the mistake.

The Veteran Problem

A failed war always comes home.

This is one of the most dangerous lessons from Germany after the First World War. Millions of men came back from the front with habits that no civilian society could easily absorb. They had lived for years in a world where violence was normal.

Then they returned to a country that was poorer, angrier, and politically broken.

For many of them, peace felt like abandonment. They had risked their lives and lost friends, while being told their sacrifice had meaning. And then they came home to unemployment, humiliation, and politicians explaining why the empire was gone.

In Germany, some of these men entered paramilitary groups that fought in the streets and attacked leftists. They treated politics as another battlefield. The war had trained them to solve conflict through force, and the post-war state was too weak to contain them.

Russia may face its own version of this problem.

A large number of men will return from a brutal war. Some will have injuries. Some will have money for a short time and no future after that. And many will have learned cruelty as the new normal.

And they will need a story.

But a rational story would be unbearable. It would say: you were used. You were sent to destroy another country for lies. Your suffering did not save Russia but only served a corrupt regime and its imperial fantasy.

Most people cannot live with that, so they will look for another explanation. One that lets them keep their dignity.

They will listen to someone who tells them: you were brave, but betrayed.

That kind of story is very attractive to a man who comes home from war and finds that nobody wants him, nobody understands him, and nobody can give him back what he lost. It tells him that his failure was not his fault.

And a future nationalist leader will know exactly how to speak to him. He will only need one sentence: They stole your victory, and I will return your honor.

That’ll be enough to build a movement that pulls in veterans, angry patriots, young men with no future, officers disappointed by the old command, and civilians who want someone to explain why their lives got worse.

This is why post-war Russia may be more dangerous than wartime Russia in one specific way. During the war, the state tries to control violence by directing it outward. After the war, that violence returns home and starts looking for a new target.

Dignity Without War

So what can the West do to prevent a new Hitler from coming to power in the post-war Russia?

First of all: it should allow Russia to keep its dignity.

After the First World War, Germany was blamed for the catastrophe. And yes, Germany bore enormous responsibility. But the political handling of defeat gave German nationalists exactly the story they needed. They could point to the treaty, the reparations, the lost territories, the foreign pressure, and say: look, they want to destroy us. They don’t want peace. They want us on our knees forever.

That argument worked because it protected dignity.

This is the warning for the West after the war in Ukraine.

If Russia comes out poorer, isolated, angry, and flooded with returning veterans, the next political question will be: who gives Russians a way to feel like human beings without empire?

If nobody does, the revenge sellers will come first.

They will say Russia was cheated, betrayed, and denied its rightful place. They will say the West wants Russia weak forever and Ukraine was only a tool.

We have heard this music before.

The answer is not appeasement. Appeasement only teaches aggressive states that violence works.

The real answer is harder. Russia must lose the right to dominate its neighbors. But Russians must not be told that dignity itself is available only through domination.

There must be a visible path where Russia can be poor but not humiliated. Responsible for its wrongdoings but not eternally cursed. A country can be forced to pay for crimes and still be offered a future that does not require revenge.

This will require serious political imagination.

Russian society needs an alternative story: you can be Russian without being imperial. You can have dignity without making neighbors afraid. You can belong to Europe not as a conqueror, but as a normal country.

Will Russians accept that?

I don’t know.

But if no such path exists, the old path will return. The path of worshipping past glory, feeling betrayed, seeking revenge, and another leader promising to make the nation formidable again.

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