The 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the fighting of World War I in Europe came and went with surprisingly little notice on Nov. 11. Commemoration was muted for a conflict that took the lives of some 15 to 19 million soldiers and civilians (estimates vary widely) including, in just 19 months, 116,000 Americans.

Those were shocking numbers for a nation whose territory was untouched by enemies and whose population had just topped 100 million. The toll in blood helps explain why Western European leaders appeased Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and why overwhelming majorities of Americans were, until the attack on Pearl Harbor, opposed to entering a war “over there,” to use the World War I phrase.