Yeah the League of Nations was the result of the first one and it failed. Given the sheer slaughter they needed a way to forge peace as it clearly was massively self destructive.

I am not sure how true it was but I heard a theory that Europe lost much of its intellectual prominence due to so many young men dying in the trenches in WW1 - now Europe does good intellectual work now but it is more "neat thing out of Europe" as opposed to "the hotspot". I am not well equipped to evaluate the merits but the idea is interesting at very least.