On a macro level, I am fascinated by World War I. On the micro level, I am horrified by it.

This was one of the most lethal wars in history. Far more French and British soldiers died in World War I than died in World War II — which is the last war most modern humans really know anything about.

Yet it was World War I that led almost directly to everything that has happened since, certainly in Europe, but also in west Asia and North America, too. And the Great War (as it was known pre-1939) nearly destroyed France, and brought the concept of industrial-level killing into human history.

Last year, a new museum dedicated to telling the story of World War I, La Musee de la Grande Guerre, opened in the Paris suburb of Meaux, which is located about 30 miles east of Paris, near the Marne River, site of two great battles, in 1914 and in 1918.

We previously had visited some of the grim sites of the Great War, including the battlefields north of Verdun, and on our way back to Paris, the Meuse-Argonne American cemetery.

Verdun is particularly chilling; at the Douaument Ossuary the bones of more than 130,000 French and German soliders are on display in a huge building.

The point being that World War I was a disaster for Europe in general, and France in particular, and anyone interested in this part of the world needs to understand the Grande Guerre.

The museum in Meaux helps advance that cause.

If you followed the link to the New York Times story, above, you saw that the museum houses a remarkable collection of artifacts gathered by one French man.

Uniforms, posters, weapons … this is just a fraction of the man’s collection, but it is enough to bring us a sense of an awful war.

The reasons for all wars often seem silly and random, afterward, but World War I is particularly so, and the costs seem atrocious compared to what was at stake — beginning with Austrian insistence on punishing Serbia for the zealots who assassinated two Austro-Hungarian royals in Sarajevo. Western Europe was a vibrant and optimistic place before the Great War; chastened and gloomy since.

What made the Great War so horrific was the nature of its fighting — most of it from trenches, often muddy and vermin-infested — and the enormous sacrifices in men required to launch an offensive.

More than 1.4 million French soldiers died, and more than 880,000 British, and more than 115,000 American — and the U.S. was actively at the front for barely one year.

Machine guns and artillery were the big killers, and that the original combatants kept fighting for more than four years is astonishing. It was the last time that so many people were ready to die for so many countries.

The new museum isn’t much to look at, from the outside, but the displays inside are intelligently laid out, and the replicas of trenches bring home the living conditions for soldiers.

The museum has several video stations, where photographs and movies from the era can be seen. On the walk to the entrance from the parking lot, loudspeakers disguised in the foliage broadcast the sounds of marching, and planes, and singing.

It is a thorough but somber place, but also enlightening. All those complete uniforms, from the leathers the aviators wore to the coarse wool the soldiers wore.

The place was not crowded when we were there, in the afternoon, which seems sad, because even the French have much to learn, and remember, from the Great War.

I recommend it to everyone.