The war helped catapult the US from being a debtor nation to a creditor one, and Wilson's leading role in negotiations at Versailles, even though he didn't actually get what he wanted, made America a big player on the world stage for the first time. Thanks, Thought Bubble. But just so we don't get completely Eurocentric, another major outcome of the war was the end of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the nation-state of Turkey. The rest of the world saw some change, too, but not much for the better. In Africa, Britain took Germany's colonies, and even though Indians fought and died in a higher percentage than Americans in World War I, India didn't gain any real autonomy. All these terrible outcomes led to a general sense of disappointment in literary circles. And this feeling of pointlessness and cynicism was expressed by the writers of The Lost Generation.