J.B. Shurk:

Mark Jeftovic wrote a wonderful essay arguing that WWIII has been in the works ever since industrialized nations jettisoned the classical gold standard at the outbreak of WWI.  Drawing from Ferdinand Lips’s insightful book, Gold Wars, Jeftovik recounts how everything changed once governments abandoned sound money in order to finance long wars.  From the mid-1600s all the way to 1914, the gold-linked British pound remained remarkably stable — even increasing its value relative to gold over those two and a half centuries (no doubt because of its proven resilience through myriad crises).

Quoting Lips, Jeftovic soberly notes:

In 1914, at the beginning of World War 1, the gold standard was thrown overboard within a few weekends.  In order to finance wars, the world resorted to deficit spending and paper money.  Had the gold standard not been given up, the war would not have lasted more than a few months.  Instead, it lasted more than four years and ruined most of the major economies in the world and left millions dead in its wake.