Ravel said that it is a reflection of post-World War I Europe, saying
"While some discover an attempt at parody, indeed caricature, others categorically see a tragic allusion in it - the end of the Second Empire, the situation in Vienna after the war, etc.... This dance may seem tragic, like any other emotion... pushed to the extreme. But one should only see in it what the music expresses: an ascending progression of sonority, to which the stage comes along to add light and movement."
and also commenting in 1922 that "It doesn't have anything to do with the present situation in Vienna, and it also doesn't have any symbolic meaning in that regard. In the course of La Valse, I did not envision a dance of death or a struggle between life and death.