The Obscure World War I

[Andy]

World War I did not have much of a cause and it was mostly a stalemate unlike World War II. But the main reason is that World War II is more recent.

[Andy H]

World War I did not have much of a cause and it was mostly a stalemate unlike World War II

Would you care to expand on this point please!

Andy from the Shire

[Phil C]

I dont agree that people have more interest in the second world war because its more recent. Speaking personally I find conflicts that my nation took part in more interesting than those that she didn't, and judging by the content of a lot the posts other people feel the same way. Our family lost four relatives on the first day of the somme offensive so i'm very intereted in the great war.

[peter_suciu]

I think there are several other reasons to why World War I is often overlooked when compared to World War II.

1) World War I did not result in "settled business." When people study wars they often like a sense of closure. This was not the case with WWI.

2) There was the "moral" right vs. wrong with WWI. While the Germans were painted as the wrong side in WWI, it is hard to really say today that they were wrong -- especially with what happened next.

3) But most importantly WWI has not been the subject of movies, books and games that made WWII so memorial. People remember the trenches and the war is summed up by this one aspect. People forget about the naval war, the air war, the revolts in Ireland, the revolution in Russia, the mutinities in France and Germany, etc.

[will smith]

I'm sorry maybe i'm a little strange but I certainly have never considered the great war as a background war!!!! it set the stage for much that later transpired the treaty of versaille for instance and the rightous indignation the german people felt as a result the introduction of the tank! and aircraft as funcional aspects of planning and tactics let us not forget the introduction of chemical warfare!!! in the form of mustard gas and other pleasant little variations!!!. in terms of deaths caused it did't take as many as the war to follow but I'd say in terms of the horrors expierienced by front line soldiers it was certainley eqaul if not greater!!! I'd agree though that was no real sense of closure though (and its good to hear another historian say that) the term 'armistance' is more like an admission of exhaustion by the werstern powers and not really an admission of defeat whereas total surrender is just that and pretty final to boot. Nice one desert fox the way the americans like to remember it is almost like they won the war single handed all by themselves-Wagner's right to in what he says about tanks that they're full potential was not really pressed until after the war besides like aircraft they to were virtually embryonic there is a qoute from seigfried owen taken from one of his poems talking about the slaughter of flanders it goes something like this-

and jacob dropped the knife and slew his son and half the seed of Europe one by one.

Peace 8)


Vergeissmienicht

[davethelight]

WWII definetely has a higher profile in the collective consciousness of civilisation today than WWI, and I think this has alot to do with the effect it had on each and every person who lived in the participating countrys at the time.

I think the pervasive effects of the war were more extreme than those of the First World War, certainly every one at home felt the effect of war on their lives in WWI, with women working in the factorys and on the farms while the men fought and died on the battlefields, but WWII had all of this with the addition of mass displacement and slaughter of civilians. Not only did the war affect far more people, it affected them far more!
It is really a comparison of scale, with the added element of time (and the degrading effect this has on the significance of history).