Why is WWII taught so extensively in most countries yet WWI is just glossed over?

[octafish]

snip
It's a curious thing that Australia seems only to take glory from losses.

The defeat at Gallipoli is remembered, the successes on the Western front, or the sinking of the Emden by the Sydney is not. Tobruk isn't discussed as much as the Kokoda Trail (and discussion of that ends before the eventual victory). Australia remembers Vietnam, but not Korea.

Hell, even Ned Kelly got to be a folk hero, nobody remembers the Victorian police force officers that got him.

I think more Australian's are becoming aware of things like the Battle of Kapyong. I don't know how widespread that is though. It is a disapointment that the French remember the Australian's efforts on the Western Front better than Australians. While we as a nation may concentrate on Gallipolli the French will never forget Villers-Bretonneux or Passchendaele.

I think most Australians are justifiably proud of the Rats of Tobruk though. I think we just like the underdog, the battler, and the spirit of resistance. Hell in my opinion the greatest Australian hero of WW2 was a doctor who never fired a shot and was captured by the Japanese very early on.

 

[Naeo]

My US History and World History classes (I'm not counting the class I took specifically on the World Wars in this) both had a fairly good coverage of WWI and WWII. However, I can see why America might skim over WWI more in its history classes--America was more involved with WWII and for a longer time than with WWI, so it was a bigger thing for us.

 

[Megabobster]

I don't even know if I was taught about WWI >_>

 

[RedDeadFred]

In my Social Studies 30 class in grade 12, we spent about a third of the semester on WWI, another third on WWII, and the last third on the Cold War.
I live in Alberta.

 

[RedDeadFred]

They taught nearly nothing about WWI in Wales, though WWII was obviously taught.

I found WWI more interesting, as a lead up to WWII due to the idiocy of the 'winners' bashing Germany so hard.

A very unpopular thing to mention in public schools.

Similarly the lead up to Japan attacking the US is glossed over.

You don't want the villains looking like they had any justifications, better they just be random barbarians.

It's because WWII was the only war in the last 300 years where there was a clear right and wrong. Most other wars are simply disagreements between two equally reasonable parties, but World War II had a clear evil villian that had to be defeated.

Was that clear evil the guys carpet bombing and nuking civilians cities?

Or was it the one that was massacring civilians in death camps?

Or the one that was decapitating civilians in China in a contest to see who could launch a head the farthest?

Was that evil the oppressive nations that dragged a nation into a poverty so deep that only there would it even end up following a crazed genocidal dictator?

What about the major ally who killed more people than that clear evil guy?

I get so confused with WWII when people mention the clear evil villain. Cause I seem to recall basically every major party butchering thousands if not millions of civilians (and of course soldiers).

Ok. Yes Stalin was an Evil bastard and yes the US definitely committed a war crime by dropping nukes in Japan but to say Stalin killed more innocents than Hitler is a bit much...
We don't really know hoe many he killed but it is certain that Hitler's genocide killed at least six million Jews. So ya I'd say that Hitler was definitely the greater evil.
Hurray for me being Canadian though. No one ever blames us.

 

[Conza]

I understand how WWII is more recent, however, WWI was the lead up to WWII as without it Germany wouldn't have been crippled.
Is it due to the grey and gray morality surrounding the events with no country truly being in the right?
Is it simply because most of the western front was bogged down in trenches?

My take on why it's taught is this.

WWI was a war that should not really have been fought, there's very little to learn from it, lots of atrocities occurred, people died, and we won. Thankfully.

WWII, is almost the complete opposite. Hitler, being who he was, is the personification of evil and wrong, no doubt about it, not a single person alive, with half a morality, would argue differently, and it was because of his madness, that at all costs, he needed to be put down and removed. If he had not been the evil man that he was, he would not have done half of the things he did, and perhaps, the second world war would never have happened... But he was, and he did, so we must learn from this, as this war was probably the most universally planet defining conflict that has ever occurred for mankind.

There's no grey or gray, there's no who was wrong and who was right, we were right, he was wrong, we won, and so help us, I hope there exists not a single alternative reality, where that is not the case, because those universes would contain history so heinous and so rippled with suffering and mass undeserving imprisonment, let alone billions upon billions of outright death, it's hard to fathom.

You're quite right, a fire will not burn without fuel, and WWI was certainly a key link in the causality that lead to the second world war, but its scope of horror is much narrower.

I don't think I've used hardly enough 'colourful' words to describe how thankful we should be, that the second world war was won by the allies, we can only hope that this is the last war containing such dire circumstances - and that is why we should learn its details more, even if, we should learn the necessary precursors, which facilitated its occurence.

 

[Norendithas]

Well, we learned less WWI than WWII but it was more 40%:60% than anything.

 

[Plurralbles]

WWI makes every country that participated look bad. : )

 

[Jewrean]

Here in Australia I was only taught about WW2. I know very little about WW1.

 

[geekRAGE]

whats WWI and WWII

 

[RadiusXd]

year 11 20th century history class, did a term on WW1, and after some other stuff skipped over WW2 to reach the cold war. Apparently we didn't have time for it.

 

[spartandude]

I learnt about it at school, but at a guess I would say it's because WW2 had more lasting direct repercussions.

WW1 also has a tonne of lasting repercussions that we are still trying to get used to, especially when it comes to socialising, people being in control and whether war was a good thing

OT, in my secondary school we actually covered WW1 more than WW2, thats not to say we bearly covered the second war, we did in great detail, but we spent more time on the first

 

[spartandude]

I understand how WWII is more recent, however, WWI was the lead up to WWII as without it Germany wouldn't have been crippled.
Is it due to the grey and gray morality surrounding the events with no country truly being in the right?
Is it simply because most of the western front was bogged down in trenches?

The long and short of it is:

WWII is a pretty well-defined conflict, you know who was right, who went in on the right, who went in on the wrong. It's terrible that it was a war but...

WWI is a much more mired conflict. No one knows who is right, who was wrong, they're only halfway certain they know who started it, and in my opinion Britain and France sued the hell out of Germany because a bunch of Balkan states had no money. In fact that last sentence pretty much laid the breeding ground for Hitler in the second conflict.

Well World War 1 was really just a war of empires fighting eachother, both sides were eaqual dick heads and were both evil, however Britain and France were incredibly harsh on the Germans which lead to a terrible economic situation in germany.

but im not convinced it was the sole thing that lead to Hitler, as many of us know Hitler got support in vienna early on but was then arrested in 1924 and the Nazis became a joke. after that the german economy became strong again and even after hitler was realesed from prisen no one took him seriously. it wasnt untill the Wall Street Crash absolutelt destroying the german economy again that hitler was taken seriously

 

[karloss01]

The first 2 responses surprise me, other people I had talked to just said that they got taught the bare bones of it then skipped to WWII.

its how i was tought, little was said about WW1 (until i researched it myself i didn't even know how it started) in both my primary and high schools but we did a lot on WW2 and Communist russia (more specifially Stalin).

 

[Ekonk]

More countries were involved in WW2 than the first.

Not to mention that it wasn't - unlike WW1 - totally pointless.

 

[MrStab]

Well unless you have had experience in a large percentage schools world over i don't think you can use the term "most countries"

OT: In general high school we learned about WWII more however I think that is because we had more to do with it than WWI here (Australia) but when I did history last year we covered both equally.

 

[Toriver]

The reason my high school only barely covered WW1 and focused so much of WW2 is one word: Holocaust. Our coverage of WW2 since junior high right up to senior year was dominated by the Holocaust and horror stories of Hitler and the SS, and it was the second most heavily taught conflict in my high school education. Our WW1 coverage was basically "a bunch of countries fought in Europe. Germany lost and got charged up the ass for it. That evil bastard Hitler used this later as an excuse to kill 6 million Jewish people, which we will now talk about for the next month." Even the Pacific theater of WW2 was only lightly touched, essentially limited to Pearl Harbor, Midway, the Bataan Death March (for emotional effect), and the atomic bombs. We didn't even talk about the Manhattan Project or any other aspect of how we got them: we just had them and dropped them, and spent most of our time, again, going over personal human interest stories of their effect on regular people rather than on the intricacies of why they were dropped and whether or not it was right: it was a tragedy that caused all these sad stories, so it was automatically and undebatably the wrong decision, end of story.

In that environment you can probably guess what the most-covered conflict was - Vietnam, getting half a semester devoted to a major project to it in junior year. The Vietnam unit, however, was surprisingly even-handed and comprehensive, explaining it from the French occupation all the way up to the North's takeover after the US pulled out. It also covered everything from military strategy to soldiers' experiences to geopolitical ramifications to politics and protests back home to the treatment of soldiers who returned. Our teacher took good care never to overly praise or condemn the actions taken or to sway us one way or the other on it, like he had with the atomic bombings. We were left to do further research and make up our own minds, then present our opinions, using the results of our research to support them. It was really well done, and I wish our coverage of either World War had been that extensive.

Most of my non-holocaust knowledge of WW2 comes from research done out of my substantial personal interest in it. But I did get some good in-depth study of WW1 in college from minoring in European history, with my courses spending much more time on it than WW2 (partly, my profs said, because high school spends so much time on WW2... )

 

[RuralGamer]

I was taught much more about WW1; maybe its just Scotland, but most of my friends were taught it to some degree; the most we were taught about WW2 was the rise to power of the Nazis and the home front stuff.

 

[Korolev]

Here's my take on it:

1) No side was a monster. All sides had political angles and a lust for land. It was also largely avoidable. Russia, for instance, had no real reason to get involved other than the fact that the Tsar was a big softy who felt honour bound to intervene (and it destroyed Russia in the process, and helped spark the Revolution)
2) The scale of the fighting, while immense, was no where near the level of WWII.
3) It wasn't a real World War. Sure, the Brits rounded up soldiers from all over the world, and some of the battles did take place in the Ottoman Empire and there were skirmishes in colonial regions of Africa, but apart from that, it was a mostly European war. Sure the Americans got involved at the very end, and their help was useful in forcing the Germans to agree to an end, but the bulk of the fighting was done by Europeans who really, had no reason to fight each other, other than the fact that some ponce in some castle or palace decided "well, I think I'd like a war today!"
4) The Fighting wasn't glorious or particularly skillful. Millions died as a result of the stupidity of the Generals with their 18th Century tactics in a 20th Century conflict. It's hard to really find glory in a battle like the Somme, in which idiot generals told their troops to walk, literally WALK to the German front lines. Well, you can guess what happened to those British soldiers - they were chewed up by Machine Gun fire.
5) At the end of the day, the aims and accomplishments of WWII were far nobler than the aims and accomplishments of WWI. After WWII, The Nazis had been killed, the Jews liberated, China liberated, France Liberated, the Imperial Japanese defeated and a new age had begun for the allies. After WWI had ended, there was nothing to celebrate. Millions had died for pretty much nothing at all, the Tsar had fallen and the Communists were gaining control of Russia, continental Europe was devastated and so many lives were ruined due to crippling injuries. All for pretty much NOTHING. The generals had though WWI would be a cake walk. It proved to be anything but.
6) The soldiers themselves hated the war. They saw nothing good come from it. Unlike WWII, in which soldiers accepted harsh conditions in order to defeat fascism, the soldiers of WWI were treated HORRIBLY by their commanders, forced (at gunpoint) to stage suicidal attacks and live in APPALLING conditions. You have no idea how horrible it was to live in those trenches, with the constant shelling, disease, water, gas attacks and mud everywhere. It was cold, dirty, bloody, and your "battle plan" involved going over the top and attacking the enemy positions head on, which was usually an invitation to get shot with machine gun fire. It was dreadful, pointless and cruel, and the soldiers hated, absolutely HATED the stupid, belligerent, inefficient, careless and proud generals who couldn't give less of a damn about the average soldier. The way the generals treated their men was disgusting - if you were Shell-shocked and couldn't move, they'd KILL YOU for being a coward! They refused to listen to advice or change tactics.