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

[SammiYin]

The only WWII we were taught at school was primarily holocaust related. We were taught nothing about the war itself.
I don't remember getting anything on WWI either to be honest, my school sucked.

 

[Blackality]

Actually I think here it was the opposite. Our country was one of the few european neutral nations during WWII anyway.

 

[Fledge]

I had at least 100x more hours of WWII taught to me than WWI.

England.

 

[Mr Goostoff]

Here in Canada, we do kind of the opposite.
We played a pretty big role in WWI, and as such I was taught much more about it than WWII.
We did a lot in WWII as well, but we tend to get overshadowed by either Britain or the USA. Or both.

 

[Yureina]

This girl got more about WW1 in school than I ever got about WW2. Middle/High school at least. University I never looked at WW1, while WW2 got quite a bit due to my focus on modern history.

 

[bob1052]

WW2 had better movies to watch in class.

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

My history teacher covered WWI more than WWII. So no, this doesn't apply to me.

 

[zero14777]

I don't really think that the wars are treated unfairly, well maybe they were to you, but WWII is probably the more memorable just because of well Nazis, Hitler, holocaust, etc. WWI is mostly remembered for a bunch of people in trenches with machine-guns because two small countries were in political conflict.

 

[maninahat]

Define "most countries".

When I was at school, WW1 was taught as extensively (if not more) than WW2.

We learnt about WW1 in detail, briefly touched on the Great Depression, but concentrated mostly on post-WW1 reparations and the League of Nations, then went on to WW2. In fact, the first half of the 20th Century was really taught as one subject, since WW1 influenced everything else.

I even remember WW1 being taught more extensively than WW2 at primary school, with great importance being placed on "The Great War" and what we remember on Armistice Day, the sacrifices, the horrors and the "Lions Led By Donkeys".

Yeah, basically I got the same as well.

There is a lot more to learn in WWI, and the intermediate period. WWII is comparatively straight forward. If you are learning about history, than things like propaganda, allegiances and re-writing history itself are of more value than blitzkriegs.

 

[The Great Purtabo]

Ah the Boer war...
Good times...
Good times...

 

[maninahat]

What I want to know is why we persist in calling them "World Wars" when they pretty much just revolved around Germany, France, Great Britain, and Russia. Oh sure, we over here in North America joined in too, and Japan got involved in the second one, but the vast majority of the conflict in both wars was centered around the afor mentioned 4 countries. But even if you take into account every country that was involved, that still leaves 2 entire massive continents that weren't involved in anyway whatsoever, 3 if you count Antarctica.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/images/1914wrld.gif

Remember that at this point Britain includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India and a large chunk of Africa. The battleground was continental Europe mostly but soldiers from all over the world were dragged into it (Japan was involved in WWI as well). WWII also had naval battles in either one or both poles, some people refer to WWI as 'The Great War' because of the unprecedented casualties.

Ok, 1 entire continent then. _> Alright alright, I stand corrected.

More than one continent, smart alec. Africa saw a lot of action, then there was the whole Russian revolution going on at the same time. And of course, the collapse of the Ottoman empire and the independance of the middle east. Finally, some less bloody but still significant action in the Pacific and China. Countries from every continent had some stake in this war.

 

[Firewind_77]

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?

i imagine because ww1 is out of human memory, and there are no super-weapons involved or video documentaries

Just to note "no super-weapons" is quite false here. WWI saw the introduction of large scale chemical warfare (despite being banned by treaty, but there was a loophole). The German versions being designed by Haber (who you might know for the Haber cycle. He made modern mass-produced fertiliser, he's also considered a war-criminal by a lot of people.)

We were always taught both fairly evenly in Ireland, though there was a slight emphasis on WWI in my education since so many Irish served in the English army and we were neutral in WWII.

 

[BytByte]

World War I was definitely much smaller scale than WWII. The main portion of WWI was just the trench warfare where no advancements were made. WWII on the other hand was much more global due to Hitler's Blitzkrieg tactic. Much more ground was covered which allowed for more interesting stories to crop up.

Also I don't believe the notion that WWII is covered more because it was more black and white is correct. Here in the USA, the Vietnam War is taught extensively and that conflict had much more dissent than WWI ever did.

 

[t3h br0th3r]

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?

Because of the Atomic Bomb (at least in the US).

WWI was glossed over in my history classes because its main impact for the US was that it set the stage for WWII (which many of our grandfathers fought it) which set the stage for the A-Bomb, which set the stage for the Cold War, which lead to the 10 years of Win known as the 90s.

WWI is mostly though of as the last war that had horses and the first time America saved France, settling the life-debt we owed them from the US War of Independence (There are more things named for Lafayette in the US than in France).

 

[conelrad]

It's more about your Country/State's curriculum rather than teacher/school preference over one war rather than another. In the school's I teach in, for example, and in my own education at high school, we learnt the beginning of WW1, the involvement of the nation, Germany's defeat and Versailles, which logically leads to the rise of the Nazis. WW2 on the other hand focusses on the Nazis and the rise of global American power.

There are a few reasons for this: mostly it boils down to a fact that there are only so many lessons in a unit and teachers have be very selective when choosing topics from the curriculum. If I had all the time in the world I'd be going on about every front and major battle of WW1, as even a single battle in that war was so destructive, so cataclysmic to human life, that nations would collapse or fall into strike. However teachers can't. The result is they must present the abridged version of history: that is focussing on the beginning and political ramifications of WW1. Why? Because WW1 is generally agreed to be the catalyst for most conflict in the 20th Century. I could go on but there is enough material on the historical importance of 1914-18 without me reproducing it here. 'The First World War' by Michael Howard is a short, excellent starter to the topic.

 

[icyneesan]

I learned way more about WWI and the Cold War then I did WWII. Everything we were taught about WWII was done in one class, while we spent 2 weeks on WWI, and 2 months on the Cold War.

In my opinion, you can learn what you need to know about WWII from Call of Duty 1 and 2, and casually looking at wiki for dates of important battles and the names of lesser known officers.

 

[Thamian]

Personally, while I got taught extensively about the inter-war years, WW1 only really got a look at the conditions under which the soldiers fought and a brief over view of what happened, while WW2 only really got an over view of what happened (I suppose the assumption was that thanks to TV we'd know WW2 quite well atleast).

As far as the perception that WW2 is taught more thoroughly that WW1 is concerned, ultimately it's probably down to it one: principally being a European war (only really justifying the World War moniker by sheer dint of most of the nations involved owning quite a large portion of the rest of the globe), and two: being kinda morally f***ed up... Ultimately, it was a pissing contest between a collection of toffs which in the process got best part of 16 million people killed.

WW2 on the other hand was a glorious and truly global fight to the death against a truly evil ideology (atleast in Europe, don't really know all that much about the Japanese ideologies during the war), in which (with some margin of error) around 70 million people died. Not only is there a difference in which one is more recent, but also a massive difference in scale.

 

[JustJuust]

We learn WWI in great detail here in Canada... I haven't tried learning it anywhere else. Anyhoo we Canadians are pretty proud of our wartime contributions in WWI, as in we are proud of how bravely those young boys fought not proud of the war itself.

But every Remembrance day when I was in school I remember the "Great War" being covered probably more than WWII.

But I digress, Vimy Ridge, the Somme, the triple alliance and triple entente, the assassination of archduke Ferdinand. Yep, all covered.

Can't forget Ypres and Passchendale now can we? I guess in Canada we cover WW1 pretty well.

what do you know about 100 days campaign escapists?

 

[maddawg IAJI]

Because WWII was a large event both politically and technologically. WWII saw the first major combat roles of both tanks and air planes and had large scale battles with losses that would dwarf those of WWI. It had the holacaust, the creation of the atmoic bomb, the birth of Communism and Facism, the rise and fall of the Nazi party in Germany, a complete redoing of Japan's government and its end marks the beginning of the Cold War which would segregate Europe for several decades.

In short, it had a much larger impact.

 

[Vakz]

Welcome to Sweden. We went through WWI in detail, but only briefly touched WWII, just the general stuff (Hitler gaining power, jews bullied, invading rest of europe, holocaust, allied winning).