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

[ArchBlade]

Because trench warfare is boring?

Wait, no, wrong.

Actually, I got pretty good coverage of WWI early on in middle school, if I recall correctly. After that though, most of my history teachers who touched on it used it as a framing device to set up the World War II lesson, WHEN THE REAL LEARNING BEGAN.

I suppose it really depends on where you live though. Not all curriculum are the same. And then some of them suck.

 

[Withard]

Is Unit 731 Taught much in Japan? Or America for that matter?

hmmm

 

[supermariner]

I did GCSE History at school as an option
and basically all we covered for the forst 15 months was WW1
WW2 never even came up on the curriculum

 

[darkknight9]

Depends on what country you are in. If your in the land of the short attention span where visuals rule the day instead of actually having to read about your history then you are force fed ww2 till you puke. In same said country its also the biggest opportunity to show glory vs gory. Both sell well for hollywood, but not for the three different history text manufacturers in same said country.

-darkknight9, living in said country with one ww2 book on the shelf next to my seven books on ww1, four on the boer war, and two on the Napoleonic era thankyouverymuch.

 

[Spineyguy]

The Great war was a much bigger and more in-depth section of my History classes than WWII, and I personally found it more interesting.

When you're taught about WWII it can feel like we were fighting this big, demonic, all-powerful entity called the Nazis, which is mostly the fault of the National Socialist leaders and Hollywood. As weird as it sounds, WWII is a bit mainstream, it's become a caricature of itself. "The Germans" or "The Nazis" have turned into this Machiavellian concept of ultimate evil because that was a way of bolstering the armies and keeping the troops dedicated. "The Allies", and America is especially guilty of this, are commonly portrayed as this perfect, heroic faction whose victory was inevitable because they had morality on their side. But there is far less to separate the two wars than we have been led to believe.

But with WWI we have always been taught that we were fighting men, with families and jobs, this adds a big human element to the war, which is the reason it is taught so much more. Everyone knows at least 1 war poem (even if it's only the one from the Gears of War 2 advert), and the publishing of this material is what has made WWI so tragic a story. WWI was fought with men and tanks, but WWII was fought with ideas and concepts, this is what makes them so different.

 

[Flauros]

Oddly enough, it could be just your memory. Everyone usually gets those two mixed up. They hear germans and trenches, they immediately assumme WW2. Go head, ask a random persom some trivia. Its all WW2, all the way down.....

 

[Badong]

Well, World War 2 got taught in my country because it was the only World War that we got involved in. Man, was our shit wreaked in World War 2

 

[DarksideFlame]

We did only have a chapter about the WW1 but at least 2 chapters about WW2 and one chapter for the effects it brought to the national community

 

[Pontus Hashis]

We were taught about them equally, but the first war was more intressting, more ambigus. The ottoman empire was tottaly left out tho, and the only thing I know of it was the "maybe" genocide of armenians, and that was not taught in school.

 

[tris4992]

In Belgium we see both equally, we have however yet to touch the cold war which is kind of dissapointing.

 

[Knusper]

If anything, over my time at grammar school, I have spent more time on WWI than WWII. I spent an entire year studying it and then also a part of my GCSE was on the Post-war treaties whereas WWII got just a little bit of time as filler before I started doing my GCSEs

 

[flaviok79]

The way I learned is that both conflicts are considered by some historians as one conflict with a "lunch break" in the middle - as the first lead to the second. In brazil we are taught both conflicts to fairly the same extent, and the cold war is another chapter of the school year.

 

[Jakub324]

We were taught WW1 in a lot of detail, probably more so than WW2 not including the holocaust; we spent over a month on that one.

 

[MadMechanic]

Are they?
Having just finished A2 history (and I'm hoping to move on to Uni next year), I can honestly say I almost learnt sweet FA about both WW1, WW2, and in fact, any military history. All thr stuff I know about both wars, I have learnt by myself, in my own time.
Primary school, we did WW2 for about a month in year 6 (final year). It covered the home front of Britain, nothing more.
Secondary School - Year 9, at the very end of the year (when no-one gave a toss about learning) we did WW1 for...2 weeks. We learnt about WW1 in 6 lessons, each 45 minutes long.

GCSE (yr10-11) We did coursework on Gallipoli - and that was purely down to the head of history having an interest in that part of history. The rest of it? The exam was based on Germany in the inter-war period. Very basic end of WW1, very basic start of WW2

AS history - Edwardian Britain. No WW1 coverage. Russia 1894-1945 - despite both WWs being there, we didn't cover them.
A2 - coursework on Nazi Germany, WW2 only appeared as a 'side story' to the Holocaust. Russia, 1855-1964 - once again, WW1 + WW2 completely skipped over.

It's a long running joke in my history set that I'm obsessed with military history. I probably am. It's just I've taken the time to learn about what I believe to be very important aspects of history, rather than just accept the bullshit the exam boards believe is important.

 

[Declaro]

Being educated in two different countries, I had kind of a mixed experience on this.
When I took AP US History, we covered them fairly equally, which is to say, not very much focus on the military aspects, much more focus on the repercussions in the US.
In IB History, we basically skimmed over WWI, but it was one of the 'paths' schools could read, our school just chose to read other paths instead.

I think the fact a lot of people consider World War I to be little more than 'World War II: The Prequel' is to blame for a lack of specific focus. However, it's almost impossible to not at least mention WWI's effects on, say, Germany, if you're in any sort of decent history class. If a teacher didn't at least bring it up, it would be a pretty serious oversight.

WWI is also, like other people have said, a serious clusterfuck in terms of what caused it.

 

[a ginger491]

It was actually the opposite for me this year. we spent about 3 weeks on WWI, about a week on WWII, and the rest of the semester to chose and analyse a post WWII conflict of our choosing. Mine was the UN-Somalia conflict of the early nineties

 

[Vhite]

What I would like to know is that why when we were taught history of Europe, America and even a little bit of Africa, we were never taught anything about Asia except maybe how Mongloians invaded Europe.

 

[Alexlion]

In britain its not i learnt more about the first than the second

 

[Alpha Centauri]

In my history class, we learnd a hell of a lot more about world war 1 than we did about world war two, its possible due to the fact that I live in Canada and we played some big rolls in world war 1, like Vimiy Ridge, not to say we didn't do big stuff like than in WW2.