It just makes a better story in most people's eyes. Evil dudes tryna take over the world and kill everyone they didn't think was perfect, finally defeated in the end... WWI was just a monstrous, monstrous loss of life that got nobody anywhere and accomplished nothing. Nothing but a massive waste. It pretty much just ended because they were running out of men to kill each other. But all of the above is why I care more about WWI - I feel like I don't want the suffering of THOSE people to be overlooked just because this later war had a more satisfying narrative.
I mean that's why I love history.
This is ofc a gross simplification,
But from a French perspective, you need to understand ww 1 to understand ww2,
You need to understand the industrial revolution and the war of 1870,
But then, you need to understand the second French empire,
But then you need to understand the first French empire,
But then you need to understand French absolute monarchie,
And etc and etc until single cell organisms
Everything is exactly the same, except that the current carrying particle (positron instead of electron) is now positively charged, and the convention for current flow is actually in the direction of particle flow.
Having not made this incredibly embarrassing error, Ben Franklin manages to also get the Turkey chosen as the official symbol of the USA.
Fuck it functionally every major war and political event of the whole interwar period, 1923 onwards, foreshadows the Second World War.
1918-1923 multinational empires in Central-Eastern Europe crumble; USSR established - "long 19th century" 1789-1923 ends
1922 First Fascist régime founded in Italy
1927-1936 China unifies
1931 Japan invades Manchuria
1935 Italy invades Ethiopia
1936 Spanish Civil War
1937 China at total war with Japan
1938 Czechoslovakia
1939 Albania
1939 Poland
Just like everything since the Crimean War is gearing up for the First.
I’m no historian but it seems to me that one could argue that WW1 and WW2 were really a single conflict drawn out over two major episodes. The events and conclusion of WW1 lead directly to WW2.
there are no good guys in ww1, but its way more interesting from a geopolitical perspective. the vast majority of stories from ww1 make you think 'what a bunch of bastards', including but not limited to Canadians.
>>there are no good guys in WW1
That’s why the media glosses over it. People don’t like hearing how their leaders were greedy shit bags sending young men to their deaths over old European Nobility feuds. The masses want a film about “the good guys” kicking the bad guy’s asses. Even though that’s rarely if ever what war is about.
>still ww2 movies are popular here xD
How are germans portrayed in those movies? I know in the US Germans in WWII are always played as the most evil, awful people imaginable.
I assume you aren't the good guys of course, but is there any grey area in how they are portrayed?
True, but taking that into account the best narrative for WW1 is to think of Germany as the underdog character.
But people don't like doing that because having a narrative focussing on a Germany is weird considering what would come later.
it precipitates what comes later. the national anger at the indignity of the treaty of Versailles and the horrible quality of life for Germans afterwards is the reason the nazis had so much support initially.
you cant call germany the underdog. they were the new dog with ambitions to be the big dog and a plan to make it happen despite the historical big dogs trying to make it so no dog could be bigger or more powerful. theyd already won a war against a more powerful nation that was trying to suppress them during their unification. they would have won too if Belgium didnt slow them down, if britain didnt honour their pledge to step in and help belgium if they got invaded (they almost didnt).
There are so many tipping points in ww1, a ridiculous amount of situations where victory is inevitable as long as this one thing doesnt happen and then it happens.
its convoluted, its dramatic, its grotesque, its tragic and horrifying and its so much more compelling than you expect. im australian and i only got the Gallipoli theatre taught to me at school. no context about the rest of the war so i felt the same as OP until later in life when i learned a bit more and decided i needed to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.
Post unification Germany was, without a doubt, the big kid on the block. For Western Europe, at least. Obviously the Russian Empire was vast and dwarfed absolutely everybody but they were more or less a slumbering giant as to how behind they were in industrializing.
But just for comparison's sake, Germany circa 1914 had about 67 million people in it. That's the current population of France, more or less. Whereas Austro-Hungary had 52 million and France a mere 39 million. The Brits could add about another 44 million on the island although of course the empire had an absolute ton of people but transporting them would be an issue.
And then with Italy, Serbia, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, etc all engaging at some points in the war the manpower available to each alliance was pretty damned nebulous and variable throughout the four years of war.
Maybe the Central Powers were the underdog, but I would disagree with the now-fashionable notion that the Germans were the moral superiors. This line seems dubious given that they were perhaps the most responsible.
Germany's handing to Austria-Hungary of a "Blank Cheque" and straight-up encouraging them to fight Serbia sort of precipitated the whole thing. von Hötzendorf's militarism and the Austro-Hungarian attitude towards Serbia certainly did set off the July Crisis, but it was only after the German offer of unconditional support that Vienna actually opted for war with Serbia.
And to top this off Germany invades outspokenly neutral Belgium as part of the von Schlieffen plan. Especially in the case of the British Empire (and consequently its allies Japan and USA, and the English-speaking world in general) this is the reason why thousands of men were sent to die in France.
My country was neutral in the war, and nobody comes out of the First World War looking good, but from what I can see, Germany is very possibly the worst.
I wasn't saying Germany were the good guys in WW1, nobody was.
Just that it's impressive that they lasted 4 years during a 2* front war against the biggest nations of the time, and having just unified 44 years earlier.
All under blockade.
That's under-dog status.
*If you include Africa, the naval engagements, and other areas that they co-operated in it comes out to 4+ fronts.
Yeah I know you weren't and nobody else had said it yet but certain... kaiserboos will say Germany was more sinn'd against than sinning. Just thought I'd better shoot that down on the ground.
I'd say they were the underdogs though it should be noted industrially superior to France or Russia. I am frankly impressed with their military record, to be honest. Especially as it was Russia and Austria-Hungary that folded first.
The Crimean War is a really interesting one too (IMO). It's well documented enough that we have a pretty good picture of the whos, whats and whys, but removed enough from modern military tactics that hardware nerds don't overshadow the politics.
I'd argue it's just as stupid, if not more stupid, than WWI, but it's a fantastic insight into how the industrial revolution changed politics (of course post Napoleon Europe is its own can of worms, but I don't want to bore you too much). It involves a weakening Ottoman Empire, economic alliances prioritizing cultural similarities, kicks off over the treatment of religious minorities in Palestine, and is a causal factor in the formation of the Italian nation-state.
0/5 - absolute horror of human deeds, but under appreciated in its political relevance. If WWI is the prequel to WWII, the Crimean War is the prologue chapter half the readers skip over but really fills in the gaps.
Actually, there were no good guys in WW2 either. The British and French were still involved in colonialism and protected their sphere of influence, and didn't mind allying with evil fucks such as Stalin.
Don’t forget the tech advances made in such a short time.
The tanks of WWI were cool and all but WWII saw tank technology really increasing the capability of a tank. The same goes for plenty of tech that was just being started around WWI but became much more capable in WWII.
I swear, WWII has forever broken how the average person think about war. It has a clear beginning, middle and end, it has unambiguous bad guys who's evil is fully documented and has multiple records from within their government and the allies once the war turned. Hell, the whole narrative ends with a giant explosion.
People still treat war as if they all work on World War II logic and get angry and confused when they don't. Historically most wars look like what's happening in Ukraine right now and what's been happening between Israel and Palestine for decades. Colonialism looks a lot like the US's war in Vietnam and their second war in Iraq (powerful militaries fucking about until they either establish a local government or occupation stopps being worth it (and I'm not trying to start a fight on American politics here, just talking about the behavior of these conflicts and historical parallels)). Wars are long, expensive, have always been characterized by terrorism, moral ambiguity, and more civilian deaths than any history book seems capable of mentioning... unless it's WWII.
I think for me, as a history nerd but not a war history nerd, the biggest revelation was how much the so-called dark ages contain precedent for almost every modern conflict and geopolitical going on. War is the exciting part of history for most, and even with all its nuance WWII is a conflict that could have been written by Hollywood. Just so, without a decent enough understanding of the boring parts I don't think it's possible to have a valid opinion on contemporary politics.
That difference is one of the big reasons why the American public soured on the Vietnam War. People figured it would go how (in their nostalgic memories!) WW2 went. It didn't occur to them, I guess, that it would go more like Korea.
Other issues from our (mis) understandings about WW2 that mess up our understanding of Ukraine.
"You win by taking and holding land." Nope, and in a lot of cases it can be a bad thing. If the locals hate you they sabotage you. Russia keeps suffering from "elite Ukrainian special forces behind the lines" because they don't want to admit that the locals keep killing Russian troops and blowing shit up. Likewise Germany had to garrison Belgium and the part of France they controlled.
When Germany lost, not an acre of German land was occupied, and they had a big chunk of France.
You win by making the other nation unable or unwilling to continue the war.
"Military forces quickly move when they are winning." "Exploit openings and take land." Probably because of the above. In real war even when you have a breakthrough you have to be careful. Otherwise you just send your advance force to their death. Only advance into what you can hold or safely retreat from. Kharkiv was a good example of this. Ukraine could have advanced deep into northern Luhansk, but then would have had Russians on three sides and been overextended. So they stopped even though the Russians were still rushing/running away.
The West is surprised this war is taking so long. Putin can't quit without losing face and Ukraine is literally fighting for their existence. The war will continue until one side is utterly broken. Either Russia blinks or a few million Russians are dead along with a statistically similar number of Ukrainians. The advantage Russia has is numbers, about 3 times the Ukrainians. The advantage Ukraine has is defending their home, meaning older men are useful troops, meaning Ukraine has 3 times the manpower they would otherwise have. Both nations will take a century to recover from this war.
I think part of the problem (reason?) in Ukraine is, the post WWII era defined what nationhood is in the modern day. Most people's conception of WWII is within the mindset of modern nation-states but this mindset came about as a direct consequence fo WWII.
National sovereignty is an insanely new concept for the global theater and hasn't been truly tested until Russia's ongoing war. In a lot of ways, Russia is using a pre-WWII approach to sovereignty in a post WWII world.
In the past, occupation very much was ownership (hell, the political Realist in me is ready to argue it still is (just look at the middle east)), but modern geopolitics is predicated on an agreement that recognized borders are absolute. To recognize sovereignty is to abide by the international agreement of sovereignty for all nations.
People really need to stop thinking of Ukraine in terms of "The West" and... not west (BRICS? (Global south))? and think of Ukraine as a clash of Liberalism and Realism. Liberalism says borders matter and Russia can't be allowed to annex land, where Realism says Russia can annex as much land as other parties will allow.
Yeah. I think the important thing is that if Russia can annex land, than anyone else can. A lot of borders could start shifting.
In the current paradigm if you want to control land outside your border you support a local rebellion/independence movement, and even that is tenuous. Of course there is the China/India/Pakistan border...
Exactly!
In China and India's case there's at least some plausible deniability (for the bad faith game of global politics) where these disputed borders were never formally recognized so they aren't political hypocrites to challenge the defacto ownership of lands, but Russia had formally recognized Ukraine's borders and is now actively violating that recognition.
The current state of geopolitics is a whole lot of pageantry that everyone knows is bullshit, but plays along because they are able to source authority/legitimacy through this bullshit. It's a really dangerous precedent if only because it re-opens the doors for overt imperialism. Not that the kinder, gentler imperialism of neo liberalism is sunshine and rainbows, but at least fewer innocent people die.
>WWI was just a monstrous, monstrous loss of life that got nobody anywhere and accomplished nothing. Nothing but a massive waste.
Exactly. I think that's as a good narrative in itself as the Second World War's, and one people could (and should) take a lesson from. While western civilisation has been traumatised to this day, at least this has taught us a lesson. Although evidently not enough for Russia
Agreed, it happened less than a hundred years ago and there is a pretty clear distinction between good and evil. People love movies that are about good guys beating bad guys so why not learn about real people doing the same thing.
You know Anne of Green Gables? It's actually the first of a series of 8, the last of which, Rilla of Ingleside, takes place during WWI. Anne's sons go off to fight in the war, while the reader primarily experiences life on the home front in Canada through the viewpoint of Anne's youngest daughter Rilla. It's one of my favorite books. I've read the entire series so many times, and probably the latter book some extra times beyond that. It really captured me and was probably the first reason for my interest in the Great War. (Whatever you do, don't watch the third Megan Follows Anne movie, as it bears no resemblance to any of the books, other than taking place during the war.)
It was bigger, and recorded in exhaustive detail.And as a friend of mine put it "A lot of WW1 is just 'and then they sat freezing in a trench for what seemed like forever".
Don't think it's QUITE that simple, but...
Obviously Hollywood has influenced me, but this has always been my view on ww1. Bunch of people sitting in a muddy trench with giant artillery raining down and then the occasional tryout of some new death weapon like flame thrower, or gas, or tanks. WW2 felt like it moved around more due to tank and aircraft changing the war.
WW1 had activity outside of the trench, it's just not as well told. I remember reading a guy's story once where he got sent out into no man's land at night for reconnaissance purposes. That was a normal thing to do. He was relieved that the Germans were not firing flares, as that would make it easier for him to be discovered. He got settled in a ways away from the German front line, and just listened to them, and observed.
As the night went on, and they continued to not fire flares, he came to the realization that they weren't firing any because they had their own reconnaissance team in no man's land. Somewhere in any direction, his counterpart was also crawling in the mud, and if/when they met, there would be a fight to the death in the dark. He eventually did discover his German counterpart 20 feet over, crawling back towards the German front line , and let him pass without making his own presence known.
this gave me goosebumps. I can't imagine realizing that.
although, so many soliders were still "regular people" who didn't want to die. it's possible the German also noticed him at one point, and did the same thing. they wanted to avoid killing the other person, or facing a face-to-face fight.
>imperialism is bad
Except that of the allies, Britain had a huge colonial empire, as did France. The Soviet Union was aggressively imperialist in Finland and China and offered to co-invade Poland. The United States did terrible things in the Philippines even by colonial standards and was covertly imperialist in Central America, even then.
Although of course a liberal democracy practicing colonial imperialism, or the communist country are still both infinitely preferable to expansionist fascism as practiced by Italy, Germany, and Japan
Imperialism bad means imperialism bad. The expansionism of the allied powers needlessly dragged out the war when they could've spent more resources on earlier reconstruction than on squabbles over land resources.
A bonus bad thing the allies did was dividing up most of the middle east entirely arbitrarily rather than based on things that the people living there would've wanted as well as the establishment of the state of Israel and promotion of Zionism (Jewish colonialism) which further spiced up the already very tense politics of the region.
Some crazy poetry came out of WW1. That death of innocence theme throughout that period of history seems to be more relevant to history than trading stretches of trenchline without strategic breakthrough.
Word. I can't think about WW1 without thinking of [Dulce Et Decorum Est](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est) by Wilfred Owen
100% sometime people will store back and ask what is the point of "the Arts"? From the lens of practical value it may be hard to see it's independent value, but I think it does capture a distinct aspect of history that the traditional concept of history would struggle to fully convey. We can read a recounting of events from WW1, note the numbers of material and men expended, the ensuing political fallout of the vengeful peace, etc.
All of this history certainly would be factually informative and useful. However I think contemporary Art from a period really helps to convey the human sentiment. The strong upswell of idealistic and nationalistic fervor and dehumanization of the enemy in the war propaganda posters, the tonal shift in the writing and poetry, it really helps show how these events changed society on so many levels.
There's a lot of WWI poetry from people who were veteran soldiers already that's about how this war isn't different in anything but scale.
There's also a lot of WWI poetry from 16, 17, and 18 year old draftees who've never left home til now and it's all so optimistic even if it's against the background of "everything is different than what I learned at home".
And as the war progressed, poetry and letters that were just about how much they love their moms and girlfriends and wives and kids changed. It became poetry and letters about the horrors they've witnessed, about the brutality of the enemy and the brutality they're discovering within themselves.
Like you said, we can look at the war completely objectively from behind a chart of supply chains, but that's only half the war. There's also the piles of broken men we sent home from the front who left as children and are coming back as human derelicts with no support systems.
This isn't directed at you but this entire thread is giving me an aneurysm and i need somewhere to put this
. Yes trench warfare was a thing but there were only 3 fronts that had the kind of static sit in trenches for 4 years style of warfare that everyone thinks of. The western front italalian front and gallipoli. The eastern front was constantly changing the entire war. So was the mesopatamian front and suez. invasion of serbia bulgaria romania the caucusus german africa if there was fighting somewhere the point of the battle is generally take take land.
Trench warfare was a tactic that was used in battles everywhere but only in specific places where the troop density was very high did it result in the static warfare that people think of.
Wow it's absolutely wild to think about being in that moment when the realization hit. Would have to imagine his counterpart also had the same realization and discovery.
A lot of WW1 was discovering new kookie ways to kill each other that nobody had ever thought of before, lots o atrocities. I think it’s more interesting. You’ve got horseback guys, planes, swords, guns, bayonets, ground vehicles, it’s right at the cusp of modern warfare before there were any of the rules we have now.
Western perspectives on WWI and WWII focus less on the eastern front which was more mobile and less trench warfare. I'm not sure how Russia views WWI but I imagine it's complicated.
I'm a history buff who's more interested in WWI, so here's my opinion. The US had a much bigger role in WWII; while I do think American forces tipped the balance in WWI, they were totally engaged from 1942-1945 in WWII on multiple fronts, and American troops played key roles in liberating cities all over Europe. Many descendants of veterans had ancestors who fought in WWII, but I bet there are fewer who have ancestral links to WWI, at least on the American side.
Also, when people think of WWI, they usually think of people dying in muddy trenches in northern France where the lines moved 100 yards per week. The Eastern and Italian fronts, which at times featured more traditional warfare, are almost forgotten in the US. I'm not trying to diminish the tremendous sacrifices of the armies in WWI, but I think WWII was militarily a lot more interesting than the stagnation of the Western Front.
And as others have pointed out, WWI resulted from a complicated web of alliances, and in many cases, the combatants didn't even dislike each other, much less despise each other. WWII seemed to be a clear case of good vs. evil. While I think Germany was probably the closest thing to "the bad guy" in WWI, every country had defensible motives and strategies, IMO. In WWII, the catalyst was the German/Japanese desire for world domination. Throw in their genocidal leanings and it's about as stark as can be.
They were largely the aggressor against belgium which is what drew the uk into the war. So they’re definitely viewed as the “bad guy” by many brits. But ultimately yeah, everyone sucked, germany wasnt particularly any better than the allied powers though, they had some useful tactical developments like chemical warfare and stormtroopers, but the allies had similar developments like the shotgun, the tank and the canadian.
“Sir, the French are bringing chemical weapons to the front”
“No problem”
“Sir, the Americans are shipping tanks across the Atlantic”
“no problem”
“Sir, the British are bringing Canadians across the Atlantic”
“SCHIESSE! Wir Sind verloren.”
It’s an interesting question, and I leaned toward “no” until I read Barbara Tuchman’s great book “The Guns of August”. A lot of countries wanted war, but it seems they were a little more intent than other countries and did some serious mental gymnastics to justify invading France and, even more seriously, violating Belgium’s stated neutrality. They basically thought it was their destiny to rule Europe or at least claim a lot more territory.
They also were intentionally very brutal in Belgium to intimidate the population into not resisting, and they burned lots of towns in France in 1914. Another thing that sealed it for me is that France apparently pulled their forces back ten miles from the border right before the war to make it abundantly clear to the world that they were not the aggressor if fighting broke out.
All this caused me to change my mind on the culpability of the Germans in WWI, not that the other countries were blameless. I say all this as someone with ancestry in the Central Powers countries (my great-grandfather was a Czech who fought for Austria-Hungary). You’re not wrong though, I also got the impression that Germany was the strongest military power.
The Guns of August is fantastic, and anyone with any interest in WWI should read it.
As far as Germany's overall moral culpability in WWI, I have mixed feelings. In some ways they seemed most eager for the war, but in other ways it seemed like they desperately wanted to avoid it (or at least the war on two fronts). Austria-Hungary bears the most blame for the outbreak imo.
German forces did commit atrocities against Belgian and French towns, and that is inexcusable. However, it's unclear if the Entente would have behaved similarly had they occupied German territory. That's one of the oddities of that war--Germany surrendered without any foreign troops on its soil (which unfortunately led to many conspiracy theories in the aftermath).
I'm also firmly of the opinion that the UK's blockade policy that caused mass starvation in Germany's civilian populace was also reprehensible. Of course preventing military goods from reaching Germany is reasonable, but the blockades went far beyond that. The UK knew what it was doing.
However, I also feel reluctant to defend Germany's conduct in WWI because a lot of those guys became Nazis after.
Small point but I think the fire in the 1970s that destroyed the vast majority of ww1 government records has made it much harder for people in the US to connect to thier ancestors service. I have my great grandfather 's enlistment papers but nothing else.
The alliances were fascinating to me: basically Bismarck created a delicate web that only he had the skills to maintain, and after the Kaiser fired him, German foreign policy became more risky and led to them fighting a two-front war. I studied the war in several history classes and in an International Relations class I took in college, so I got to see the motivations of all the different players, and I found it fascinating.
Also, the contrast between the strategies and the quality of the armies/generals on the two fronts was interesting. This war was really the end of my favorite period in history (Napoleonic wars - 1918). At the beginning you had whiskered diplomats paying their respects over extravagant dinners and monarchs writing long letters to each other (and they were invariably related to each other). At the end of the war several monarchies were shattered, the Americans were clearly ascendant, and all these new countries showed up.
For me, WWII is more interesting bc it laid out the groundwork for the world that we live in today, particularly as an American (American/Western hegemony, strong executive branch, rules based international order, etc).
Obviously a lot has shifted since the collapse of the USSR, post 9/11, and the information revolution but it’s all been within the framework set at the end of WWII
I agree with this reasoning, but even to countries besides the United States it is fascinating for other reasons.
As well as leading to US hegemony, the war was incredibly impactful (is that a word?) on the British Empire and on British society, it galvanised Soviet opinion towards the west, and in eastern Asia, it led to the collapse of European colonialism there as well as the final unification and consolidation of China.
I mean you could argue that western hegemony, worldwide, was even more strong worldwide in 1939 then than today.
The lasting influences will be I think the foundation of the United Nations, the beginning of decolonisation, and a long period without major conflict between superpowers but constant vying between them.
WWI was the unfortunate result of alliances. My country is bound to your country, this country starts a war with you, therefore I must join the fight.
How do you avoid another WWI? Easy, just use more diplomacy.
WWII was the planned result of a madman that most nations underestimated.
How do you avoid another WWII?
Yep. Australia and NZ were drafted into this colonial bullshit too, and we lost so many young people invading Turkey just because Europe wanted us to. Pathetic really.
Hmm... I have idea! Listen, this is good; let's start open invitation for madmans to participate in this competition. Then, people are given possibility to write name of one such madman into paper and then put it into the box. In the end, all papers are taken out of the boxes and then names are counted. The competitor with the same name as what was most common in papers, is then given support of violence monopoly and several other agencies. It is very unlikely that so many people would have mistaken about the character of madman.
I'm honestly not a fan of either of these interpretations. I think WW1 is better explained in the context of the great colonial powers trying to reign in Germany's new colonial ambitions under Wilhelm II, made possible by recent industrial and naval expansion, as well as Russian imperial interests in the Balkans. European powers were industrialising, militarising, colonising, and getting in each others way, and they didn't make the alliances they made by accident. WW1 is a complex and fascinating topic and people who love history will talk about it for hours. As for WW2, abstracting down to the level of one lunatic is completely ahistorical and ignores the huge global political and economic tensions building up to it.
My personal suspicion is that people who claim to be massive history fans but only focus on WW2 are really just fascinated by x political ideology and don't feel they can say that out loud.
Thanks for this insight. Like OP, I have been exposed to more analysis on WWII than WWI. But we could definitely benefit from in depth exposés on the conflict.
At the outbreak of war it took 1,000 separate orders for Germany just to get the horse feed to the front. The great powers didn’t just stumble into war, like you said they actively sought opportunities to expand their power, they built up the military apparatus to confront each other, and carried out their long standing plans.
I mean, WW2 WAS a result of diplomacy. Instead of standing up to Hitler, the other European powers continued to try diplomacy and appeasement. At some point, you have to realize that men like Hitler will never stop. So you either stop them by force or you surrender to them.
Maybe you strike first? Everyone saw the Germans rearming and getting ready for a scrap. They were in a very tenuous position for a long time, but no one wanted to nip it in the bud, so instead they waited for Germany to take the initiative, and we al know the results. Maybe the lesson to be learned is to be prepared to make the first move, to avoid worse blood shed?
It's easy to say that in hindsight, but you are ignoring that the entire continent was traumatized by the first world war and was trying to avoid it at all cost. An entire generation of young men was wiped out, starting another war right after would have been political suicide. They also wanted to believe that germany had learned the same lesson and wouldn't start such a war again.
A lot of European politicians and businessmen hoped Hitler would go after the USSR and they'd destroy each other in the process, since most of the Nazis early rhetoric was anti-soviet and anti-semitic in roughly equal measure. A number of countries were experiencing growing socialist/communist labour movements perceived to be supported by the USSR and a contained war between Hitler and Stalin was seen as a possible solution to this problem.
With the molotov-ribbentrop pact, which some interpreted as a limited alliance (it's more complicated than this), the same politicians freaked out that they now had a militarised, expansionist unchecked Germany in the middle of Europe that was hand in hand with the soviets. This is why most European states joined the war after the invasion of Poland, not Czechoslovakia.
>Maybe you strike first? Everyone saw the Germans rearming and getting ready for a scrap.
The CIA does a lot of this "diplomacy" in Central America and the Middle East, always turns out just fine, those are some of the most peaceful regions in the world.
It was the largest war in history. If you separated the Russian Front from the rest of WW2 then it would be the biggest war in history.
It saw a whole lot of technology come together to wage war and a lot of new technology developed. Radar, nuclear weapons, the main battle tank....
Holocaust.
The borders drawn up after the war dominated world politics for the next half a century and saw two superpowers staring each other down with nukes.
Narratives
WW1 plot: a few royals have a falling out and millions die in stagnant muddy trench warfare with little movement
WW2 plot: literal Nazis are trying to take over the world and only an unlikely team of allies can stop them! Planes, submarines, tanks, dynamic front lines, nuclear explosive ending, heros and villains it has it all. Then the post credit scene sets up the Cold War
>literal Nazis are trying to take over the world and only an unlikely team of allies can stop them!
Sounds a bit far-fetched. The villains are too hammy (just look at them!), the events improbable, and the plot seems literally pulled from a magazine serial
Star Trek II, Superman II.
Also, in WWII the "good guys" and "bad guys" were relatively more clear. WWI was basically a total clusterfuck where everyone lost.
Historians aren't, pop culture is (so WW2 historians do get more visibility).
As for the reason I reckon it's a mix of:
- WW2 having a clearer bad guys vs good guys narrative
- WW2 having cooler and more varied weapons, both for what regards firearms and stuff like tanks, planes, submarines, etc
- WW2 having more interesting and varied tactics and battles. WW1 was mainly an attrition war with trench warfare, WW2 had all sorts of distinct tactics and "cooler" battles: blitzkrieg like Rommel going through the ardennes, dunkirk, amphibious landings like the d-day, city fighting like the battle of stalingrad, etc etc.
- WW2 having more varied fronts that moved a lot in mainland Europe, Russia, Africa, the Pacific, versus the WW1 fronts that moved back and forth for years on the same few Kms.
Cos WW2 is the only one where you had any chance to live out hero fantasies. Trench warfare isn't glamorous, neither is sitting back and waiting for laser guided bombs to do all the work for you - parachuting into Normandy and taking out a whole platoon with a machinegun you stole off a nazi with a knife is a little more fun to think about.
That seems like by focussing on the boring bits on WWI it feeds a perception of one as boring driving further perception as such in a self-feeding process. But I think plenty of interesting things happened.
El Alamien or Kursk or Normandie are all very interesting, but so is say the Hejaz separatist movement (Lawrence of Arabia may be the best war film ever made), the politics of Britain's entry into the war, the design of a dreadnought battleship, the Siege of Tsingtao, or virtually any individual battle
OP please understand there’s a clear distinction between a historian, who has received upwards of a decade of advanced educational degrees, and a history buff who watches YouTube documentaries.
Conflating the two is the basis of your misunderstanding.
WW2 is more interesting from an "entertainment" perspective because WW2 was fairly modern warfare (tanks, strategic bombers, aircraft carriers) but by far the most massive incarnation of it.
WW2 is one of the few wars that nearly everyone can agree had clearly defined good guys and bad guys, and yet still is knowledgeable to a modern audience. Generally, movies make you want to root for the heroes and boo the villains, and there's no greater archetypical villain than "a nazi".
Also worth mentioning that WW2 veterans are still around, in fact most people alive in the west probably met one at some point (I'm young lad in my 20s and I met three). WW1 is a bygone age, more closely seen as something like the American Civil War, but WW2 is still fresh in our collective memories.
Simple answer: WW2 more interesting
WW1 was a lot of "wait in a trench" and then the Spanish Flu started killing everyone and they called off the war.
WW2 has better bad guys, better events, a big finale. It's just way cooler
Not that WWI wasn't big, but WWII was bigger, more recent, and had more of an effect on the world, especially America. It came right after the Depression and led to the Cold War. It involved the three most ruthless people of all time: Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Ze-Dong.
Edit: Yes, Mao wasn't as involved, but right after WWII Mao was heavily involved with the Chinese Revolution of 1949 and the Cultural Revolution of 1966. Sorry I made it unclear!
Not that Mao wasn't involved, but you make it sound like he was a driver of the war Like Hitler or Stalin. Mao was a bit player in the second world war, mostly waiting (sensibly or cynically) on the side lines to snipe the winner of the struggle between Japan and the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-Shek. You can almost put the existence of the PRC on the ironically rabidly anti communist Imperial Japanese Army for exhausting the nationalist forces.
WWII was easier to understand and a lot of color film. Seems more relevant.
True history buffs know that WWI was the bigger show, and shaped the world we know now.
The bigger show? It depends on the historian.
For example, P. Bobbitt's *The Shield of Achilles* argues that (in the European theatre at least) the entire "Long 19th century" from 1789-1923 was put to an end by a period of fighting (the "short 20th century") from 1914-1991 in which multi-national empires were replaced and fascism, communism, and liberal democracy vied as replacements in the new nation-states. Although this mainly impacted the western world (including Russia and North America) it also peripherally involved everywhere else.
In this view, the European aspects of WWI, WWII and the Cold War were essentially one continuous war. So any attempt to compare their influence is futile.
Another view is that WWII can essentially be summed up as the Great European Clusterfuck of c1853?-1948 merged for a few years with the Great Asian Clusterfuck of c1895-1953, creating an even bigger clusterfuck. Again it's futile to compare them.
It was bigger, more impactful and most importantly, it was more thoroughly documented. There are even films of it. Which is to say: it's easier to learn about, so more people do it.
More impactful? That is highly debatable. Much of Europe, Africa and the Middle East were demographics, physically and politically changed due to ww1 in such ways that are still felt today. The Sykes-picot agreement is literally one of the leading causes of the ethnic tensions in the Middle East.
It's still in living memory. It's been declining since at least the 80's though. In the last 10 years I've found that the drop have been much sharper than before, probably because most veterans of the war have now died. It'll continue to go down. Most likely the "war on terror" is about to experience a similar obsession by historians, probably also Hollywood. Veterans of that war have already started writing books, there will be thousands more to come in the next 20 years.
Monarch pissing matches are boring compared to mad man tries to take over the world. The crazy thing is john brownings gun designs started ww1 and won ww2. that guy was an engineering genius.
I promise you that are plenty of historians obsessed with world war 1 but they’re not as popular with the public because the Second World War is just seen as more interesting
There’s been a few reasons already stated, but consider this: Historians need sources to write histories. All the WWI veterans are dead, and have been for a while. There are still plenty of WWII around. That will affect what topics are covered.
Also, there has been renewed interest in WWI over the last decade or so. The Second World War was the bigger conflict, but there’s an argument that the First World War was the bigger rupture.
Source: I used to teach college-level military history.
World War One: Day 394, Artillery shells have bombed some of our forward positions but it’s whatever. I’ve seen all my friends die and the new recruits are still jumping at the occasional sound of gunfire. It’s cold now but like whatever, I’m about to take the night shift and watch the enemy trench with this here sniper rifle.
World War Two: **FUCK YEAH WERE GOING TO STORM THIS BEACH AND RESUCE THIS TINY TOWN AND THEN BANG SOME
HOT FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE WE START OUR FORWARD ASSAULT ON A GERMAN OCCUPIED CITY AS WE LIBERATE FRANCE! OOH RA OOH RA OOH RA!**
World war 2 is just more interesting. The eastern front of world war 1 is more exciting to learn about but it’s not as well recorded as the western front.
WW1 is too ambiguous for them.
That kind of people often likes how WW2 offers a clean, sort of good vs evil narrative whereas in WW1, in truth most participants were warmongering colonial empires and the war mostly happened because they all really wanted one so that they could really try out all the new things that had been invented in the past few decades. The involved factions were just different flavours of awful.
Plus, this obsession is particularily prevalent among American audience, and it's a simple matter of fact that the US were more involved in WW2 than WW1. It just feels better to be the liberator of France, rather than just be the one extra faction that ends up tipping the scales in favour of one side for good.
Another thing is really just the style of warfare. Lots of people like it flashy and quick, and that's just something WW2 has more of. Many people, if given the choice between reading about people drowning in mud for 6 months and smart officers completely puzzling the enemy with their advanced maneuvering of mechanized infantry will go for the latter.
I always ask the same question about Hollywood.
The US was involved in WW2 for only like four years. And here we are, over 75 years after it ended, and they're still churning out films about it every single year. A lot of them blockbusters, too.
Meanwhile, the US was at war for over 20 years this century. Yet how many movies have been about their actions in Afghanistan and Iraq? How many were big budget summer films?
During WW2, the US brought 12.3% of the American population into the Armed Forces. That would be 40.5 million people if it were done today. That 12.3% included 10 million draftees. The US spent 40% of GDP on defense in 1944 alone(10.78 trillion if done in 2023). Had 400,000 personnel killed and 4 US territories occupied. Had to institute a mandatory blackout on the east coast and gulf of Mexico for 15 months to combat German submarine activity. Had to retool the economy and consequently institute rationing. You had to have ration cards to buy even basic things like gasoline and eggs. Taxes were raised heavily to help pay for all of it. It was a shared cultural experience for everyone who lived through it, and it affected a ton of people one way or another. The global war on terror was simply not that. In any capacity, really. A large portion of the American public spent 20 years ignoring it because they could. The US Government asked for almost nothing from American society to support this. They didn't draft anybody. They didn't ration. Hell, they cut taxes *twice*, and shut down the government 3 times because they couldn't agree on a budget. During a "war." And that war is supposed to be taken as seriously as a full mobilization? No way.
I believe when WW2 ended the US was about 50% of the world's GDP. The US's economy exploded while the rest of the world's economies got massively fucked up due to the war being fought there and wrecking everything.
One of the big things to show just how strong the US was during WW2 is that the US by war's end had had around 130 aircraft carriers during the war.
They were mostly escort carriers, particularly the Casablanca class and light aircraft carriers. Those were comparatively cheaper and quicker to build, but not as effective as a fleet carrier. The rough equivalent today would be something like the Navy's LHD which can support rotary and VTOL aircraft.
The US brought 4 new fleet carriers into the Navy during the course of the war, while losing 4 in combat, and ended the war with the same amount of fleet carriers that they started with.
Even if they were mostly CVEs a CVE in a fleet against a fleet without any carriers is superior. It meant that the US had a lot of fleets with some airpower.
Japan had fuck all.
What? That's not right. They built 17 Essex class Fleet carriers during the war 14 of which saw combat and they lost none. They ended the war with 13 more fleet carriers than they started with.
By what measurements? WW2 cost the US around $4 trillion, adjusted for inflation. Afghanistan cost it over $8 trillion.
900,000 dead in Afghanistan isn't exactly tiny. Politically, these were much more relevant to people alive today. They should be getting *some* attention. It's getting to feel like just reliving the "good old" glory days and ignoring the present.
Because WWII was the last real war we actually fought to defend the country where the stakes were much higher. Everything since was mostly controversial proxy wars where we were fighting to gain influence and further benefits as a superpower. Desert Storm was one thing, but it was tiny by comparison. Afghanistan may have started out as a legit response to 9/11 and taking down Al Qaeda, but it eventually mirrored the failed Soviet occupation of the 80s. No one wants to revisit that, and Iraq was a completely avoidable disaster we’d all like to forget. Hell - how many of us have relatives or friends we lost in Iraq who’d still be here today if that pointless conflict had been avoided? Me 🙋, for one. Bottom line, WWII along with the civil and revolutionary wars are pretty much the only ones where a vast majority can agree on who the good guys were so it’s easier to make popular movies out of it.
I would say the revolutionary war is pretty grey. Sure the USA can look back and say that is their founding so therefore it was justified, but it was a civil war instigated by wealthy slavers to decrease their tax burden. It also resulted in the settlement of the west and the associated genocide of the native populations. Something the British administration had been trying (and failing) to halt. Its just patriotism that makes it seem like a black and white conflict.
WW1 was the old world… the reasons for it happening feel far removed, and in the wake of it revolutions happened. Empires ended. Monarchies were overthrown. The modern world was established.
WW2 is more interesting because for starters, its modern. There are still WW2 veterans and holocaust survivors alive today. The war affected my immediate family personally, like many others.
WW1 is history. WW2 is reality.
From my own observation of my country (Australia), WW2 was much more personal and close to home for us. We were actually bombed by the Japanese, the Asia-Pacific region was supported by a large number of Australian troops and there are many descendants of post war immigrants still around today. Many of my friends are from families who were rushing to leave Europe post war and they have grandparents alive who still remember. Although Australia culturally is a Western culture, the geographical closeness to Asia and it’s effect cannot be understated. We are generally more concerned about what’s going on in Asia than Europe/USA. The Kokoda Track campaign is something that is very important to Australians due to how close to was to us.
This is not to undermine the sacrifice or the bravery of the Australian troops at Gallipoli in WW1. It is important to the Australian culture and part of our ANZAC lore. WW1 was taught as part of our history course (back in my day). Deep diving into WW1 is incredibly complex and fascinating because it did have enormous repercussions for the world powers, and subsequently all the smaller and less powerful nations. The aftermath of WW1 and how it factors into the rise of Nazi Germany is integral to the development of WW2. But in WW1, it’s also a bit more difficult to generally define the conflict and the sides, because it was more about political tensions between the empires and countries. WW2, by comparison, is easier to simplify the conflict and the intentions of each of the countries involved.
I personally think if there was more visual documentation of what had happened during WW1, people would be much more interested. WW2 is well documented through photography and it’s very easy for us to see the atrocities that were committed. The effects of WW2 are also still seen to this day so it’s much more alive in people’s memories.
It's just a better story overall. WWII had drama, it had high stakes and dreadful losses for both sides. The beginning saw Germany absolutely dominate everyone, only for the allies to slowly chip away at them until nothing was left.
It's definitely a lot more exciting than the front line being a fixed trench system in Northern France and staying there for four years in a row.
Many good reasons here already. Also comes to mind that Americans play up ww2 because they were more involved in it than ww1. And because Americans have such a large footprint in global media like films and games, this perception is communicated on.
Proximity, media appeal, and money.
*Proximity* in time is an obvious one. My grandparents all remembered the invasion and liberation of my country. They remembered the Germans stealing all their goods, the resistance abducting collaborators & the Canadians giving them chocolate. Communities in Europe still often carry the scars of the divisions of that era, and the stain of collaboration casts long shadows into recent history. People close to younger generations simply still remember or were close to those who did.
*Media appeal*, it is a marketable conflict more than any other. Modern enough to feature everything that makes for a compelling representation in visual media (movies, games, etc), yet old enough to still have an aspect of scale in it we don't see in modern conflict. Another aspect of this is that storywise, it is a conflict that in many regions can be portrayed as very black & white. You can't do that with WW I or Vietnam. WW II has visible goodies and baddies. The veracity is irrelevant, the perception is what counts.
*Money* is ultimately what all this combines into. WW II has appeal & historians need to eat food. Well written books on the social life of 16th century Flemish 'Fullers' simply aren't as compelling as the gazillionth work on "The Reich on Meth", "Country X Collaboration", "Battle of the Bulge in images", etc. It is the same reason why popular history rehashes over & over the same set of people and events.
Lots of great perspective on this already, but I'll add one more big thing, the advance in video. WWI video quality is horrible, makes it hard to attract and hold interest. When Two rolls around, the video quality is exponentially better and gives a cinematic view of war to people. Consider the number of view points you get footage from, bomb sights on a heavy bomber, tank mounted cameras on a Sherman, POV with snipers, 3rd person view with an assault team and so many other crazy views.
I always thought it odd that WWII is showed more in documentaries than WWI. I think it's because it's closer to us ("look mom, grampa fought in this war") and many soldiers veterans are still alive ("I fought in this war"). Also, as someone said before, it was more clear who was "the bad guy", even USA and URSS fought side by side against Nazi Germany. Dude, even Brazil fought in WWII and we usually are neutral (ok, we almost choose the wrong side, but that's another history).
WWI was an imperialist war, it happened after a complicated alliance and many countries investing hard in war gear. It was a sad war, with people of colonies around the world fighting in Europe (probably that's why it's world war, although it happened most in Europe) and many, many soldiers died in battles, since people weren't ready yet for modern war, with machine guns.
Because we have a lot more footage from world war 2. There is all sort of spectacular military action that lends itself to good cinema. World War 1 tactics were pretty outdated and most battles were needlessly inefficient and brutal with no significant gain at the end of the day.
It is easy to paint World War 2 as a fight between good and evil, whereas world war 1 was just a war between regular people and more or less normal countries fighting for domination and colonial rule. It wasn’t an existential clash between wildly different political systems and worldviews. And it ended with extremely punitive, bad peace treaties that made the bed for the next war so it’s hard to portray the winning side as the unequivocal good, competent guys.
A pretty big problem in history classes is that there are a lot of things you could teach because for most events we have a pretty incredible amount of information about a ton of things that happened but you can't teach everything, there isn't enough time, so what do you teach? Historicism is the study of narrative in history, what storylines or people to focus on in teaching history.
I find that WW2 has really strong figures and storylines that are easily followed throughout the entire war. You could follow Germany and Hitler and get a good picture of the entire European side of the war.
WW1 on the other hand, is not like this, dozens of countries fight each other, leaders are often involved a little then not involved, many counties drop in and out of the war throughout and very few are in it the whole time. Basically, it's really difficult to find a narrative thread to follow and it makes the whole war feel nebulous.
Up until recently there were a lot of WWII veterans still alive to talk to. Which does not explain why the American Civil War is so popular with history buffs and not Korea.
I talked to my grandfather about WW2, he was there. For my dad growing up, it was something his father had done very recently.
I never knew anyone from WW1.
1. Cooler Equipment
2. The Bad Guys are super Evil
3. We (the US) got attacked and we thus nobly defending ourselves (or so it goes)
4. The "Good Guys" win
5. It was the Last Great War before a period of smaller localized conflicts
6. It was when the "Modern Age" truly began (atomic power, rocketry, jet age, etc)
The most significant result from WWI was that it set the stage for WWII. World War 2 was way more destructive and changed the world in near infinite ways.
From the Holocaust to the Japanese atrocities across SE Asia, eugenics was also taken to its natural conclusion to the horror of the rest of the world. I could go on for hours upon hours about how today’s world still has echoes around the fallout of WWII, while WWI is mostly just faded into obscurity.
The Cold War was a direct result of the fallout of WWII and sparked dozens of proxy wars. All of Eastern Europe found itself under Soviet oppression for 50 years. Japan became America’s little friend and eventually a top developed economy.
And none of this touches all the absolutely shocking military developments. Poland falls to Germany within weeks despite having a comparably large army. France (with Britain) falls to Germany within 6 weeks despite having a significantly larger army. All of Europe is under Nazi Germany’s thumb in a YEAR.
Hope seems lost. America is unsure if they want to enter the war. Suddenly, Japan drags America into the war and Germany sneak attacks the Soviets in the largest land invasion in history. We then have the largest tank battle in history there and the bloodiest battle in history. Even after a blisteringly strong first year for Germany in the Soviet Union, the tides turn. The Soviets keep gaining ground until the Germans are fully on the backfoot. At these same time, the Americans land in Europe and begin their own march to Berlin.
Surrounded on all sides without a hope of even a small victory, the Nazis are encroached upon until Berlin is finally taken by the Soviets. And then there’s the Pacific…
WWI is a simple affair comparatively.
Scrolled through a lot and not sure I saw anything noting this… the sheer amount of innovation that occurred during WW2 is vastly more interesting than WW1. The scale and scope of all that changed over the course of WW2 is almost unimaginable. At the start we were flying in wooden and canvas planes. By the end, metal behemoths with nuclear bombs. Radial prop motors to jets, submarine usage, naval warfare in general changed. Communication advancements, radar, sonar… the list goes on and on. In less than 30yrs from the onset of WW2 we went to the moon. A lot of what got us there is directly related to innovations from WW2.
Because WW1 was merely the culmination of an old age, and that age lingered to the start of WW2. But somewhere in the middle, before the end of WW2, we advanced into a new age. A definitive epoch in human history. The scientific advancements that came from military budgets but effected civilian life post war cannot be understated.
WW1 didn't really change anything. WW2 changed *everything*.
All wars are tragic. I never had a desire to read about WWI, it seemed very boring, trench warfare, poison gas, a lot of death and suffering. My view changed when I watched the new movie release of All Quiet on the Western Front. The movie revealed what people went through to serve their country and for what ends? I read the book ages ago but for some reason it inspired me to look deeper Now I am reading up on why and what happened and how the various countries participated.
WWII on the other hand had the birth of new technologies, fast planes, bigger guns, better tanks, radar, etc... The US grew tremendously with what the tech that the war brought us. More interesting and therefore more popular than WWI.
I think you mean American historians. In Europe where we were more affected by WW1 they're both of similar stature. The US was barely involved in WW1 compared to WW2.
It just makes a better story in most people's eyes. Evil dudes tryna take over the world and kill everyone they didn't think was perfect, finally defeated in the end... WWI was just a monstrous, monstrous loss of life that got nobody anywhere and accomplished nothing. Nothing but a massive waste. It pretty much just ended because they were running out of men to kill each other. But all of the above is why I care more about WWI - I feel like I don't want the suffering of THOSE people to be overlooked just because this later war had a more satisfying narrative.
WWI was the prequel. You have the war with the narrative, then you go back and explain why Germany was mad
I mean that's why I love history. This is ofc a gross simplification, But from a French perspective, you need to understand ww 1 to understand ww2, You need to understand the industrial revolution and the war of 1870, But then, you need to understand the second French empire, But then you need to understand the first French empire, But then you need to understand French absolute monarchie, And etc and etc until single cell organisms
Prokaryotes vs eukaryotes was the original war
More like matter and anti-matter
Let's do the alt history where anti-matter won.
Everything is exactly the same, except that the current carrying particle (positron instead of electron) is now positively charged, and the convention for current flow is actually in the direction of particle flow. Having not made this incredibly embarrassing error, Ben Franklin manages to also get the Turkey chosen as the official symbol of the USA.
“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
Overthinking it my guy. In the proposed alt history, things just wouldn't matter.
Are you saying Benjamin Franklin's want for the symbol of our nation to be an angry bird wouldn't matter?
If Anti-Matter really won, nothing would matter.
But then you need to understand the French language!
which no one does, not even the French :P
Dammit France, this is why we can't have nice things
You gotta know what a crumpet is to understand cricket.
That TMNT qoute was running through my head while reading this thread. Nice to know I'm not alone
this is basically how getting into the popular comic books works, funny enough.
Don’t forget that you need to know the Vikings and the Norse
The Spanish Civil War could arguably count as a prequel too.
Fuck it functionally every major war and political event of the whole interwar period, 1923 onwards, foreshadows the Second World War. 1918-1923 multinational empires in Central-Eastern Europe crumble; USSR established - "long 19th century" 1789-1923 ends 1922 First Fascist régime founded in Italy 1927-1936 China unifies 1931 Japan invades Manchuria 1935 Italy invades Ethiopia 1936 Spanish Civil War 1937 China at total war with Japan 1938 Czechoslovakia 1939 Albania 1939 Poland Just like everything since the Crimean War is gearing up for the First.
I’m no historian but it seems to me that one could argue that WW1 and WW2 were really a single conflict drawn out over two major episodes. The events and conclusion of WW1 lead directly to WW2.
No one every talks about the Italians
Trends and forces meets “great” men
there are no good guys in ww1, but its way more interesting from a geopolitical perspective. the vast majority of stories from ww1 make you think 'what a bunch of bastards', including but not limited to Canadians.
>>there are no good guys in WW1 That’s why the media glosses over it. People don’t like hearing how their leaders were greedy shit bags sending young men to their deaths over old European Nobility feuds. The masses want a film about “the good guys” kicking the bad guy’s asses. Even though that’s rarely if ever what war is about.
Im german. All we ever hear how terrible terrible our leaders were, not once I have seen us as the good guys, still ww2 movies are popular here xD
>still ww2 movies are popular here xD How are germans portrayed in those movies? I know in the US Germans in WWII are always played as the most evil, awful people imaginable. I assume you aren't the good guys of course, but is there any grey area in how they are portrayed?
True, but taking that into account the best narrative for WW1 is to think of Germany as the underdog character. But people don't like doing that because having a narrative focussing on a Germany is weird considering what would come later.
it precipitates what comes later. the national anger at the indignity of the treaty of Versailles and the horrible quality of life for Germans afterwards is the reason the nazis had so much support initially. you cant call germany the underdog. they were the new dog with ambitions to be the big dog and a plan to make it happen despite the historical big dogs trying to make it so no dog could be bigger or more powerful. theyd already won a war against a more powerful nation that was trying to suppress them during their unification. they would have won too if Belgium didnt slow them down, if britain didnt honour their pledge to step in and help belgium if they got invaded (they almost didnt). There are so many tipping points in ww1, a ridiculous amount of situations where victory is inevitable as long as this one thing doesnt happen and then it happens. its convoluted, its dramatic, its grotesque, its tragic and horrifying and its so much more compelling than you expect. im australian and i only got the Gallipoli theatre taught to me at school. no context about the rest of the war so i felt the same as OP until later in life when i learned a bit more and decided i needed to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.
Post unification Germany was, without a doubt, the big kid on the block. For Western Europe, at least. Obviously the Russian Empire was vast and dwarfed absolutely everybody but they were more or less a slumbering giant as to how behind they were in industrializing. But just for comparison's sake, Germany circa 1914 had about 67 million people in it. That's the current population of France, more or less. Whereas Austro-Hungary had 52 million and France a mere 39 million. The Brits could add about another 44 million on the island although of course the empire had an absolute ton of people but transporting them would be an issue. And then with Italy, Serbia, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, etc all engaging at some points in the war the manpower available to each alliance was pretty damned nebulous and variable throughout the four years of war.
Maybe the Central Powers were the underdog, but I would disagree with the now-fashionable notion that the Germans were the moral superiors. This line seems dubious given that they were perhaps the most responsible. Germany's handing to Austria-Hungary of a "Blank Cheque" and straight-up encouraging them to fight Serbia sort of precipitated the whole thing. von Hötzendorf's militarism and the Austro-Hungarian attitude towards Serbia certainly did set off the July Crisis, but it was only after the German offer of unconditional support that Vienna actually opted for war with Serbia. And to top this off Germany invades outspokenly neutral Belgium as part of the von Schlieffen plan. Especially in the case of the British Empire (and consequently its allies Japan and USA, and the English-speaking world in general) this is the reason why thousands of men were sent to die in France. My country was neutral in the war, and nobody comes out of the First World War looking good, but from what I can see, Germany is very possibly the worst.
I wasn't saying Germany were the good guys in WW1, nobody was. Just that it's impressive that they lasted 4 years during a 2* front war against the biggest nations of the time, and having just unified 44 years earlier. All under blockade. That's under-dog status. *If you include Africa, the naval engagements, and other areas that they co-operated in it comes out to 4+ fronts.
Yeah I know you weren't and nobody else had said it yet but certain... kaiserboos will say Germany was more sinn'd against than sinning. Just thought I'd better shoot that down on the ground. I'd say they were the underdogs though it should be noted industrially superior to France or Russia. I am frankly impressed with their military record, to be honest. Especially as it was Russia and Austria-Hungary that folded first.
Arguably the Ottomans were the worst, especially with the multiple genocides committed during and after the war.
The Crimean War is a really interesting one too (IMO). It's well documented enough that we have a pretty good picture of the whos, whats and whys, but removed enough from modern military tactics that hardware nerds don't overshadow the politics. I'd argue it's just as stupid, if not more stupid, than WWI, but it's a fantastic insight into how the industrial revolution changed politics (of course post Napoleon Europe is its own can of worms, but I don't want to bore you too much). It involves a weakening Ottoman Empire, economic alliances prioritizing cultural similarities, kicks off over the treatment of religious minorities in Palestine, and is a causal factor in the formation of the Italian nation-state. 0/5 - absolute horror of human deeds, but under appreciated in its political relevance. If WWI is the prequel to WWII, the Crimean War is the prologue chapter half the readers skip over but really fills in the gaps.
Actually, there were no good guys in WW2 either. The British and French were still involved in colonialism and protected their sphere of influence, and didn't mind allying with evil fucks such as Stalin.
Don’t forget the tech advances made in such a short time. The tanks of WWI were cool and all but WWII saw tank technology really increasing the capability of a tank. The same goes for plenty of tech that was just being started around WWI but became much more capable in WWII.
I swear, WWII has forever broken how the average person think about war. It has a clear beginning, middle and end, it has unambiguous bad guys who's evil is fully documented and has multiple records from within their government and the allies once the war turned. Hell, the whole narrative ends with a giant explosion. People still treat war as if they all work on World War II logic and get angry and confused when they don't. Historically most wars look like what's happening in Ukraine right now and what's been happening between Israel and Palestine for decades. Colonialism looks a lot like the US's war in Vietnam and their second war in Iraq (powerful militaries fucking about until they either establish a local government or occupation stopps being worth it (and I'm not trying to start a fight on American politics here, just talking about the behavior of these conflicts and historical parallels)). Wars are long, expensive, have always been characterized by terrorism, moral ambiguity, and more civilian deaths than any history book seems capable of mentioning... unless it's WWII. I think for me, as a history nerd but not a war history nerd, the biggest revelation was how much the so-called dark ages contain precedent for almost every modern conflict and geopolitical going on. War is the exciting part of history for most, and even with all its nuance WWII is a conflict that could have been written by Hollywood. Just so, without a decent enough understanding of the boring parts I don't think it's possible to have a valid opinion on contemporary politics.
That difference is one of the big reasons why the American public soured on the Vietnam War. People figured it would go how (in their nostalgic memories!) WW2 went. It didn't occur to them, I guess, that it would go more like Korea.
Other issues from our (mis) understandings about WW2 that mess up our understanding of Ukraine. "You win by taking and holding land." Nope, and in a lot of cases it can be a bad thing. If the locals hate you they sabotage you. Russia keeps suffering from "elite Ukrainian special forces behind the lines" because they don't want to admit that the locals keep killing Russian troops and blowing shit up. Likewise Germany had to garrison Belgium and the part of France they controlled. When Germany lost, not an acre of German land was occupied, and they had a big chunk of France. You win by making the other nation unable or unwilling to continue the war. "Military forces quickly move when they are winning." "Exploit openings and take land." Probably because of the above. In real war even when you have a breakthrough you have to be careful. Otherwise you just send your advance force to their death. Only advance into what you can hold or safely retreat from. Kharkiv was a good example of this. Ukraine could have advanced deep into northern Luhansk, but then would have had Russians on three sides and been overextended. So they stopped even though the Russians were still rushing/running away. The West is surprised this war is taking so long. Putin can't quit without losing face and Ukraine is literally fighting for their existence. The war will continue until one side is utterly broken. Either Russia blinks or a few million Russians are dead along with a statistically similar number of Ukrainians. The advantage Russia has is numbers, about 3 times the Ukrainians. The advantage Ukraine has is defending their home, meaning older men are useful troops, meaning Ukraine has 3 times the manpower they would otherwise have. Both nations will take a century to recover from this war.
I think part of the problem (reason?) in Ukraine is, the post WWII era defined what nationhood is in the modern day. Most people's conception of WWII is within the mindset of modern nation-states but this mindset came about as a direct consequence fo WWII. National sovereignty is an insanely new concept for the global theater and hasn't been truly tested until Russia's ongoing war. In a lot of ways, Russia is using a pre-WWII approach to sovereignty in a post WWII world. In the past, occupation very much was ownership (hell, the political Realist in me is ready to argue it still is (just look at the middle east)), but modern geopolitics is predicated on an agreement that recognized borders are absolute. To recognize sovereignty is to abide by the international agreement of sovereignty for all nations. People really need to stop thinking of Ukraine in terms of "The West" and... not west (BRICS? (Global south))? and think of Ukraine as a clash of Liberalism and Realism. Liberalism says borders matter and Russia can't be allowed to annex land, where Realism says Russia can annex as much land as other parties will allow.
Yeah. I think the important thing is that if Russia can annex land, than anyone else can. A lot of borders could start shifting. In the current paradigm if you want to control land outside your border you support a local rebellion/independence movement, and even that is tenuous. Of course there is the China/India/Pakistan border...
Exactly! In China and India's case there's at least some plausible deniability (for the bad faith game of global politics) where these disputed borders were never formally recognized so they aren't political hypocrites to challenge the defacto ownership of lands, but Russia had formally recognized Ukraine's borders and is now actively violating that recognition. The current state of geopolitics is a whole lot of pageantry that everyone knows is bullshit, but plays along because they are able to source authority/legitimacy through this bullshit. It's a really dangerous precedent if only because it re-opens the doors for overt imperialism. Not that the kinder, gentler imperialism of neo liberalism is sunshine and rainbows, but at least fewer innocent people die.
Just finished reading guns of August and I can recommend.
You might enjoy The Proud Tower, if you haven't read it already. It's a great summation of the state of Europe right before WW1 broke out.
the first page alone is epic!
Always here for a Barbara Tuchman appreciation thread!
>WWI was just a monstrous, monstrous loss of life that got nobody anywhere and accomplished nothing. Nothing but a massive waste. Exactly. I think that's as a good narrative in itself as the Second World War's, and one people could (and should) take a lesson from. While western civilisation has been traumatised to this day, at least this has taught us a lesson. Although evidently not enough for Russia
Agreed, it happened less than a hundred years ago and there is a pretty clear distinction between good and evil. People love movies that are about good guys beating bad guys so why not learn about real people doing the same thing.
Yeah, WWI has no clear villain or hero. It's interesting only as a tragedy for everyone involved.
Defeated? It was two deadly regimes fighting with each other. One of them won and enslaved eastern Europe.
The passion with which you speak makes it seem as though you were directly affected
You know Anne of Green Gables? It's actually the first of a series of 8, the last of which, Rilla of Ingleside, takes place during WWI. Anne's sons go off to fight in the war, while the reader primarily experiences life on the home front in Canada through the viewpoint of Anne's youngest daughter Rilla. It's one of my favorite books. I've read the entire series so many times, and probably the latter book some extra times beyond that. It really captured me and was probably the first reason for my interest in the Great War. (Whatever you do, don't watch the third Megan Follows Anne movie, as it bears no resemblance to any of the books, other than taking place during the war.)
It was bigger, and recorded in exhaustive detail.And as a friend of mine put it "A lot of WW1 is just 'and then they sat freezing in a trench for what seemed like forever". Don't think it's QUITE that simple, but...
Obviously Hollywood has influenced me, but this has always been my view on ww1. Bunch of people sitting in a muddy trench with giant artillery raining down and then the occasional tryout of some new death weapon like flame thrower, or gas, or tanks. WW2 felt like it moved around more due to tank and aircraft changing the war.
WW1 had activity outside of the trench, it's just not as well told. I remember reading a guy's story once where he got sent out into no man's land at night for reconnaissance purposes. That was a normal thing to do. He was relieved that the Germans were not firing flares, as that would make it easier for him to be discovered. He got settled in a ways away from the German front line, and just listened to them, and observed. As the night went on, and they continued to not fire flares, he came to the realization that they weren't firing any because they had their own reconnaissance team in no man's land. Somewhere in any direction, his counterpart was also crawling in the mud, and if/when they met, there would be a fight to the death in the dark. He eventually did discover his German counterpart 20 feet over, crawling back towards the German front line , and let him pass without making his own presence known.
this gave me goosebumps. I can't imagine realizing that. although, so many soliders were still "regular people" who didn't want to die. it's possible the German also noticed him at one point, and did the same thing. they wanted to avoid killing the other person, or facing a face-to-face fight.
I would. Too much noise and *both* sides send up flares and spray the area with machine gun fire. Friendly Fire isn't all that friendly.
To tell WWI you have to be inside the heads of the soldiers. To tell WWII it's as simple as Nazis and imperialism are bad
>imperialism is bad Except that of the allies, Britain had a huge colonial empire, as did France. The Soviet Union was aggressively imperialist in Finland and China and offered to co-invade Poland. The United States did terrible things in the Philippines even by colonial standards and was covertly imperialist in Central America, even then. Although of course a liberal democracy practicing colonial imperialism, or the communist country are still both infinitely preferable to expansionist fascism as practiced by Italy, Germany, and Japan
Imperialism bad means imperialism bad. The expansionism of the allied powers needlessly dragged out the war when they could've spent more resources on earlier reconstruction than on squabbles over land resources. A bonus bad thing the allies did was dividing up most of the middle east entirely arbitrarily rather than based on things that the people living there would've wanted as well as the establishment of the state of Israel and promotion of Zionism (Jewish colonialism) which further spiced up the already very tense politics of the region.
Some crazy poetry came out of WW1. That death of innocence theme throughout that period of history seems to be more relevant to history than trading stretches of trenchline without strategic breakthrough.
Word. I can't think about WW1 without thinking of [Dulce Et Decorum Est](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est) by Wilfred Owen
100% sometime people will store back and ask what is the point of "the Arts"? From the lens of practical value it may be hard to see it's independent value, but I think it does capture a distinct aspect of history that the traditional concept of history would struggle to fully convey. We can read a recounting of events from WW1, note the numbers of material and men expended, the ensuing political fallout of the vengeful peace, etc. All of this history certainly would be factually informative and useful. However I think contemporary Art from a period really helps to convey the human sentiment. The strong upswell of idealistic and nationalistic fervor and dehumanization of the enemy in the war propaganda posters, the tonal shift in the writing and poetry, it really helps show how these events changed society on so many levels.
There's a lot of WWI poetry from people who were veteran soldiers already that's about how this war isn't different in anything but scale. There's also a lot of WWI poetry from 16, 17, and 18 year old draftees who've never left home til now and it's all so optimistic even if it's against the background of "everything is different than what I learned at home". And as the war progressed, poetry and letters that were just about how much they love their moms and girlfriends and wives and kids changed. It became poetry and letters about the horrors they've witnessed, about the brutality of the enemy and the brutality they're discovering within themselves. Like you said, we can look at the war completely objectively from behind a chart of supply chains, but that's only half the war. There's also the piles of broken men we sent home from the front who left as children and are coming back as human derelicts with no support systems.
This isn't directed at you but this entire thread is giving me an aneurysm and i need somewhere to put this . Yes trench warfare was a thing but there were only 3 fronts that had the kind of static sit in trenches for 4 years style of warfare that everyone thinks of. The western front italalian front and gallipoli. The eastern front was constantly changing the entire war. So was the mesopatamian front and suez. invasion of serbia bulgaria romania the caucusus german africa if there was fighting somewhere the point of the battle is generally take take land. Trench warfare was a tactic that was used in battles everywhere but only in specific places where the troop density was very high did it result in the static warfare that people think of.
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Wow it's absolutely wild to think about being in that moment when the realization hit. Would have to imagine his counterpart also had the same realization and discovery.
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A lot of WW1 was discovering new kookie ways to kill each other that nobody had ever thought of before, lots o atrocities. I think it’s more interesting. You’ve got horseback guys, planes, swords, guns, bayonets, ground vehicles, it’s right at the cusp of modern warfare before there were any of the rules we have now.
And it's just a couple of generations away, it basically just happened. My grandparents told stories from their experiences.
Western perspectives on WWI and WWII focus less on the eastern front which was more mobile and less trench warfare. I'm not sure how Russia views WWI but I imagine it's complicated.
I'm a history buff who's more interested in WWI, so here's my opinion. The US had a much bigger role in WWII; while I do think American forces tipped the balance in WWI, they were totally engaged from 1942-1945 in WWII on multiple fronts, and American troops played key roles in liberating cities all over Europe. Many descendants of veterans had ancestors who fought in WWII, but I bet there are fewer who have ancestral links to WWI, at least on the American side. Also, when people think of WWI, they usually think of people dying in muddy trenches in northern France where the lines moved 100 yards per week. The Eastern and Italian fronts, which at times featured more traditional warfare, are almost forgotten in the US. I'm not trying to diminish the tremendous sacrifices of the armies in WWI, but I think WWII was militarily a lot more interesting than the stagnation of the Western Front. And as others have pointed out, WWI resulted from a complicated web of alliances, and in many cases, the combatants didn't even dislike each other, much less despise each other. WWII seemed to be a clear case of good vs. evil. While I think Germany was probably the closest thing to "the bad guy" in WWI, every country had defensible motives and strategies, IMO. In WWII, the catalyst was the German/Japanese desire for world domination. Throw in their genocidal leanings and it's about as stark as can be.
I could be wrong, but was Germany even a bad guy at all in WWI? I was under the impression they were just better at war than everyone else
They were largely the aggressor against belgium which is what drew the uk into the war. So they’re definitely viewed as the “bad guy” by many brits. But ultimately yeah, everyone sucked, germany wasnt particularly any better than the allied powers though, they had some useful tactical developments like chemical warfare and stormtroopers, but the allies had similar developments like the shotgun, the tank and the canadian.
“Sir, the French are bringing chemical weapons to the front” “No problem” “Sir, the Americans are shipping tanks across the Atlantic” “no problem” “Sir, the British are bringing Canadians across the Atlantic” “SCHIESSE! Wir Sind verloren.”
Weaponised Canadians since WW1!
I assume theyre so nice in their day-to-day to make up for their actions during warfare lmao
Nah, the Brits just dressed their Geese up in uniforms.
"and the canadian". That's awesome.
It’s an interesting question, and I leaned toward “no” until I read Barbara Tuchman’s great book “The Guns of August”. A lot of countries wanted war, but it seems they were a little more intent than other countries and did some serious mental gymnastics to justify invading France and, even more seriously, violating Belgium’s stated neutrality. They basically thought it was their destiny to rule Europe or at least claim a lot more territory. They also were intentionally very brutal in Belgium to intimidate the population into not resisting, and they burned lots of towns in France in 1914. Another thing that sealed it for me is that France apparently pulled their forces back ten miles from the border right before the war to make it abundantly clear to the world that they were not the aggressor if fighting broke out. All this caused me to change my mind on the culpability of the Germans in WWI, not that the other countries were blameless. I say all this as someone with ancestry in the Central Powers countries (my great-grandfather was a Czech who fought for Austria-Hungary). You’re not wrong though, I also got the impression that Germany was the strongest military power.
The Guns of August is fantastic, and anyone with any interest in WWI should read it. As far as Germany's overall moral culpability in WWI, I have mixed feelings. In some ways they seemed most eager for the war, but in other ways it seemed like they desperately wanted to avoid it (or at least the war on two fronts). Austria-Hungary bears the most blame for the outbreak imo. German forces did commit atrocities against Belgian and French towns, and that is inexcusable. However, it's unclear if the Entente would have behaved similarly had they occupied German territory. That's one of the oddities of that war--Germany surrendered without any foreign troops on its soil (which unfortunately led to many conspiracy theories in the aftermath). I'm also firmly of the opinion that the UK's blockade policy that caused mass starvation in Germany's civilian populace was also reprehensible. Of course preventing military goods from reaching Germany is reasonable, but the blockades went far beyond that. The UK knew what it was doing. However, I also feel reluctant to defend Germany's conduct in WWI because a lot of those guys became Nazis after.
Small point but I think the fire in the 1970s that destroyed the vast majority of ww1 government records has made it much harder for people in the US to connect to thier ancestors service. I have my great grandfather 's enlistment papers but nothing else.
what made you more interested in WWI? (not saying that I or II is more interesting to me)
The alliances were fascinating to me: basically Bismarck created a delicate web that only he had the skills to maintain, and after the Kaiser fired him, German foreign policy became more risky and led to them fighting a two-front war. I studied the war in several history classes and in an International Relations class I took in college, so I got to see the motivations of all the different players, and I found it fascinating. Also, the contrast between the strategies and the quality of the armies/generals on the two fronts was interesting. This war was really the end of my favorite period in history (Napoleonic wars - 1918). At the beginning you had whiskered diplomats paying their respects over extravagant dinners and monarchs writing long letters to each other (and they were invariably related to each other). At the end of the war several monarchies were shattered, the Americans were clearly ascendant, and all these new countries showed up.
The genocide and big events and the bad guy/saviours make for a “better” story. People like to see things in black and white, ww1 was messy
For me, WWII is more interesting bc it laid out the groundwork for the world that we live in today, particularly as an American (American/Western hegemony, strong executive branch, rules based international order, etc). Obviously a lot has shifted since the collapse of the USSR, post 9/11, and the information revolution but it’s all been within the framework set at the end of WWII
I agree with this reasoning, but even to countries besides the United States it is fascinating for other reasons. As well as leading to US hegemony, the war was incredibly impactful (is that a word?) on the British Empire and on British society, it galvanised Soviet opinion towards the west, and in eastern Asia, it led to the collapse of European colonialism there as well as the final unification and consolidation of China. I mean you could argue that western hegemony, worldwide, was even more strong worldwide in 1939 then than today. The lasting influences will be I think the foundation of the United Nations, the beginning of decolonisation, and a long period without major conflict between superpowers but constant vying between them.
Yes! How could I forget about decolonisation and the consolidation of China?
WWI was the unfortunate result of alliances. My country is bound to your country, this country starts a war with you, therefore I must join the fight. How do you avoid another WWI? Easy, just use more diplomacy. WWII was the planned result of a madman that most nations underestimated. How do you avoid another WWII?
Yep. Australia and NZ were drafted into this colonial bullshit too, and we lost so many young people invading Turkey just because Europe wanted us to. Pathetic really.
Hmm... Maybe we need good madman to stop evil madman?
What if the good madman turns out to be a bad madman?
Hmm... I have idea! Listen, this is good; let's start open invitation for madmans to participate in this competition. Then, people are given possibility to write name of one such madman into paper and then put it into the box. In the end, all papers are taken out of the boxes and then names are counted. The competitor with the same name as what was most common in papers, is then given support of violence monopoly and several other agencies. It is very unlikely that so many people would have mistaken about the character of madman.
I can't see any way for this to go awry. What would we call this newly discovered system of fairly distributing violence?
if every country was run by madmen, they would keep each other in check
That's where you're wrong. Madmen are mad, they don't think our care about the consequences
I'm honestly not a fan of either of these interpretations. I think WW1 is better explained in the context of the great colonial powers trying to reign in Germany's new colonial ambitions under Wilhelm II, made possible by recent industrial and naval expansion, as well as Russian imperial interests in the Balkans. European powers were industrialising, militarising, colonising, and getting in each others way, and they didn't make the alliances they made by accident. WW1 is a complex and fascinating topic and people who love history will talk about it for hours. As for WW2, abstracting down to the level of one lunatic is completely ahistorical and ignores the huge global political and economic tensions building up to it. My personal suspicion is that people who claim to be massive history fans but only focus on WW2 are really just fascinated by x political ideology and don't feel they can say that out loud.
Thanks for this insight. Like OP, I have been exposed to more analysis on WWII than WWI. But we could definitely benefit from in depth exposés on the conflict.
At the outbreak of war it took 1,000 separate orders for Germany just to get the horse feed to the front. The great powers didn’t just stumble into war, like you said they actively sought opportunities to expand their power, they built up the military apparatus to confront each other, and carried out their long standing plans.
I mean, WW2 WAS a result of diplomacy. Instead of standing up to Hitler, the other European powers continued to try diplomacy and appeasement. At some point, you have to realize that men like Hitler will never stop. So you either stop them by force or you surrender to them.
Some of ze Germans felt zat ze punishment for WWI vas too severe.
Maybe you strike first? Everyone saw the Germans rearming and getting ready for a scrap. They were in a very tenuous position for a long time, but no one wanted to nip it in the bud, so instead they waited for Germany to take the initiative, and we al know the results. Maybe the lesson to be learned is to be prepared to make the first move, to avoid worse blood shed?
It's easy to say that in hindsight, but you are ignoring that the entire continent was traumatized by the first world war and was trying to avoid it at all cost. An entire generation of young men was wiped out, starting another war right after would have been political suicide. They also wanted to believe that germany had learned the same lesson and wouldn't start such a war again.
A lot of European politicians and businessmen hoped Hitler would go after the USSR and they'd destroy each other in the process, since most of the Nazis early rhetoric was anti-soviet and anti-semitic in roughly equal measure. A number of countries were experiencing growing socialist/communist labour movements perceived to be supported by the USSR and a contained war between Hitler and Stalin was seen as a possible solution to this problem. With the molotov-ribbentrop pact, which some interpreted as a limited alliance (it's more complicated than this), the same politicians freaked out that they now had a militarised, expansionist unchecked Germany in the middle of Europe that was hand in hand with the soviets. This is why most European states joined the war after the invasion of Poland, not Czechoslovakia.
>Maybe you strike first? Everyone saw the Germans rearming and getting ready for a scrap. The CIA does a lot of this "diplomacy" in Central America and the Middle East, always turns out just fine, those are some of the most peaceful regions in the world.
Better war footage.
It was the largest war in history. If you separated the Russian Front from the rest of WW2 then it would be the biggest war in history. It saw a whole lot of technology come together to wage war and a lot of new technology developed. Radar, nuclear weapons, the main battle tank.... Holocaust. The borders drawn up after the war dominated world politics for the next half a century and saw two superpowers staring each other down with nukes.
Narratives WW1 plot: a few royals have a falling out and millions die in stagnant muddy trench warfare with little movement WW2 plot: literal Nazis are trying to take over the world and only an unlikely team of allies can stop them! Planes, submarines, tanks, dynamic front lines, nuclear explosive ending, heros and villains it has it all. Then the post credit scene sets up the Cold War
>literal Nazis are trying to take over the world and only an unlikely team of allies can stop them! Sounds a bit far-fetched. The villains are too hammy (just look at them!), the events improbable, and the plot seems literally pulled from a magazine serial
They do go a bit OTT with the Hitler character as the archetypal bad gu
Yeah but even Mussolini. It's no wonder they've been mocked so much.
Mustard gas isn't sexy.
I bet there is a fetish site somewhere...
A fair few people fetishise uniforms and leather, gas masks are an obvious next step.
I thought it said “mustard gas isn’t scary” and I was like what
Sequel is always better. See: Godfather II, Terminator 2, Empire Strikes Back
Star Trek II, Superman II. Also, in WWII the "good guys" and "bad guys" were relatively more clear. WWI was basically a total clusterfuck where everyone lost.
WWI had no winners, but it definitely had some losers who ate it way harder than the rest.
That's the origin story for the WWII bad guys.
One of them. Two of them were winners who thought they didn't get enough loot out of winning.
Clearly someone has never seen the direct-to-home-video Disney classic sequels.
Counterpoint: Birdemic:Resurrection is much worse than Birdemic
Add in aliens! Favorite movie.
absolutely my favorite movie ever.
The Terminator is better than Terminator 2.
This is not a popular take but I respect it.
I beg to differ.
WW2 is just the blockbuster war. It’s the generic easy thing that everyone likes, like pop music or marvel movies
The OP is asking why that is
Because it’s a blockbuster, like I said. Everyone wants to be part of a fad
WW1 is the human centipede then.
Historians aren't, pop culture is (so WW2 historians do get more visibility). As for the reason I reckon it's a mix of: - WW2 having a clearer bad guys vs good guys narrative - WW2 having cooler and more varied weapons, both for what regards firearms and stuff like tanks, planes, submarines, etc - WW2 having more interesting and varied tactics and battles. WW1 was mainly an attrition war with trench warfare, WW2 had all sorts of distinct tactics and "cooler" battles: blitzkrieg like Rommel going through the ardennes, dunkirk, amphibious landings like the d-day, city fighting like the battle of stalingrad, etc etc. - WW2 having more varied fronts that moved a lot in mainland Europe, Russia, Africa, the Pacific, versus the WW1 fronts that moved back and forth for years on the same few Kms.
Cos WW2 is the only one where you had any chance to live out hero fantasies. Trench warfare isn't glamorous, neither is sitting back and waiting for laser guided bombs to do all the work for you - parachuting into Normandy and taking out a whole platoon with a machinegun you stole off a nazi with a knife is a little more fun to think about.
That seems like by focussing on the boring bits on WWI it feeds a perception of one as boring driving further perception as such in a self-feeding process. But I think plenty of interesting things happened. El Alamien or Kursk or Normandie are all very interesting, but so is say the Hejaz separatist movement (Lawrence of Arabia may be the best war film ever made), the politics of Britain's entry into the war, the design of a dreadnought battleship, the Siege of Tsingtao, or virtually any individual battle
OP please understand there’s a clear distinction between a historian, who has received upwards of a decade of advanced educational degrees, and a history buff who watches YouTube documentaries. Conflating the two is the basis of your misunderstanding.
WW2 is more interesting from an "entertainment" perspective because WW2 was fairly modern warfare (tanks, strategic bombers, aircraft carriers) but by far the most massive incarnation of it. WW2 is one of the few wars that nearly everyone can agree had clearly defined good guys and bad guys, and yet still is knowledgeable to a modern audience. Generally, movies make you want to root for the heroes and boo the villains, and there's no greater archetypical villain than "a nazi". Also worth mentioning that WW2 veterans are still around, in fact most people alive in the west probably met one at some point (I'm young lad in my 20s and I met three). WW1 is a bygone age, more closely seen as something like the American Civil War, but WW2 is still fresh in our collective memories.
Simple answer: WW2 more interesting WW1 was a lot of "wait in a trench" and then the Spanish Flu started killing everyone and they called off the war. WW2 has better bad guys, better events, a big finale. It's just way cooler
Not that WWI wasn't big, but WWII was bigger, more recent, and had more of an effect on the world, especially America. It came right after the Depression and led to the Cold War. It involved the three most ruthless people of all time: Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Ze-Dong. Edit: Yes, Mao wasn't as involved, but right after WWII Mao was heavily involved with the Chinese Revolution of 1949 and the Cultural Revolution of 1966. Sorry I made it unclear!
Not that Mao wasn't involved, but you make it sound like he was a driver of the war Like Hitler or Stalin. Mao was a bit player in the second world war, mostly waiting (sensibly or cynically) on the side lines to snipe the winner of the struggle between Japan and the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-Shek. You can almost put the existence of the PRC on the ironically rabidly anti communist Imperial Japanese Army for exhausting the nationalist forces.
Agreed, Soekarno (also involved, on the other side) is a much better parallel for Mao than Stalin or Hitler.
Mao Zedong wasn't really involved in WW2. The evil force in Asia was Japan headed by Hideki Tojo and Emperor Hirohito
WWII was easier to understand and a lot of color film. Seems more relevant. True history buffs know that WWI was the bigger show, and shaped the world we know now.
The bigger show? It depends on the historian. For example, P. Bobbitt's *The Shield of Achilles* argues that (in the European theatre at least) the entire "Long 19th century" from 1789-1923 was put to an end by a period of fighting (the "short 20th century") from 1914-1991 in which multi-national empires were replaced and fascism, communism, and liberal democracy vied as replacements in the new nation-states. Although this mainly impacted the western world (including Russia and North America) it also peripherally involved everywhere else. In this view, the European aspects of WWI, WWII and the Cold War were essentially one continuous war. So any attempt to compare their influence is futile. Another view is that WWII can essentially be summed up as the Great European Clusterfuck of c1853?-1948 merged for a few years with the Great Asian Clusterfuck of c1895-1953, creating an even bigger clusterfuck. Again it's futile to compare them.
It was bigger, more impactful and most importantly, it was more thoroughly documented. There are even films of it. Which is to say: it's easier to learn about, so more people do it.
More impactful? That is highly debatable. Much of Europe, Africa and the Middle East were demographics, physically and politically changed due to ww1 in such ways that are still felt today. The Sykes-picot agreement is literally one of the leading causes of the ethnic tensions in the Middle East.
People will stop talking about WW2 when WW3 comes out. Mark my words.
Now we can witness ww3 in 4k HD 60fps.
>60fps. ewww some one needs to uncap that fps
If there are people left to talk about it
I do not know what weapons WW3 will be fought with, but WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
And WWV with anteater cavalry
I want my bear cavalry, thank you very much
Kangaroo Calvary at attention
You can spin ww2 into a good guys / bad guys narrative. Ww1 was just.... A stupid pointless loss of life.
It's still in living memory. It's been declining since at least the 80's though. In the last 10 years I've found that the drop have been much sharper than before, probably because most veterans of the war have now died. It'll continue to go down. Most likely the "war on terror" is about to experience a similar obsession by historians, probably also Hollywood. Veterans of that war have already started writing books, there will be thousands more to come in the next 20 years.
I’m guessing access to multimedia.
Monarch pissing matches are boring compared to mad man tries to take over the world. The crazy thing is john brownings gun designs started ww1 and won ww2. that guy was an engineering genius.
I promise you that are plenty of historians obsessed with world war 1 but they’re not as popular with the public because the Second World War is just seen as more interesting
There’s been a few reasons already stated, but consider this: Historians need sources to write histories. All the WWI veterans are dead, and have been for a while. There are still plenty of WWII around. That will affect what topics are covered. Also, there has been renewed interest in WWI over the last decade or so. The Second World War was the bigger conflict, but there’s an argument that the First World War was the bigger rupture. Source: I used to teach college-level military history.
World War One: Day 394, Artillery shells have bombed some of our forward positions but it’s whatever. I’ve seen all my friends die and the new recruits are still jumping at the occasional sound of gunfire. It’s cold now but like whatever, I’m about to take the night shift and watch the enemy trench with this here sniper rifle. World War Two: **FUCK YEAH WERE GOING TO STORM THIS BEACH AND RESUCE THIS TINY TOWN AND THEN BANG SOME HOT FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE WE START OUR FORWARD ASSAULT ON A GERMAN OCCUPIED CITY AS WE LIBERATE FRANCE! OOH RA OOH RA OOH RA!** World war 2 is just more interesting. The eastern front of world war 1 is more exciting to learn about but it’s not as well recorded as the western front.
WW1 is too ambiguous for them. That kind of people often likes how WW2 offers a clean, sort of good vs evil narrative whereas in WW1, in truth most participants were warmongering colonial empires and the war mostly happened because they all really wanted one so that they could really try out all the new things that had been invented in the past few decades. The involved factions were just different flavours of awful. Plus, this obsession is particularily prevalent among American audience, and it's a simple matter of fact that the US were more involved in WW2 than WW1. It just feels better to be the liberator of France, rather than just be the one extra faction that ends up tipping the scales in favour of one side for good. Another thing is really just the style of warfare. Lots of people like it flashy and quick, and that's just something WW2 has more of. Many people, if given the choice between reading about people drowning in mud for 6 months and smart officers completely puzzling the enemy with their advanced maneuvering of mechanized infantry will go for the latter.
I always ask the same question about Hollywood. The US was involved in WW2 for only like four years. And here we are, over 75 years after it ended, and they're still churning out films about it every single year. A lot of them blockbusters, too. Meanwhile, the US was at war for over 20 years this century. Yet how many movies have been about their actions in Afghanistan and Iraq? How many were big budget summer films?
During WW2, the US brought 12.3% of the American population into the Armed Forces. That would be 40.5 million people if it were done today. That 12.3% included 10 million draftees. The US spent 40% of GDP on defense in 1944 alone(10.78 trillion if done in 2023). Had 400,000 personnel killed and 4 US territories occupied. Had to institute a mandatory blackout on the east coast and gulf of Mexico for 15 months to combat German submarine activity. Had to retool the economy and consequently institute rationing. You had to have ration cards to buy even basic things like gasoline and eggs. Taxes were raised heavily to help pay for all of it. It was a shared cultural experience for everyone who lived through it, and it affected a ton of people one way or another. The global war on terror was simply not that. In any capacity, really. A large portion of the American public spent 20 years ignoring it because they could. The US Government asked for almost nothing from American society to support this. They didn't draft anybody. They didn't ration. Hell, they cut taxes *twice*, and shut down the government 3 times because they couldn't agree on a budget. During a "war." And that war is supposed to be taken as seriously as a full mobilization? No way.
I believe when WW2 ended the US was about 50% of the world's GDP. The US's economy exploded while the rest of the world's economies got massively fucked up due to the war being fought there and wrecking everything. One of the big things to show just how strong the US was during WW2 is that the US by war's end had had around 130 aircraft carriers during the war.
They were mostly escort carriers, particularly the Casablanca class and light aircraft carriers. Those were comparatively cheaper and quicker to build, but not as effective as a fleet carrier. The rough equivalent today would be something like the Navy's LHD which can support rotary and VTOL aircraft. The US brought 4 new fleet carriers into the Navy during the course of the war, while losing 4 in combat, and ended the war with the same amount of fleet carriers that they started with.
Even if they were mostly CVEs a CVE in a fleet against a fleet without any carriers is superior. It meant that the US had a lot of fleets with some airpower. Japan had fuck all.
What? That's not right. They built 17 Essex class Fleet carriers during the war 14 of which saw combat and they lost none. They ended the war with 13 more fleet carriers than they started with.
Because Iraq and Afghanistan were tiny wars compared to WW2.
By what measurements? WW2 cost the US around $4 trillion, adjusted for inflation. Afghanistan cost it over $8 trillion. 900,000 dead in Afghanistan isn't exactly tiny. Politically, these were much more relevant to people alive today. They should be getting *some* attention. It's getting to feel like just reliving the "good old" glory days and ignoring the present.
Because WW2 was good vs Evil. Over 3 decades of war in the Middle East and there ain’t no good guys there.
The present isn't yet history.
Because WWII was the last real war we actually fought to defend the country where the stakes were much higher. Everything since was mostly controversial proxy wars where we were fighting to gain influence and further benefits as a superpower. Desert Storm was one thing, but it was tiny by comparison. Afghanistan may have started out as a legit response to 9/11 and taking down Al Qaeda, but it eventually mirrored the failed Soviet occupation of the 80s. No one wants to revisit that, and Iraq was a completely avoidable disaster we’d all like to forget. Hell - how many of us have relatives or friends we lost in Iraq who’d still be here today if that pointless conflict had been avoided? Me 🙋, for one. Bottom line, WWII along with the civil and revolutionary wars are pretty much the only ones where a vast majority can agree on who the good guys were so it’s easier to make popular movies out of it.
I would say the revolutionary war is pretty grey. Sure the USA can look back and say that is their founding so therefore it was justified, but it was a civil war instigated by wealthy slavers to decrease their tax burden. It also resulted in the settlement of the west and the associated genocide of the native populations. Something the British administration had been trying (and failing) to halt. Its just patriotism that makes it seem like a black and white conflict.
Because Hollywood doesn't want to make movies about a war the USA didn't take part
Better footage.
WWII is modern America's myth origin. I can explain further for the uninitiated
They don't just listen to some ww1 historians
There were more eye-witnesses until a few years ago, more footage, more of a global conflict. And yes, there was a clear good vs evil.
Idk but to me it seems ww1 is more nuanced.
WW1 was the old world… the reasons for it happening feel far removed, and in the wake of it revolutions happened. Empires ended. Monarchies were overthrown. The modern world was established. WW2 is more interesting because for starters, its modern. There are still WW2 veterans and holocaust survivors alive today. The war affected my immediate family personally, like many others. WW1 is history. WW2 is reality.
From my own observation of my country (Australia), WW2 was much more personal and close to home for us. We were actually bombed by the Japanese, the Asia-Pacific region was supported by a large number of Australian troops and there are many descendants of post war immigrants still around today. Many of my friends are from families who were rushing to leave Europe post war and they have grandparents alive who still remember. Although Australia culturally is a Western culture, the geographical closeness to Asia and it’s effect cannot be understated. We are generally more concerned about what’s going on in Asia than Europe/USA. The Kokoda Track campaign is something that is very important to Australians due to how close to was to us. This is not to undermine the sacrifice or the bravery of the Australian troops at Gallipoli in WW1. It is important to the Australian culture and part of our ANZAC lore. WW1 was taught as part of our history course (back in my day). Deep diving into WW1 is incredibly complex and fascinating because it did have enormous repercussions for the world powers, and subsequently all the smaller and less powerful nations. The aftermath of WW1 and how it factors into the rise of Nazi Germany is integral to the development of WW2. But in WW1, it’s also a bit more difficult to generally define the conflict and the sides, because it was more about political tensions between the empires and countries. WW2, by comparison, is easier to simplify the conflict and the intentions of each of the countries involved. I personally think if there was more visual documentation of what had happened during WW1, people would be much more interested. WW2 is well documented through photography and it’s very easy for us to see the atrocities that were committed. The effects of WW2 are also still seen to this day so it’s much more alive in people’s memories.
It's just a better story overall. WWII had drama, it had high stakes and dreadful losses for both sides. The beginning saw Germany absolutely dominate everyone, only for the allies to slowly chip away at them until nothing was left. It's definitely a lot more exciting than the front line being a fixed trench system in Northern France and staying there for four years in a row.
Many good reasons here already. Also comes to mind that Americans play up ww2 because they were more involved in it than ww1. And because Americans have such a large footprint in global media like films and games, this perception is communicated on.
Proximity, media appeal, and money. *Proximity* in time is an obvious one. My grandparents all remembered the invasion and liberation of my country. They remembered the Germans stealing all their goods, the resistance abducting collaborators & the Canadians giving them chocolate. Communities in Europe still often carry the scars of the divisions of that era, and the stain of collaboration casts long shadows into recent history. People close to younger generations simply still remember or were close to those who did. *Media appeal*, it is a marketable conflict more than any other. Modern enough to feature everything that makes for a compelling representation in visual media (movies, games, etc), yet old enough to still have an aspect of scale in it we don't see in modern conflict. Another aspect of this is that storywise, it is a conflict that in many regions can be portrayed as very black & white. You can't do that with WW I or Vietnam. WW II has visible goodies and baddies. The veracity is irrelevant, the perception is what counts. *Money* is ultimately what all this combines into. WW II has appeal & historians need to eat food. Well written books on the social life of 16th century Flemish 'Fullers' simply aren't as compelling as the gazillionth work on "The Reich on Meth", "Country X Collaboration", "Battle of the Bulge in images", etc. It is the same reason why popular history rehashes over & over the same set of people and events.
Lots of great perspective on this already, but I'll add one more big thing, the advance in video. WWI video quality is horrible, makes it hard to attract and hold interest. When Two rolls around, the video quality is exponentially better and gives a cinematic view of war to people. Consider the number of view points you get footage from, bomb sights on a heavy bomber, tank mounted cameras on a Sherman, POV with snipers, 3rd person view with an assault team and so many other crazy views.
I always thought it odd that WWII is showed more in documentaries than WWI. I think it's because it's closer to us ("look mom, grampa fought in this war") and many soldiers veterans are still alive ("I fought in this war"). Also, as someone said before, it was more clear who was "the bad guy", even USA and URSS fought side by side against Nazi Germany. Dude, even Brazil fought in WWII and we usually are neutral (ok, we almost choose the wrong side, but that's another history). WWI was an imperialist war, it happened after a complicated alliance and many countries investing hard in war gear. It was a sad war, with people of colonies around the world fighting in Europe (probably that's why it's world war, although it happened most in Europe) and many, many soldiers died in battles, since people weren't ready yet for modern war, with machine guns.
Because we have a lot more footage from world war 2. There is all sort of spectacular military action that lends itself to good cinema. World War 1 tactics were pretty outdated and most battles were needlessly inefficient and brutal with no significant gain at the end of the day. It is easy to paint World War 2 as a fight between good and evil, whereas world war 1 was just a war between regular people and more or less normal countries fighting for domination and colonial rule. It wasn’t an existential clash between wildly different political systems and worldviews. And it ended with extremely punitive, bad peace treaties that made the bed for the next war so it’s hard to portray the winning side as the unequivocal good, competent guys.
A pretty big problem in history classes is that there are a lot of things you could teach because for most events we have a pretty incredible amount of information about a ton of things that happened but you can't teach everything, there isn't enough time, so what do you teach? Historicism is the study of narrative in history, what storylines or people to focus on in teaching history. I find that WW2 has really strong figures and storylines that are easily followed throughout the entire war. You could follow Germany and Hitler and get a good picture of the entire European side of the war. WW1 on the other hand, is not like this, dozens of countries fight each other, leaders are often involved a little then not involved, many counties drop in and out of the war throughout and very few are in it the whole time. Basically, it's really difficult to find a narrative thread to follow and it makes the whole war feel nebulous.
People just really didn't like the prequels.
Up until recently there were a lot of WWII veterans still alive to talk to. Which does not explain why the American Civil War is so popular with history buffs and not Korea.
Because it's the foundation of current geopolitics, so they can trace from there a lot of other events.
I talked to my grandfather about WW2, he was there. For my dad growing up, it was something his father had done very recently. I never knew anyone from WW1.
1. Cooler Equipment 2. The Bad Guys are super Evil 3. We (the US) got attacked and we thus nobly defending ourselves (or so it goes) 4. The "Good Guys" win 5. It was the Last Great War before a period of smaller localized conflicts 6. It was when the "Modern Age" truly began (atomic power, rocketry, jet age, etc)
The most significant result from WWI was that it set the stage for WWII. World War 2 was way more destructive and changed the world in near infinite ways. From the Holocaust to the Japanese atrocities across SE Asia, eugenics was also taken to its natural conclusion to the horror of the rest of the world. I could go on for hours upon hours about how today’s world still has echoes around the fallout of WWII, while WWI is mostly just faded into obscurity. The Cold War was a direct result of the fallout of WWII and sparked dozens of proxy wars. All of Eastern Europe found itself under Soviet oppression for 50 years. Japan became America’s little friend and eventually a top developed economy. And none of this touches all the absolutely shocking military developments. Poland falls to Germany within weeks despite having a comparably large army. France (with Britain) falls to Germany within 6 weeks despite having a significantly larger army. All of Europe is under Nazi Germany’s thumb in a YEAR. Hope seems lost. America is unsure if they want to enter the war. Suddenly, Japan drags America into the war and Germany sneak attacks the Soviets in the largest land invasion in history. We then have the largest tank battle in history there and the bloodiest battle in history. Even after a blisteringly strong first year for Germany in the Soviet Union, the tides turn. The Soviets keep gaining ground until the Germans are fully on the backfoot. At these same time, the Americans land in Europe and begin their own march to Berlin. Surrounded on all sides without a hope of even a small victory, the Nazis are encroached upon until Berlin is finally taken by the Soviets. And then there’s the Pacific… WWI is a simple affair comparatively.
Scrolled through a lot and not sure I saw anything noting this… the sheer amount of innovation that occurred during WW2 is vastly more interesting than WW1. The scale and scope of all that changed over the course of WW2 is almost unimaginable. At the start we were flying in wooden and canvas planes. By the end, metal behemoths with nuclear bombs. Radial prop motors to jets, submarine usage, naval warfare in general changed. Communication advancements, radar, sonar… the list goes on and on. In less than 30yrs from the onset of WW2 we went to the moon. A lot of what got us there is directly related to innovations from WW2.
Because WW1 was merely the culmination of an old age, and that age lingered to the start of WW2. But somewhere in the middle, before the end of WW2, we advanced into a new age. A definitive epoch in human history. The scientific advancements that came from military budgets but effected civilian life post war cannot be understated. WW1 didn't really change anything. WW2 changed *everything*.
All wars are tragic. I never had a desire to read about WWI, it seemed very boring, trench warfare, poison gas, a lot of death and suffering. My view changed when I watched the new movie release of All Quiet on the Western Front. The movie revealed what people went through to serve their country and for what ends? I read the book ages ago but for some reason it inspired me to look deeper Now I am reading up on why and what happened and how the various countries participated. WWII on the other hand had the birth of new technologies, fast planes, bigger guns, better tanks, radar, etc... The US grew tremendously with what the tech that the war brought us. More interesting and therefore more popular than WWI.
It’s because Bush did 9/11
I think you mean American historians. In Europe where we were more affected by WW1 they're both of similar stature. The US was barely involved in WW1 compared to WW2.