You don’t see a lot of movies about WWI these days and I assure that most folks no little about it. This is understandable in the extent that WWII has happened more recently and there is a ton more video documentation associated with WWII (not to mentioon the existnece of the prototypical symbols of evil, the Nazis). But WWI seems to me to be more important in defining the world we live in today. Modern warfare, tanks, machine guns, chemical warfare, airpower were all introduced in WWI. Communism in Russia gained a foothold in large part due to Russia’s involvementin the war. The class system that dominated the British military came under iscrutiny. The Austo-Hungry empire was demolished creating a plethora of weaker nations. Of course, the groundwork for WWII was laid. The US came into pe-eminence, before it was mostly a regional power, but in WWI it became more global (BTW, I am not suggesting the the US came in and saved the day as some like to do). Personaly, I find WWI history fascinating.
I’m sure that good stories could be written about it (and “A Very Long Engagement” wasn’t a bad movie). My first thought, though, is that sitting in trenches for long periods of time and then making suicide charges back and forth doesn’t work so well for compelling cinema.
“All Quiet On The Western Front” (the version with Lew Ayres) remains one of the best war movies ever made. The battle action sequences are chilling and very well done, unlike most of the crapola of the '30s (and '40s).
There’s as much drama involved in WWI as in the Civil War and there are numerous similarities (suicidal frontal assaults and mostly bad generalship, for example). In fact the lessons learned in the Civil War were ignored by the people who conducted campaigns in WWI.
I wouldn’t exactly say the U.S. “saved the day” for the Allies, but it would have been very dicey without the doughboys and war materiel supplied by America.
I agree 100% with the OP. And by way of demonstration, we can note that World War I has been lost to popular culture in a way that World War II has not. Beyond Snoopy fighting the Red Baron (and I suppose Red Baron frozen pizza), there’s precious little to remind us on a regular basis that the war even occurred, let alone that Americans lost their lives in large numbers in it – and still less that it was the pivotal event of the 20th century. Much of the forgetfulness is accounted for by the time factor, principally the fact that almost no War War I veterans are left. And WWII tended to overwrite whatever memories we had of the earlier world war.
But I don’t think time is the only reason for forgetting. I think World War I left the world with a profound sense of failure – not just as to the war itself, but as to the aftermath – and America is not very good at remembering failures.
I think it probably has something to do with the fact that Nazis capture the imagination in a way that the Kaiser does not. Nazis were pretty evil. The Kaiser, on the other hand, wasn’t all that different from other European rulers of the time. In the popular retelling of WWII, we fought the war to save the world from evil. The same can’t be said of WWI. What, we fought to save the world from ???
The war was simply a more destructive version of European wars that had been going on for centuries. The only difference was that the U.S. foolishly became involved in it. Sure, it changed the world, but it doesn’t have the ideological dimensions we’ve given to WWII. Because of that, people who have little knowledge of history won’t be drawn to entertainment that uses it as a backdrop.
Sal is right on the money about WWII overriding WWI in the public consciousness (particularly in America.) I think a big part of it is that the Nazis were just more memorable antagonists, and easier to think of in black-and-white terms. Imperial Germany doesn’t seem as evil, and didn’t fight for as evil-seeming a goal as Hitler’s Germany did. And they didn’t massacre hordes of innocents in the same way. And we didn’t have to fight on two major theaters on opposite sides of the world, nor wage such massive air and sea campaigns.
Renob beat me to the punch, I see.
Just another bunch of Europeans slaughtering each other stupidly in a war that didn’t have to happen…but did because they were all so fucking eager to get to the killing part. Also, there weren’t the bad guy/good guy thingy you had in WWII going…just a bunch of mopes too stupid or too fixated to to avoid the bloodbath.
Obviously my antipathy for this war is fairly high so I have to say that…no, I don’t think its underappreciated. Of course, part of this might be because my grandfather (on my mothers side) fought there and had nothing good to say about how the Europeans (our ‘allies’) treated the Americans who came there to fight and die. In addition, I’m not sold on the fact that the US had to get involved at all. I think the war was a tragic waste that, as the OP said, set the stage for yet another European blood bath a few decades down the pike…and again because our Euro buddies made it that way. As much as I’m no fan of Wilson, had the Euro’s listened to him about reparations and what the League of Nations SHOULD have been, instead of seeking their petty and stupid revenge, then we probably wouldn’t have had to do the same thing again in the 30’s and 40’s.
A tragic waste as I said. Under appreciated? Not IMHO. I’m not advocating forgetting about it mind…I think there are important lessons to be learned, and important things from that conflict to remember about our Euro pals. But I don’t think its quite as easy to find some ‘good guys’ to have an epic movie about it…as all sides in the conflict were a bunch of fuckups, and all of them were in the wrong to push the conflict to the ridiculous lengths they did.
Sorry for the rant. Take it with a grain of salt…WWI just pushes my buttons.
-XT
I’m a big WWi buff and my attitude toward the indifference is the same as when my mom made a dessert nobody else liked “great - more for me!”
There’s so much available on the internet, I can always find other interested parties whose scholarship vastly exceeds my own. But I don’t have to wade through chaff up to my knees as I would if I were studying the US Civil War or WWII
Plus a search for Civil War materials can lead to a nasty KKK site, or Neo-Nazi shit for WWII. You don’t have to worry about that when idly finding out if there was even a slight difference between American and British helmets.
Just random thoughts, maybe not worth too much:
There isn’t too much you can do with it that hasn’t already been done, I don’t think, at least WRT the western front. It was a blood-soaked stalemate from beginning to end. The eastern front had more movement, but we tend not to be as interested in that, in either world war.
The fallout from the war was so devastating that the pre-WWI world was completely obliterated. It’s hard to write something about it, because people can only relate to the world that came after.
Futility is a hard thing to read about. We want things to move ahead. If you happen to kind of like Britain, reading “Gallipoli” just gives you a headache from smacking your forehead so many times. I suppose the Turks think it’s a comedy, though.
The negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles are fascinating, but for some reason that sort of thing never gets much treatment. The only person I can think of who pays attention to post-war political maneuvering is Lyndon Larouche[:smack:]. Ouch.
xtsime, I understand the sentiment, but I don’t mean “Underappreciated” in the sense that folks should like the war. I meant in terms of folks don’t seem to appreciate the effect it has had on our modern world.
Paths of Glory is a great WWI movie. Directed by Kubrick and starring Kirk Douglas.
It’d be interesting to know if a thousand years from now World War I and World War II will be considered basically the same war – the same way the Thirty Years War and Hundred Years War are both now considered unitary events, though each comprised a number of smaller warlets. After all, the sides didn’t change that much from War War I to World War II, and in many respects, World War II was World War I simply breaking out again.
Also, we have far less archival footage of WWI campaigns, personalities, propaganda, etc., and what we do have feels very antiquated (no audio, degrading film stock, fewer relatable visual touchstones). We also have fewer veterans around who suffered through WWI to pass on any oral tradition, and there are fewer cultural points of reference from that time (particularly music) that still resonate on a nostalgic level.
But I agree that I think it’s largely a canvas of carnage, and not as easily adaptable to clear-cut Good vs. Evil presentations that make WWII more inherently “dramatic”. There are plenty of WWII films, for example, that largely play as adventure films (The Great Escape, The Enemy Below, The Guns of Navarone, The Dirty Dozen, etc. ) but I can’t really think of any that approach WWI the same way (in terms of gung-ho kick-assery)–perhaps Lawrence of Arabia is the closest, but that’s on the African front, which very few associate with the crux of the trench warfare battlefields in Europe.
:smack: Oh…sorry then. I misunderheard you. I agree with you then…it certainly had a huge impact on our modern world, much more so than WWII.
I’ll slink off now…
-XT
WWI was a long time ago and WWII, much bigger and longer, intervened. I have a tape of the PBS series The Great War which shows in detail what an awful experiece it was for the dogface in the trenches, on both sides.
To get a feel for WWI rent the film Paths of Glory or find a tape of the PBS series.
I just made a new thread in Cafe Society to talk about the legacy in popular culture of WWI.
No problem, I wasn’t exactly the paragon of claritudeness.
I’d also reccomend Barbara Tuchman’s excellent book, The Guns of August.
It’s not all that easy to decide where one war began and where one ended.We can state readily enough that certain treaties and documents were signed on certain dates, but it doesn’t seem to have abated the fighting much elsewhere.
For the Russians, WW1 continued into the revolution, and the purges amount to a war on its own population.
Add in the Chinese civil wars, and also that Japan was fighting in China quite some time before war in Europe broke out, and given the huge scale of some of these killings, it’s debateable wether WW1 and WW2 are not just one continuing event that had individual nations rolling in and rolling out of the fight as circumstances dictated.
You might also add in other wars that were directly caused by the two main fighting periods, Korea, Vietnam are also very closely linked in with WW2.
It’s a side issue, but I’m honestly curious as to what those lessons that were ignored are supposed to be. Given the terrain, technology, and size of the armies available in 1914, I challenge you to come up with a solution to the operational difficulties faced by the two armies.
The simple fact is that two massive armies with limited frontage that are armed with rapid firing machine guns and artillery, but that do NOT have either armored vehicles or practical portable radios, are limited in their ability to conduct offensive operations in depth once the fronts are stabilized and defensive lines are constructed.
“Lawrence of Arabia,” of course, mostly occurs in Arabia, which I believe is technically in Asia.
The “African” front of WWI was fought by different people and was a very different affair than the war between the Triple Entente/Arabs and the Turks.