AH Challenge...more interest in the Great War

The Great War, AKA World War One, is all but ignored over here in the USA. (I don't know how well known it is in Europe...someone please give me an idea.)
I don't mean forgotten per se, but how often do you see movies or books about it, or video games featureing that war.

So, how could the Great War be more in people's conciousness in the current time. Keep the divergences as limited as feasible
 

Hnau

Banned
More U.S. intervention, obviously, either by getting them in sooner or making the action last longer.
 

Thande

Donor
Trouble is that people tend to think of it as being Blackadder sitting in a muddy trench and then being sent by Haig to get mown down by German machine gun fire. That image has become too iconic from anti-war films that started right there in the 1910s, like how Vietnam is just drugged-up psycho soldiers crawling through underground tunnels in a jungle. Doesn't matter if a large part of it wasn't like that, that's the popular perception.
 
Yeah, in the West trench fighting is not very popular.
In Russia/the East WW1 tends to get completely overshadowed by WW2/GPW and the Revolution. If one goes for Tsarist times, it's usually the Tsars of old.
 
Well, the smallest change possible suggests that the solution is simply for someone to write an excellent WW1 novel and it becomes a blockbuster at the box office.

Cultural shifts can be tricky, but I think piquing interest in the great war would be a tiny thing to shift, and with culture, there are many, many routes to achieve just that.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Well, the smallest change possible suggests that the solution is simply for someone to write an excellent WW1 novel and it becomes a blockbuster at the box office.

And make sure the movie gives the impression that all the Americans fought the Germans virtually alone, with no Brits or Frenchies in sight.
 
And make sure the movie gives the impression that all the Americans fought the Germans virtually alone, with no Brits or Frenchies in sight.

I guess Amiens and the last hundred days of the war are out of the question then eh?

It have to be about the Americans making the same mistakes that the British and the French made earlier in the war all over again at Chateau-Thiery and Metz wouldn't it? They still won, but the butcher's bill...

Oh, if anyone asks, there is supposed to be a movie about Passchendale coming out this fall, but it might only be in theaters in Canada. I hope that it is a good film, as good WWI movies are hard to find, even among the old stuff from before WWII, or from the 1950s, and newer WWI films in general are extremely uncommon, which is a shame.
 

MrP

Banned
And make sure the movie gives the impression that all the Americans fought the Germans virtually alone, with no Brits or Frenchies in sight.

Something about the Meuse-Argonne, perhaps?

On a related note, I'd always (uncritically) thought it rather patriotic that Pershing refused to split up the AEF, but I've recently come round (as a result of reading Haig) to the opinion that it was both foolish, impractical and dangerous. I shall have to read some more about it and see if that opinion holds.
 

MrP

Banned
Oh, er, yes, the challenge! Well, I'd change American pre-war politics m'self. Have Teddy get in as President, and then decide to wave a big stick at the Germans from the get-go, meaning that the mass volunteer British and American armies come into their own at the same time in France in '17, and probably cutting a good year (and several hundred thousand dead) off the war as a result.
 
I guess on a serious note what you are looking for is a shorter ww1 to provide more interest in it. It is really the second wave of ww1 poets that give us the majority of the "war is hell/futile" views from ww1.
 
Go into any typical American book store that has a seperate military history section. What you inevitably find is that about 1/3 of the shelf space is World War Two, 1/3 of it is the ACW and the remaining third is everything from Thermopylae to the Gulf War. Often there is only one volume on the Korean War and there is only a 50/50 chance at best of anything about the War of 1812.
 
What is it about WWI that inspires myths?

I read the newspaper editorial that started this meme, but I thought it was wrong. Remember, at this point, WWI was a long, long, long time ago. I mean, really long time ago. The article said nobody ever listened to WWI war stories, but I did - the teacher I had who told war stories was a WWI vet. Now literally no vets are around anymore to tell war stories

The Civil War is popular because we have a big culture descended from the losers - Bonnie Prince Charlie also looms ever-popular in Scotland. WWII's popular because it was the last BIG war - if wars like that weren't obsolete due to MAD, it would've been replaced, too. At that, it may start fading when its last vets are dying, too.

In fact, before WWII and even to a couple of generations ago, WWI loomed utterly hugely on the mental horizon. One famous historian, Barbara Tuchman, published a bestseller about WWI decisionmaking that JFK kept in mind.

Because the Allies fought WWI so stupidly, a huge mythmaking industry grew up around it. Even Tuchman bought a moderate version of the myths. That stupidity and resulting myths brought Communists and Fascists to power and maybe even caused WWII. Yes, really - much more in two posts I already did. Today's Iraq mistakes are really nothing on that.

Communism / Fascism was primarily caused by stupid WWI warfighting. WW2 added to bad results of stupid WWI warfighting.
 
I'll agree with the time-distance notion about WWI, also the fact that American was barely in it before it was over. Then there was the Spanish Flu outbreak shortly there after. Then there was the Roaring Twenties, Jazz Age, Prohibition, new styles for women, gangsters (Al Capone, et.al.), Teapot Dome Scandal, the rise of Communism in Russia, finally the crash.

Then the 1930's came which were completely overshadowed by the Great Depression and the rise of Fascism in Europe, and then of course WWII.

All of these events contribute heavily to our sense of historical amnesia. Like that scene in S.M. Stirling's The Stone Dogs, (the third Draka novel) when Nate Stoddard is talking with Fred and Marya LaFarge. Americans tend to suffer from historical amnesia.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Go into any typical American book store that has a seperate military history section. What you inevitably find is that about 1/3 of the shelf space is World War Two, 1/3 of it is the ACW and the remaining third is everything from Thermopylae to the Gulf War. Often there is only one volume on the Korean War and there is only a 50/50 chance at best of anything about the War of 1812.

And a disproportionate number of Vietnam books.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I've always thought the story of the Zeebrugge Raid would make an excellent movie. Of course, it couldn't be made in America because the producers would insist that the story depict Americans doing what was, in fact, done by Brits (a la U-571).
 
The Great War, AKA World War One, is all but ignored over here in the USA. (I don't know how well known it is in Europe...someone please give me an idea.)
I don't mean forgotten per se, but how often do you see movies or books about it, or video games featureing that war.

So, how could the Great War be more in people's conciousness in the current time. Keep the divergences as limited as feasible

How about the US 6th Battle Squadron being the escorting force for the North Sea convoys when the High Seas Fleet came out in April 1918 to attack the convoys and there actually being a battle??


In the OTL, in April 1918, parts of the German fleet attempted to make an attack on a Scandinavia – UK convoy that was being covered by the 2nd Battlecruiser squadron and the 7th Light Cruiser Squadron.

The battlecruisers of the 1st Scouting Group and the 1st, 3rd and 4th Dreadnought squadrons plus two light cruiser and 4 destroyer flotillas all managed to leave harbour without the Admiralty finding out and it was only radio messages following the breakdown of Moltke that alerted them.

Hipper and Scheer failed to find the convoy and the Grand Fleet (31 battleships, 4 battlecruisers, 2 cruisers, 22 light cruisers and 85 destroyers failed to make contact with the Hipper or Scheer.
 
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