Why Has the United States Forgotten World War One?

In the United States, the First World War- while certainly acknowledged- does not hold anywhere near the same cultural weight as it does in the United Kingdom and France. To a certain extent this is understandable- the war was much less significant to Americans than it was for Europeans. Often times, this is where the conversation ends. However, I think that there may be another cause which contributed to this relative lack of attention to World War One- though it is hardly the only cause, of course.

That being the immense cultural impact of the American Civil War, which for the United States represented the hellish and cataclysmic conflict which the First World War represented to many European nations. The Civil War, which gutted entire communities and destroyed generations, continues to cast a long shadow on our world, and this would have been even stronger in the early 20th Century. It's important to remember, and quite easy to forget, that the generations who went to war in 1917 were raised in part by the men who went to war in 1861.

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