The missing attention of World War I is so apparent to some that they’ve done work on the lack of awareness itself to identify where the gap originates. Authors like Aaron Gillette begin his article written in 2006, by addressing “The popular amnesia regarding World War I…” He argues that the difference between knowledge and documentation of the war when compared to World War II is due to the clarity of the wars’ origins. World War II made it easy to identify the enemy early on and what their motives were, even before the war began. World War I’s onset is a little more complex and layered. He believes, in part, that part of the reason for the lack of documentation is that there are areas within the war’s timeline that are difficult to understand, or the facts are muddied for one reason or another. In his article, he also discussed some of the things that make the war’s origins so cloudy. One example provided is how current events have changed the direction historians use for their argument. For example, scholars writing on the subject after September 11, 2001, have “emphasized the important role Serbian terrorists played in deliberately provoking the war.” Some others, like Stephan Van Evera, have argued that the beginning of the war itself was more the result of a cult-like belief that being on the offensive was a position of power.
In part, it can also be assumed that the lack of narrative is due to the small gap between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II. Many of the events that led to the onset of World War II started with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. In comparison, World War II was a much longer conflict and consisted of more moving pieces in the chess game of war. War correspondents were more present and represented a larger number of publications. Methods of communication also had advanced which made sharing information easier. Simply put, there was more ground to cover when it came to research and more people available to document events. Just as historians might have really begun to research World War I, the world was already on its way to another large-scale conflict that distracted the focus of many from the war of the past to the oncoming war of the future.