section_path: Legacy and memory/Historiography
section_name: Historiography
paragraph_text: Historiography
  
  ... "Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn." "None," said the other, "Save the undone years"...
  
  The first efforts to comprehend the meaning and consequences of modern warfare began during the initial phases of the war and are still underway more than a century later. Teaching World War I has presented special challenges. When compared with World War II, the First World War is often thought to be "a wrong war fought for the wrong reasons"; it lacks the metanarrative of good versus evil that characterizes retellings of the Second World War. Lacking recognizable heroes and villains, it is often taught thematically, invoking simplified tropes that obscure the complexity of the conflict.
  
  Historian Heather Jones argues that the historiography has been reinvigorated by a cultural turn in the 21st century. Scholars have raised entirely new questions regarding military occupation, radicalisation of politics, race, medical science, gender and mental health. Among the major subjects that historians have long debated regarding the war include: Why the war began; why the Allies won; whether generals were responsible for high casualty rates; how soldiers endured the poor conditions of trench warfare; and to what extent the civilian home front accepted and endorsed the war effort.