How do we see war memories in the current world?
We look at the past events in the context of present beliefs. Past is accommodated to the social, economic and political demands and compulsions of the present. D-Day is cherished, remembered and celebrated by the British but Gallipoli has almost been forgotten. Graphic details of WW1 may have been bedimmed but the war itself was a watershed in human history for the reason that it shattered the faith of mankind reflected in the Victorian optimism that developments in sciences would step by step rid humankind of all its earthly problems and the nebulous paradise promised in religious texts would become a reality. Interwar poetry was not the work of just those poets who had actually fought and depicted the savagery war but also those like T.S.Eliot for whom the world was a wasteland from which the only escape was in a jejune retrogressive spirituality. Hope in human capability to transform the world lapsed into pessimistic gloom which was most seriously exacerbated by WW2. Thus even though the memories of the War are blurred, their everlasting scars will remain as a body blow to human civilisation in the form "racial memories" of mankind.
Note: The phrase "racial memories" is borrowed from the psychologist Carl Jung & article taken from other source. I encountered nice article thought of sharing with steemit community.