Whenever I read about WW1, the writings are awash with the tragedies of the soldiers, the futility infantry charges, the misery, death and destruction.
But WW2 accounts do not focus on the soldier deaths and misery as much. They are more about tactics and movements, victories and losses. They do not castigate the generals as much as WW1 accounts.
But WW2 claimed a magnitude more lives than WW1. So why the lack this lack of focus on tragedies?
No. In reality, there is simply a distorted perception of WWI amongst the Anglophone world.
Firstly, this arises from the monoglot tendencies of the English speaking people, meaning that perceptions of historical events tend to be insular, with a lack of accessibility to sources written in other languages.
Thus, there is a perception, for example, to view the battle of the Somme exclusively through the lens of the first day’s casualties and therefore as some kind of futile blunder and a national catastrophe.
The fact that the Somme offensive provided the largest territorial gain on the western front since the race to the sea, that it destroyed what was left of the old peace-trained German army, pushed them towards unrestricted submarine warfare, and robbed them of the initiative in the west until the Russian collapse, and that it likely kept the French in the war, well, that just doesn’t register at all.
Secondly, the British army of 1914-1918 was quite different to any previous British army. Up to that point, the army had been composed of people largely considered to be of little other value, being either the dregs of society wishing to avoid the poor house, or the second sons of the aristocracy who didn't fancy being vicars and frankly had little else to do. Now the middle class would go to war, en masse, for the first time and the reality of war shocked them.
Of course British soldiers, and foreign soldiers and civilians had been facing the realities of war throughout the centuries. But the resulting perception was not that all war is miserable, but that this war in particular was somehow especially miserable. That the fighting especially fierce, that the war was especially futile, and the casualty rate particularly high.
None of this is true, but this distorted perception has become so ingrained in the national psyche as a received and incontrovertible truth.
John Terraine wrote a good essay about this, and there are several other essays of his available to read on the same site. I would recommend them all.
Additional sources:
Correlli Barnett - The Collapse of British Power
William Philpott - Bloody Victory
Gary Sheffield - Forgotten Victory
In short, absolutely. The average conditions for a front-line soldier in the first world war was as terrible as the poetry and stories would lead you to think. Spending several weeks in the same dank hole in the earth with constant fear of artillery shells or deadly gas is far and way worse than the more mobile, above ground living/fighting the soldiers of the second world war encountered.
Combat for a world war one soldier was as close to hell on earth as one can achieve. The third battle of Ypres being one of the most horrid examples. British soldiers were sent though miles of deep mud and wet earth to attack mostly untouched fortified positions, many dying as they became trapped in the muck, others drowning in under their heavy equipment after stumbling into deep pockets of water in shell holes. Sir Douglas Haig looked upon the battlefield after it was over with tears in his eyes saying "Good God, did we really send men to fight in that?". There is very little comparable a world war 2 soldier would encounter.
While WW2 did claim many more lives on the whole, you have to account the much larger scale of WW2 as compared to the first world war and the losses for the belligerents in Europe were vastly higher in WW1. By the time fighting was over in 1919 France had lost 1,357,000 men out of its population o 39,600,000. This drastically overshadows the 200,000 lost in WW2 out of 41,700,000 people. Great Britain lost 702,917 in the first world war, 383,800 in the second.
You will also find that the generals of ww1 are brought into question and castigated more because they tend to take a large percent of the blame for the scale of needless loss. For instance German generals in northern France were so determined to not loose any land they would counter attack any enemy advances regardless of the cost, turning what was a numerical victory back into an even stalemate and many more lives lost.
On the whole you will find that when World War 1 is being discussed it is more the experience of soldiers and of the people who endured it as well as those who worked to cause it because that is what is most important and most interesting. The Great War is purely unique in its level of tragedy, horror, and the emotional scars it left, not only on individuals but on the whole culture in the west. It was the experience of the fighting men returning home from this cynical death machine of a war that would go on the shape the shape the future. That is why you hear so much more of their plight than that of the soldier of the Second World War, because their plight had such a profound impact on the rest of history that we are still feeling it to this day.