World War 1 has seen a resurgence in popular interest lately (thanks to Battlefield 1 and other new pieces of media) which leads me to ask why this extremely violent and bloody conflict has taken on such a romanticized depiction.
From what I understand, hardly any of the powers that got involved in the conflict achieved what they wanted out of it, or they achieved their aims through Pyrrhic victories that devastated the countries for decades. Not to mention that many of the postwar treaties (Trianon and Versailles in particular) laid the groundwork for World War II's justifications.
In light of this, when did we start to see more romanticized renderings of the war and the suffering of its soldiers? Did it happen immediately afterwards? During the war? Several decades later in light of World War II's atrocities?
Can you be more specific about some of the 'romanticized depictions' to which you're referring? This all comes as a surprise to me, as I believe it would to many others who work on the war, given that it is still routinely conceived of as a futile and barbaric tragedy in public commemoration, popular history-writing, and mainstream entertainment -- and that this widespread view of the war is totally hostile to attempts by historians or cultural scholars to provide a more nuanced or complex view of the conflict.