I'm taking a 2nd year University course right now called War in the West from 1850-1950. We only talked about the world wars though ( including a couple lectures on the era/conditions leading to WW1 and the inter-war period). My exam is on the 20th and it looks like I have loads of content to go through. The exam will consist of two essays. My Prof said the first one will be a question regarding the characteristics of World War I and the second will be regarding that of World War 2. I feel like I'm going to need to know everything, but I know I can't do that. I'm trying to get a sense of the major countries, leaders, battles, and generals in order to understand the relationship between the two wars, but it's very easy to get lost in studying just one theatre of war. There's tons of readings to go through and my lecture notes are mostly brief points on everything about the wars. It's very hard to summarize. Can anyone here help me find some resources that could briefly outline what I need to know? It's my birthday tomorrow and I also have another exam to deal with on to of the stuff my family has planned for me. That doesn't leave me with a lot of time, so I'm desperate to find any help I can get. Thank you.
EDIT: to clarify, I think the questions might have to do with the methods of warfare that characterized each war and the battles and commanders associated with them. Also how WW2 was more ideological than the first, stuff like that. I'm just looking for documentaries, articles, a YouTube series even, that could briefly explain the most important characteristics of each war and the people responsible. The class was a broad overview of both wars from the Western perspective. That's basically all I know.
A good place to begin just trying to get a sense of the characteristics of each war if to look at the artwork that came out of the conflicts, especially the paintings and drawings. Artists who produced these works typically tried to capture characteristics of the scenes they were depicting. For example, overwhelmingly, artwork from the First World War features trenches, shell holes and mud. This is not surprising as this is the common image that is provoked when someone mentions the First World War. When placed alongside photography from the same conflict, it is easy to see that much of that artwork does accurately portray the conditions and characteristics of the Western Front.
The Australian War Memorial has an extensive collection of artwork from Australia’s military history and has digitised a lot of them. A quick search found their First World War collection and the filters allow you to drill down to individual theatres, themes, battles, units etc
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