The battle of the Somme was fought because the French were losing at Verdun (and losing there would have seriously broken the front); they asked Britain to relieve the pressure by drawing off German troops, and they obliged by pissing away thousands upon thousands of lives in an attack that was never designed to succeed - just to take German troops from Verdun. Over 60K troops (mainly British) were lost on the first day, but it worked - pressure on Verdun was relieved, and France remained in the war. A year later, the French troops mutinied in response to the callousness of the high command that frittered away their lives in similar futile attacks. The mutiny was kept from the Western press at the time, since it would be hard to ask Americans to die for France while their own soldiers wouldn’t do so anymore.
A lot of the apathy by the European public to WWII had its roots in cynicism bred in WWI.
I agree. The calamity of WWI also explains a lot of behavior after WWII right up to this day.