Exactly right about how U.S. education seems to put more emphasis on WWII than WWI. And then even within WWII you don't get the whole story. Carlin's "Ghosts of the Ostfront" series gave me an entirely new perspective on the side of the war the U.S. didn't fight. In many ways - certainly in terms of lives lost - it's an even more tragic story.
It's not just the USA. Here in Finland I was pretty much only taught how the war started and how it affected Finland (which gained independence from Russia in 1917, and then fought a civil war in 1918 with some involvement from Russia and Germany). My teacher openly told us that we don't need to know any details about ww1, since ww2 is much more important (although the teaching about that one also emphasized the Finnish wars (winter war, continuation war and Lapland war) more than the ww2 itself).
Every country focuses on teaching history relevant to itself. Before I married my wife, who is Chinese, I knew next to nothing about the wars of Japanese expansionism in east asia that lead up to WW2.
