It's the bad things generations of people remember, the good things not so much. You know, hate sows war, war sows hate. The vicious circle as old as time.
Is it really? I think most people only remember them as successful conquerors.
> British colonial era? Same thing, but half the world still remembers what atrocities they have commited, and it was longer ago as WW I.
Depends! The British Empire lasted until the 1960s -- arguably 1997. That's much fresher than WW1 or WW2.
Besides, who remembers the British concentration camps?
Everyone, because it's the answer to the question "who invented the concentration camp".
Unfortunately it's the incorrect answer, because nobody remembers the American, Spanish, French and Paraguayan (the possibly correct answer) concentration camps that came earlier.
It's quite strange/interesting that atrocities in the "wars before WWI" got turned into atrocities in the "British colonial era" though; maybe people remember what they want to remember.
Well, in 50-100 years noone would really care about atrocities of ww2, just like almost noone cares about ww1 now, and literary noone about the atrocities of the wars before ww1.
But "the world-changing things" will stay, and the people who created these things will be remembered