Really depends on HOW you learn it IME. If it's just regurgitating dates/names/whatever it isn't helpful at all, at least for me. If you establish that event x led to y because of z, it just clicks and suddenly makes sense.

For example, let's take hitlers rise to power: "He became the chancellor of germany in 1933" That is just about useless. "Hitler rose to power with the help of the nazi party, which was partially formed in response to the treaty of versailles' excessively harsh terms, leading to an extreme amount of inflation and a harsh drop in industry. This set the stage for hitler arguing to use a war as a means of getting rid of the penalties of versailles and bringing germany out from the slump"

For me, in school I was mostly taught the first variation.