Does anyone remember what the general amount of exposure was?

In France, I remember going to cinema to watch it with enthusiasm.
I think most French appreciated it well but:
- USA over confidence all the time
- absence of consideration of local people's involvement
- fake *beep* story while I could tell you real ones. There are real heroes, Let's celebrate them instead of making cheesy reasons to lose several soldiers for one life...Armies were not that senseless and brainless!

Don't make me wrong.I lived in the USA when kid and love the country. But showing a movie to praise USA on a false basis is wrong to me.
Band of brothers deserves far better if we speak about history and war, otherwise create total fiction movie.

So to resume to your original questioning, I say people loved special effects but were not convinced by story arc since it was false, hence the small effect it had on this side of the ocean as we know our History.
I pay tribute to all war heroes, especially American ones.

It was pretty huge. I remember hearing that some places had counselors in the lobby to talk to people who might have been deeply affected by what they saw.

I also remember hearing about some WWII vets who went to see it and came out crying.

The first 20 minutes or so of the movie, up to the taking of the German bunker, is still regarded as some of the most realistic and emotionally shattering movie scenes ever recorded, and pretty much single-handedly changed the nature of war movies.

The rest of the film... not so good.

As for the general impact and increased public interest, I don't know. The US cable History Channel during the '90s and most of the '00s got knocked as "The Hitler Channel" because of the number of shows about WW2. Now it's mostly reality shows and has about as many new historical documentaries as MTV has music. Maybe the market is saturated; maybe after 70 years we know as much as we're going to know about WW2; maybe the Millennials just don't care about "ancient history."