[HN Gopher] The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)
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The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)
Author : secondary
Score : 75 points
Date : 2022-10-12 21:54 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| tlear wrote:
| The introduction seems questionable. Practically in every
| category that counted Americans were ahead. Artillery The God of
| War, number of tanks vastly outnumbering Germans and Sherman was
| as good as PzIV, Airpower, motorized transport. Most importantly
| logistics Americans had food, clothing, fuel. The way that intro
| is written it sounds like he is talking about Finland vs USSR ;)
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I expect the perception on the frontlines was rather different
| than what it looks like in a spreadsheet.
|
| I mean, that actually ends up being kinda the thesis of the
| article.
| gerikson wrote:
| I think Fussel had a point in 1989, but after that there's been
| plenty of depictions of war that have been less sanitized. "The
| Pacific" comes to mind in TV, and "Fury" in movies, even if it's
| very formulaic.
|
| Memoirs can be raw too:
|
| - https://gerikson.com/blog/books/read/Helmet-For-My-Pillow.ht...
|
| - https://gerikson.com/blog/books/read/With-the-Old-Breed.html
|
| And even before 1989 novels like Waugh's "Sword of Honour"
| trilogy problematized WW2.
| dougmwne wrote:
| That was also my thought. That the world has gotten a whole lot
| less sanitized since 1989 if an article so brutal could fail to
| change my impression of war very much at all. I had already
| internalized that every heroic portrayal was bullshit and that
| it was all a big great murderfest.
|
| The most striking thing about war is that most people only need
| the slightest of nudges to start blowing each other to bits. We
| are a thin crust on bottomless savagery.
| hef19898 wrote:
| After skimming the article, I can't shake the feeling that the
| author fell for Wehrmacht propaganda when it comes to
| equipment. The Wehrmacht lacked auto and semi automatic
| infantry weapons, the main rifle was bolt action . SMGs were
| not half as widespread as propaganda reel made it look and
| having the first true general purpose MG is not a war winner in
| itself. The only German tank from 42/43 onwards, when the US
| started to see combat angainst the Nazis, that could outgun
| Western allied tanks was the Tiger (great gun, but no longer up
| to date on armor), Panther (mostly used on the Eastern Front,
| inreliable and with weak side armor) and the Tiger II
| (available in homeopathic doses). The occassions where Tigers
| were encountered in France are far less numerous than believed,
| also because a barely on-par Panzer 4 kind of looks like a
| Tiger I. The bulk of the Wehrmacht was on foot, horse drawn,
| barely above WW1 infantey force. The highly mechanized army
| fielding invincible super tanks and vehicles is a propaganda
| myth.
|
| And everything beyond heavy weapons, like boots, load bearing
| equipment, trucks, rubber, food, sweets, you name it, the
| Western allies were lightyears aheaf of the Nazis. And since
| those things hint at highly effecient supply chains, the Allies
| also out performed the Nazis on spare parts and medical
| supplies.
|
| EDIT: That the author was a WW2 vet doesn't mean he couldn't
| fall for some scewed view of the enmies capabilities, because
| of course you can. Not war related, but the things that go well
| are taken for granted while the things not going well, in
| reality or just perception, stand out.
| gerikson wrote:
| Fussell references the _belief_ among GIs that the Germans
| had better kit. It 's one thing to objectively assess this
| after the fact, it's quite another to get hit by an 88mm in
| Normandy and not see the Hurricane obliterate it.
|
| The Wehrmacht fought tenaciously in Western Europe using
| second-rate troops compared to the Eastern front where the
| real struggle was. Defending is easier than attacking, and
| the defenders were inching closer and closer to their
| homeland. This counts for a lot in warfare.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I missed the believe part being explicitly mentioned,
| thabks for pointing it out. So I agree with Fussel then.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| You can see the effect of this perception today--the MG42,
| the 88 gun, and a couple of prominent Nazi tank models are
| still top-of-mind when one thinks of what the real
| _terrors_ , the real _killers_ on the ground were, the
| things you 'd have been _horrified_ to encounter, if one
| has absorbed a decent amount of pop- and actual-history of
| the war. I don 't know of any allied equivalent in the
| Anglosphere short of The Bomb (which the author of the
| piece calls out for the same reason!), which makes sense
| _even if_ our stuff was actually better, as "our boys"
| weren't facing our own weapons.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| We also had gas and oil in abundance, which the Axis were
| always short on.
| [deleted]
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Old soldiers rarely want to talk about what they've experienced.
| My father was horrified by my proposal to interview him on video
| about his WWII career.
|
| And when they ask us
|
| And they're certainly going to ask us
|
| The reason why we didn't win the Croix de Guerre
|
| Oh we'll never tell them
|
| No we'll never tell them.
|
| There was a front, but damned if we knew where.
|
| [WWI soldier's song, based on a popular song of the time]
| iwillbenice wrote:
| My grandfather was a WWII B-29 pilot. For a very long time he
| didn't talk in much detail about the horrors. It was only in
| his later years before he passed did he talk openly about some
| of the real nasty aspects. One time I asked him what the most
| unpleasant thing he experienced was during his time in the
| military. His answer was the stench of burning humans. When
| they started low level firebombing, his initial spot was the
| center-rear wave. So when he flew in to drop his stuff... the
| smell was horrendous.
|
| I suspect he shared that with us younger folks to illustrate
| that war is not glamorous, even if you win. Yes they won, but
| it was a disgustingly ugly affair for all parties involved.
|
| I'm glad he shared that, because I have a very healthy aversion
| to unnecessary conflict, in part due to a few stories shared by
| him.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| I wish more of our politicians and pundits had the
| enlightenment and empathy that comes from such an experience.
| So many rude, riled-up chickenhawks these days.
| annowiki wrote:
| I can strongly recommend Fussel's (the author of this essay) book
| "The Boys' Crusade", which provides a very eye opening account to
| WWII. It is most likely a longer version of this essay (I haven't
| read this essay).
|
| I can also recommend his book Poetic Meter & Poetic Form, but for
| different reasons.
|
| Other books in the same vein:
|
| - The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle by J Glenn Gray
| (Gray was a philosophy PhD and a 2nd Lieutenant in the war)
|
| - War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges (Hedges
| was a war correspondent during the balkans and numerous other
| conflicts, this is much more interested in the psychological
| build up to war in common society, and its effects on society)
|
| These books make me very pessimistic about human nature, but
| Nicholas Wade's Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of
| Our Ancestors provides a nice antidote: the total number of
| people killed by warfare in the 20th Century, if we followed
| similar patterns to our prehistoric ancestors, would have dwarfed
| what actually happened. We are becoming less warlike, even if its
| not cured.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Not about war, but the same author's _Class: A Guide Through
| the American Status System_ , published in 1983, is insightful
| and very entertaining.
|
| Incidentally, if anyone knows of a worthy successor, I'd love
| to read it. His observations remain remarkably accurate in most
| cases (his completely-off take on "Class X" notwithstanding)
| but there _must_ be more to say on the topic since then.
| buescher wrote:
| Bobos in Paradise by David Brooks is "what happened when the
| upper middle class became class X". You could argue whether
| it's worthy or not, but it's what we've got.
| bwanab wrote:
| "Class" seems to have held up very well. I remember back when
| it was published trying to shoehorn myself into his "Class
| X". I had to squint really hard.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I think the core problem was his not recognizing Class X as
| just the usual bohemian _avant-garde_ , and thinking that
| it represented some shift in the class hierarchy rather
| than a constant part of it. His hope for some bright future
| for this "classless" class was simply misplaced, because he
| didn't see what it actually was. Which makes the end of
| that otherwise fun book kind of a downer.
| siavosh wrote:
| I read the Chris Hedges book when it came out and it's left a
| lasting impression on me. I think it got rid of any academic
| notions of war I may have had. One part that I'll always
| remember was him saying the war criminals were the pundits on
| TV leading up to and during the Bulkan war, they held much
| guilt in leading the masses to the terrible outcomes. The other
| counter intuitive insight it gives is how wars have this
| strange effect on some people where they can relinquish their
| day-to-day worries/anxiety/failings and instead can find some
| kind of strange peace or even thrive in a more black/white
| just-survive reset of society. I should probably read it again.
| rospaya wrote:
| The Hague is full of poets, playwrites, psychiatrists and
| lawyers and the media was heavily used to incite hatred. Not
| in the way that directed violence in Rwanda for example, but
| it was propaganda.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I've read an article long ago about war veteran that wanted
| to go back. They found life in society more dreadful than
| war. War brought them unrivaled intensity of bonds (life or
| death is unquestionable) and order. In society everything is
| muddy and mediocre.
|
| Even without going to the extent of war, I find "primitive
| life" is probably still healthiest for us existentially.
| Maybe using proxies like sports as symbolic wars.
| branko_d wrote:
| > the war criminals were the pundits on TV
|
| Mila Stula comes to mind.
|
| I still remember watching the hysteria on Radio-Television
| Belgrade in disbelief that people would actually believe it.
| But they did. And the rest is history, as they say. Ugly,
| murderous, and utterly unnecessary history.
|
| I see some signs of this in the contemporary US media
| landscape, and I worry the consequences might be similar.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| What event are you describing? A quick search doesn't
| reveal any English sources for Mila Stula.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| translated from
| https://www.espreso.co.rs/vesti/hronika/197603/umrla-
| mila-st...
|
| Mila Stula is mostly remembered by the public as one of
| the leading media poets of the Milosevic regime on
| Serbian Radio and Television from the beginning of the
| 90s of the last century. She became famous for her famous
| comments in the daily Dnevnik in which she disqualified
| the opposition and its leaders. Her statement that Vuk
| Draskovic has a villa on Lake Geneva is particularly
| noteworthy, which has never been proven.
|
| The other side saw her as a victim of Tudman's regime,
| who became unwelcome in Zagreb after HDZ came to power,
| as she provoked, or asked unpleasant questions, to the
| first president of independent Croatia at media
| conferences. She was a journalist for "Danas" in Zagreb.
| The Croats, among other things, accused her of working
| for the counter-intelligence service of the JNA. This led
| to her moving to Belgrade in 1991.
| agumonkey wrote:
| here's fussell through internet archive
| https://archive.org/details/boyscrusadea00fuss
|
| argh sorry, limited preview only.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > And they knew that the single greatest weapon of the war, the
| atomic bomb excepted, was the German 88-mm flat-trajectory gun,
| which brought down thousands of bombers and tens of thousands of
| soldiers.
|
| I beg to differ. It was radar-guided anti-aircraft guns, and
| proximity fuzes for artillery shells. This had the effect of
| _doubling_ the firepower.
|
| Another was high-octane gasoline, which enabled much more
| powerful aircraft engines.
|
| The Axis did not have these technologies.
| agumonkey wrote:
| > proximity fuzes
|
| interesting, it's rarely mentioned indeed. Also I wonder if
| that was the reason for developping those flares scattered by
| planes ? or maybe that was only after the invention of guided
| missiles.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The Germans did use radar to detect, track, and guide forces
| to the targets. German night fighters had onboard radar for
| this, too.
|
| What the Germans didn't have, however, was connecting the
| radar directly to the weapon.
| mynameishere wrote:
| Words, words. They do no good. Every war should start with
| everyone getting a good look at artillery's effectiveness.
|
| https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=ww1+plastic+surgery
| rossdavidh wrote:
| "They knew that in its representation to the laity, what was
| happening to them was systematically sanitized and Norman
| Rockwellized, not to mention Disneyfied."
|
| The author seems to have little understanding of how much this
| was true of World War 1, or probably every large scale war ever.
| The home audiences for news reports in World War 1 (in pretty
| much every country) were not allowed to know how FUBB'd things
| were, and it was only after the war ended and troops went back
| home that the word partially got out. There were governments that
| did not let troops go on home leave for long periods because they
| didn't want them talking to the civilian population.
|
| I don't think this was something unique about World War 2.
| williamcotton wrote:
| The author does mention this:
|
| "IN THE POPULAR AND GENTEEL ICONOGRAPHY OF war during the
| bourgeois age, all the way from eighteenth and nineteenth-
| century history paintings to twentieth-century photographs, the
| bodies of the dead are intact, if inert, sometimes bloody and
| sprawled in awkward positions, but, except for the absence of
| life, plausible and acceptable simulacra of the people they
| once were."
| hulitu wrote:
| It is because the propaganda machine does not want you to see
| what the war is about. They dont want you to see bodies of
| desecrated children spread all over the place.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Well, in WW1 in britain they actually did an authentic
| frontline documentation for the home front to watch in the new
| cinemas.
|
| It turned out, this was kind of bad for the morale of the
| civilians, who were expecting heroics and glory and were
| devastated by the gruel pictures of reality of war and so they
| never showed it again in this shape. (I try to find the video
| again)
| lisper wrote:
| The willingness of societies to sanitize the realities of war is
| easily understood in evolutionary terms: genes that build brains
| that are willing to suspend disbelief and engage in violence
| reproduce better than genes that build brains that are not
| willing to do so because the former can use a credible threat of
| violence to exploit the latter as resources. The sad fact of the
| matter is that the answer to Rodney King's famous rhetorical
| question is that no, we can't all just get along, because we live
| on a finite planet with finite resources, and at the end of the
| day it is Darwin who runs the show, not Jesus. (Which is,
| ironically, a big part of the reason that belief in Jesus is so
| persistent and pervasive.)
| nine_k wrote:
| We can definitely go along most of the time. Bigger wars become
| more and more of a losing proposition with modern
| (conventional) weapons, and the complexity needed to run a
| prosperous society. Starting a war to grab riches (as it was in
| ancient times) usually does not work, and definitely does not
| work on larger scale.
|
| The only relatively reasonable case for starting a war today is
| a war for independence, for liberation from someone else's
| strangling control. It does not always lead to prosperity as a
| result though; look at Eritrea, for instance.
| lisper wrote:
| > Bigger wars become more and more of a losing proposition
|
| You've missed the point. Yes, a war is generally a losing
| proposition nowadays. But a _credible threat_ of war often is
| not.
|
| Even more to the point, wars were often winning propositions
| in our ancestral environment, and so we are more likely to be
| descended from people who were willing to wage them in the
| past. That is a very difficult legacy to overcome.
| philipkglass wrote:
| This meditation on World War II and memory is probably my
| favorite essay ever:
|
| "Losing the War" by Lee Sandlin
|
| https://www.leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm
|
| Sandlin refers to Fussell's writings on the war too. It's long,
| but every time I look it up I end up re-reading all of it.
| strangattractor wrote:
| If anyone is interested in Vietnam "The Things They Carried" by
| Tim O'Brien is excellent.
| strangattractor wrote:
| I watch https://www.youtube.com/user/funker530 for this reason.
| It is not a gore channel. Their intent is to document what actual
| combat is like. I have never served and likely never will given
| my age. My only rational is to stay informed. One of my enduring
| memories of childhood is the nightly casualty reports on the news
| and pictures of body bags from Vietnam. The US military is
| incredibly professional now compared to the 60's which is good.
| The downside is that our Gov't is quick to use them without
| thinking about the long term consequences.
| stormdennis wrote:
| The author was a veteran of WW2. In 1989 he was 65. He died in
| 2012, aged 88.
| greedo wrote:
| A bit off on his age in 1989; he was actually 75. Otherwise he
| would have been pretty young to have served in WW2.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| I didn't fight in WW2 obviously, but I did fight in a war. For
| me, the reticence to describe every detail to people who weren't
| there boils down to this: I don't want my wife, my children, or
| my neighbors to be burdened with thinking of something so
| horrible. I want them to be happy and safe, that's why I went. No
| need to bring it to their doorstep if I don't have to.
|
| I suspect many during and after WW2 felt this way.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I haven't, my grandfather did. He was at Pearl Harbor, many
| battles in the Pacific (he was a submariner), in the end he was
| part of the occupation of Japan and earned many medals
| including the purple heart for almost dying in a sub accident.
|
| Only as an adult have I come to realize the gift he gave me.
|
| When I was a child, I spent a ton of time with him, he had a
| big hand in raising me. The picture he painted for the young me
| formed the foundation of my world view. He chose to share with
| us the Japanese cooking he learned while living there, he
| taught us how to use chop sticks, one of my most prized
| possessions is a silk he brought back and gave me in his will.
| He never once spoke negatively about any group of people,
| especially those who were "enemies", he stood up for anyone who
| was being treated negatively and wouldn't stand for it. He
| harbored no ill will, and therefore didn't put it in me.
|
| It's only as an adult through research into his service that i
| have realized the full gravity of what he did during this
| service and the fact that he was a truly happy, blissful, and
| forgiving man after all that.
|
| I can say to you, having been one of the recipients of the
| kindness and forgiveness you are showing in your own life now,
| and sharing in this comment - thank you. This is how the world
| moves on.
| pram wrote:
| Alternate perspective: I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't
| talk about it because theres not much to say. I was either
| standing or sitting some place on guard duty, wired up on an
| insane amount of caffeine and nicotine, trying not to go insane
| for the 12 hour shifts. The only thing that punctuated the
| boredom was the daily mortar attack alarms lol
| warner25 wrote:
| I'm happy to talk to people about my experiences in
| Afghanistan, but yeah, I only have a few minutes worth of
| "war stories" to tell.
|
| One of the things that most non-veterans don't grasp is just
| how mundane day-to-day military life can be, even in a combat
| zone, like how people without a security clearance can't
| imagine how mundane most SECRET material really is. I find it
| hard to explain, but life is both different in quirky ways
| (various restrictions on freedoms, being judged
| professionally by your height/weight and 2-mile running time,
| random attacks by mortar fire, etc.) and dominated by many of
| the same experiences and concerns of civilian life (time
| spent just acquiring and eating food, dealing with traffic
| and bureaucracy, being frustrated by your assigned Windows
| machine on the enterprise network, etc.).
|
| One of my personal takeaways from my time in Afghanistan is
| just how widely variable everyone's "combat" experience can
| be. I flew helicopters, so I saw the whole range of living
| conditions on a daily basis: everything from the smallest
| observation posts where squads lived in filth and got
| attacked routinely by well-aimed direct fire, to the large
| airbases like Bagram where people worked 9-5 in a cubicle and
| had many amenities that were even nicer than what was back
| home at Fort Bragg. And where you ended up on that spectrum
| seemed quite arbitrary and luck-of-the-draw. Some otherwise
| interchangeable helicopter units just flew VIPs back and
| forth between Bagram and Kabul while others flew SEAL teams
| on very-high-risk raids every night. So when someone says
| they did a tour in Afghanistan (even if they earned a Bronze
| Star or a Combat Action Badge), that doesn't mean much to me,
| in itself. Edited to add: I think the variance among people
| who "served in WWII" is orders-of-magnitude greater. There
| were just so many millions of people in uniform in so many
| diverse places.
| standardUser wrote:
| The difference being that there was a legitimate and urgent
| fear of a foreign power invading our shores, as there were
| actively doing to other democracies at the time. I'm straining
| to think of one American adversary of the last 70 years that we
| fought half a world away that had any conceivable possibility
| of showing up at our doorstep. I can think of many, many wars
| we have fought, just not a single one that has made us safer at
| home.
| yibberish wrote:
| talking about it does not quite bring it to their doorstep; but
| it surely takes you back there; it's understandable to not want
| to go back.
|
| your choice to shoulder this burden for all, is well your
| choice. but be advised that this choice may have unintended
| consequences in a longer term. consequences of your choice to
| witholding bad things "for them".
|
| I don't belive you're doing this (bearing the horrible things)
| only to shield your relatives from your past. it is important
| you recognize that it's something you do for yourself, you are
| the main person who doesn't want to remember whatever horrible
| events you had to experience; don't pin this choice on them.
| krrrh wrote:
| He didn't say anything about not revisiting those events
| personally or with other vets, he said by with "people who
| weren't there". Give a guy a break for choosing to not sit
| his kids down to hear all the gory details.
| standardUser wrote:
| Perhaps if we were all a little more exposed to the horrors
| of war we wouldn't so eagerly vote for war-hungry leaders
| over and over and over.
| yibberish wrote:
| I'm not telling him to go scare his kids. I'm pointing out
| some possible self-deceit.
|
| "I did it for them!".. sure, why not? but my point is that
| first and foremost he's making those choices for himself;
| which is pefrectly fine. what's not fine (IMO) is to
| pretend such choices aren't selfish.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Who gives you the authority to judge the morality and
| motivations behind this person's actions?
| virtual_void wrote:
| These things aren't binary. They aren't simply this or
| that. Both can be true or neither or some combination.
|
| Your claim of selfishness seems to be unwarranted (and
| perhaps a little mean spirited), how can you possibly
| tell?
| gumby wrote:
| > I don't want my wife, my children, or my neighbors to be
| burdened with thinking of something so horrible.
|
| Interesting. Until _very_ recently, as far as I could know, my
| mother 's life began at 16. She refused to talk about anything
| from her childhood.
|
| I don't know if, like you, she didn't want to traumatize us or
| simply didn't want to think about it at all. But now, in her
| late 80s, she'll sometimes absent-mindedly relate some story
| from her childhood. They are all kid stories, but the
| perspective in them can be hair raising. (She was a child in an
| occupied country during WWII in the pacific; then immediately
| as the war ended the country became a different war zone, so
| she only knew living in that kind of environment until she left
| the country to go to university).
|
| Recently I've been thinking of this because of the Ukraine war.
| I have seen at close range the impact of a generation of kids
| (like my mother in law, and others in her village) who grew up
| in postwar Germany with essentially no adult men around. That
| whole generation is pretty screwed up, and their kids (my
| generation) also reflect that impact. While my personal opinion
| is that Germany is not doing anywhere near enough to help
| Ukraine, I think they should be preparing a for a huge postwar
| assistance, not just money for rebuilding, but psychological /
| therapy based on their experience to try to reduce the effects
| of wartime trauma on Ukraine.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "I think they should be preparing a for a huge postwar
| assistance, not just money for rebuilding, but psychological
| / therapy based on their experience to try to reduce the
| effects of wartime trauma on Ukraine. "
|
| We take lots of refugees. I would argue this is already a
| very effective way of preventing further traumatizing.
|
| But as far as I am aware, those who come do not easily get
| offered psychatric help, even if they already are
| traumatized.
|
| But the psychatric sector is pretty much operating on its
| limits anyway.
| gumby wrote:
| Being a refugee is traumatic on its own. But Germany has a
| lot of lessons (including what not to do) that it could be
| providing for good.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| Because war is so horrible, there's no reason why people who
| don't fight or unwillingly participate in them shouldn't be
| able to know just how horrible it can be. Implicitly rose-
| tinting awful realities by keeping silent about their nature is
| rarely a good thing for future generations. If anything, the
| world needs more people who have been in wars to make
| explicitly clear just how many grotesque reasons there are for
| avoiding them if at all possible.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| A side comment. Paul Fussell mentioned the origin of the GI slang
| "FUBAR."
|
| One thing I disliked early in my career were the many tutorials
| and demos that named the first object Foo and the next object
| Bar. I doubt any of these tutorial authors served in WW2 or in
| any war. It seemed to me similar to suburban raised children
| mimicking Gangster Rap. It feels fake and phony to me. War is
| horrific and evil. Writing a tutorial is the complete opposite. I
| guess I am the dude who yells at kids to get off my lawn.
| simonblack wrote:
| https://archive.ph/LmRUs
| civilized wrote:
| It's a fine essay, but I am coming to this long dissertation on
| dismemberment many years after Saving Private Ryan, which covered
| it better than any words could.
| stereolambda wrote:
| Not having fought in a war (yet?) I won't dare to speak about the
| core message here (it's well worth reading), but I sometimes
| wonder about dissemination of this knowledge. The fragments about
| Hitler and Goebbels shielding themselves from gory reality on the
| ground are interesting in this context. This shows well how the
| leadership operates on the level of its own fantasies, and moves
| the "chess pieces" while clueless about what they're really
| doing.
|
| The current difficulty in Russia with actually mobilizing many
| parts of society gives one a glimmer of hope: they have a handle
| mainly on marginalized and poor village dwellers. Maybe the
| modern living standards and communications landscape does
| ultimately make people more resistant to being mobilized for dumb
| wars, even if for 100% selfish reasons and (sadly) without
| necessarily getting rid of imperialistic nationalism. This one of
| the crucial reasons defending untampered speech is important, and
| why communist China has the information policies it has. (To be
| sure, draft evasion was very much a widespread thing even in
| republican Rome.)
|
| I sometimes think that middle 20th century was such a horrible
| time in many respects (not to deny earlier and later brutality)
| because they did have many technological means of communication,
| coordination and mass broadcast already--but to the degree it was
| usable only by the central elite. Thus they could enforce social
| conformity and mass projects, often wars, with relatively little
| difficulty. Compare how war journalist work is described in the
| article.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > The current difficulty in Russia with actually mobilizing
| many parts of society gives one a glimmer of hope: they have a
| handle mainly on marginalized and poor village dwellers. Maybe
| the modern living standards and communications landscape does
| ultimately make people more resistant to being mobilized for
| dumb wars, even if for 100% selfish reasons and (sadly) without
| necessarily getting rid of imperialistic nationalism. This one
| of the crucial reasons defending untampered speech is
| important, and why communist China has the information policies
| it has. (To be sure, draft evasion was very much a widespread
| thing even in republican Rome.)
|
| Despite the wartime propaganda efforts, Fussell notes in this
| piece that one of the things King George VI may have been
| ignorant of was that all his jails and prison-camps were full
| to bursting with deserters and draft-dodgers, as D-Day
| approached.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Of the 4 U.S. Boomer presidents: Clinton used an educational
| deferment & Rhodes scholarship to dodge the draft, then
| enrolled in ROTC when the law was changed, then pulled out of
| ROTC once his draft number was high enough that he wouldn't
| be drafted anyway. Bush enlisted in the Air National Guard,
| which was never called up for Vietnam. Obama was a child.
| Trump had "bone spurs".
|
| There's a long, recent history of draft dodgers doing well in
| high places.
| eduction wrote:
| Bizarre to write something called "the real war" that is focused
| on American forces, who were, by any measure, enjoying vast
| advantages and resources unavailable to other combatants
| (including being able to choose the time and place of
| engagement). Below is a table of WWII military casualties by
| nation: World War II casualties - Wikipedia
| Soviet Union 8,668,000 to 11,400,000 Germany 4,440,000
| to 5,318,000 China (1937-1945) 3,000,000 to 3,750,000+
| Japan 2,100,000 to 2,300,000 United States 407,300
| United Kingdom including Crown Colonies 383,700 Italy (in
| postwar 1947 borders) 319,200[68] to 341,000
| hef19898 wrote:
| Russian blood, British intel and sheer stubborness and US
| industry won WW2. A fact that both sides of the Iron Curtain
| down played and ignored throughout the Cold War.
| agapon wrote:
| Don't package all Soviet nations of the time into "Russians".
| Especially at this time.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Absolutely true, it was all Soviet Nations.
| int_19h wrote:
| Well, except for those that were preemptively deported
| for "disloyalty".
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The author's American addressing, more or less, an American
| audience, and does make some mention of the others--Britain is
| covered extensively; the German perspective a bit, plus
| American perspectives on the terrible things they were doing to
| the Germans; the horror visited upon civilians in France and
| Belgium by the allies, and more.
|
| Besides, is there any requirement that such a piece be utterly
| comprehensive before it can be so-titled?
|
| It's not bizarre at all.
| eduction wrote:
| I think it's near impossible to tell the story of "The Real
| X" -- that's a pretty sensational/trollish way to title
| something -- but if one is going to make such a rhetorical
| gesture there should be a lot more to back it up than what is
| given here.
|
| It's a complete American fantasy that our forces played a
| major role in the downfall of Germany, or that our blood
| sacrifice was particularly crucial to the outcome of any
| aspect of the war as a whole. Certainly U.S. resources like
| oil and materiel were critical to Allied success, not to
| mention the atom bomb in the defeat of Japan, and the
| (severely delayed) opening of a western front in France 1944
| helped contain Soviet victories (in other words, impacted the
| Cold War), but it is pretty insulting to the 20X more USSR
| trooops who died and the nearly 10x more Chinese forces who
| perished to say that an account of the "Real War" could
| possibly exclude them like this.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > It's a complete American fantasy that our forces played a
| major role in the downfall of Germany, or that our blood
| sacrifice was particularly crucial to the outcome of any
| aspect of the war as a whole. Certainly U.S. resources like
| oil and materiel were critical to Allied success, not to
| mention the atom bomb in the defeat of Japan, and the
| (severely delayed) opening of a western front in France
| 1944 helped contain Soviet victories (in other words,
| impacted the Cold War), but it is pretty insulting to the
| 20X more USSR trooops who died and the many many Chinese
| forces who perished to say that an account of the "Real
| War" could possibly exclude them like this.
|
| Please indicate which part of the article is claiming this.
|
| > I think it's near impossible to tell the story of "The
| Real X" -- that's a pretty sensational/trollish way to
| title something
|
| I think most people find such a title for a piece like this
| is appropriate and communicates its meaning just fine, if
| they're not going out of their way to find "gotchas".
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