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The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#41

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

hef19898 wrote: post #30
gerikson wrote: post #25

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"…

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 st…

We also had gas and oil in abundance, which the Axis were always short on.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#42

Post by stereolambda »

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.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#43

Post by yamtaddle »

eduction wrote: post #40
yamtaddle wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> 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".

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#44

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

iwillbenice wrote: post #20
denton-scratch wrote: post #7

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]

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…

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.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#45

Post by yibberish »

krrrh wrote: post #32
yibberish wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) onl…

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.

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.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#46

Post by warner25 »

pram wrote: post #15
ARandomerDude wrote: post #5

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…

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

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.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#47

Post by yamtaddle »

stereolambda wrote: post #42

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 clueles…

> 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.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#48

Post by [deleted] »

hef19898 wrote: post #30
gerikson wrote: post #25

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"…

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 st…

[deleted]

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#49

Post by hutzlibu »

gumby wrote: post #29
ARandomerDude wrote: post #5

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…

> 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 re…

"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.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#50

Post by gumby »

hutzlibu wrote: post #49
gumby wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 re…

"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 th…

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.
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