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The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

theatlantic.com

121–130 of 172 posts

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of the article was to detail the ways that the true visceral horror of world war two was sanitized or censored for public consumption. The contributions of individual nations in the Allied victory was immaterial for the purpose of that article. The title, "The Real War" is drawing a contrast with an imagined "fake" war, where men die with dignity, in important, courageous and heroic circumstances, for hig…

> it's saying "the real war had people piss their pants in fear and die before seeing any combat in a B-29 that was unfit to fly". Using this as an example of the horrors of combat in ww2 just further underlines my point because it’s so incredibly mild compared to the combat on the Eastern Front or against the Japanese in China. Most US service members, as grateful as I am to them, were far luckier than almost all ot…

There's a story [1] about russian soldiers at some points of war being assigned one rifle per two infantrymen. The idea was that one guy would get the rifle and the other one would be a "spare", waiting for the first one to die. He was also free to pick up a rifle from one of other people already dead on the ground.

BTW I suspect that the widely portrayed in media horror of being in the attack boat on D-Day was something of a common occurence for Soviet soldiers. They were routinely ordered to perform near-suicidal attacks, as Stalin's strategy was "strength in numbers". That's how he "achievied" the record number of casualities across all countries in the war.

[1] Can't find it right now, so I can't say how accurate it was, or how widespread.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#123
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Yes I really regret personally starting the war now, thanks.

Yet you've participated in it and got paid for that.

Worth to mention paid very well and still receiving retirement plan benefits.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#124
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Quoted post unavailable.

Who says they didn't?

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#125
Came here to say "why no fussel refs" and checked the author before posting.

A similar vibe to Fussel is in Farlay Mowatt's war writing, or arguably Spike Milligan's pretty bizarre but also honest autobiography of his PTSD

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mad…

The US was not in any significant danger of being directly invaded during WWII. It would have been an incredibly costly logistical nightmare for the would-be invaders, very unlikely to succeed. US worries were legitimate (atrocities perpetrated against civilians, future control of Europe/Asia, the international economic order and security of global trade networks, etc.) but “urgent” invasion wasn’t one of them.

Bulls. Hawaii was in clear and direct danger.

I presume the famous American educashun kicked in and geographically spoiled the slogan of bad bad America.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#127
post #15

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

My grandfather was a partisan in Belarus during WWII. He told a few real battle/fight stories. But those stories can fill like 1% of the time. He rarely talked about the 99% he spent surviving in forests and swamps. And when he talked it was mostly about skills like sleeping in a forest when it was -30…

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 nation…

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it occurred to you that Soviet and Chinese primary sources are less readily available? Far less, almost to the point of impossibility. It's not like those governments were forthcoming about anything for decades afterward. Also what, exactly, would adding those change about his essential point regarding the horrors of war and how they're portrayed? Did Chinese or Soviet bodies blow up differently? Immediacy and au…

I know (and can see from this thread) that emotions run high around anything touching on the ex USSR but I don’t think the current war in Ukraine is at all germane to this article from 1989 about ww2 (or to the content of my posts on HN about it).

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