Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 172 posts

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#81

Post by eyelidlessness »

jacobolus wrote: post #72
standardUser wrote: post #69

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.

Atrocities perpetrated against civilians wasn't a concern. It got retconned into our national consciousness, and sending refugees back demonstrates that thoroughly. The rest of what you say is right though.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#82

Post by pram »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #80
pram wrote: 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.

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

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#83

Post by notacoward »

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…

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 authenticity were essential to the themes he was addressing, so he used the most suitable sources available to him. What's wrong with that? Turning this into an argument about "credit" for who "won" the war seems more than a bit distasteful (especially while war is being fought over the very ground you're so quick to treat as a game board), and also beside the point.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#84

Post by pfdietz »

WalterBright wrote: post #59

> 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 airc…

The effect of the proximity fuze on non-AA artillery was profound. The Germans certainly noticed when the fuzes were released for general use at the Battle of the Bulge.

A similar fuze was also made available for use in bombs, but I don't know if that was used in Europe. It was used in the Pacific against airfields, late in the war.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#85

Post by shepherdjerred »

Nomentatus wrote: post #74
jacobolus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The mainland you mean, not the U.S. as a whole - since part of Alaska was invaded and seized. One of the reasons that's not well-known is that I believe it was kept secret during the war as it was a tad embarrassing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign

It wasn’t a very successful invasion. They held a couple of islands for two months at the cost of 4000 of their 8000 men.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#86

Post by DubiousPusher »

This is where I have found studying the Eastern front of the war to be incredibly informative. The U.S. quickly ceased to propagandize the Eastern front because they did not want to valorize the Soviets as the cold War matured. What this has left in the West is a much more sober literature regarding that part of the conflict.

What is most clear from that is what a disaster for humanity WWII was. It's much harder to romanticize it in the face of that kind of unguilded brutality.

Similarly, the experiences of underground fighters and the partisans paint a picture of unredeemable cruelty. When the slightest mistep will cause your compatriots to bury you in a shallow grave, the bullet in the back of your head branding you a traitor forever whether you deserved it or not, it's hard to sell the idea that valor is rewarded with proportional glory. The mess of war is indiscriminant.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#87

Post by shepherdjerred »

jacobolus wrote: post #72
standardUser wrote: post #69

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.

The fear was that Germany could occupy a South American country and use that to launch attacks on the U.S. this never happens obviously, but one could imagine it if the wars in Europe and Russia had gone differently.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#88

Post by mannykannot »

agumonkey wrote: post #68
siavosh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thi…

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 w…

I'm fairly sure that anthropological evidence shows, pretty conclusively, that early society was a good deal more violent (on account of violence inflicted by people) than what we have today. (I may well be mistaken about this, but I have a recollection of hearing something to the effect that all pre-columbian adult skeletal remains found in the Americas show evidence of violence (not that Columbus improved things, of course.))

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#89

Post by shepherdjerred »

coryrc wrote: post #75
jacobolus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pearl Harbor was US. The Philippines was US. We were literally invaded. They also bombed the West Coast.

Hawaii and the Philippines were only territories.

The mainland US was not in any danger.

What I mean by this is that the average US citizen was completely safe (well, until drafts)

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#90

Post by mannykannot »

teddyh wrote: post #78

I suspect that even well-meaning articles like this does society a disservice when it characterizes war as horrifying. People are not afraid of horror; people believe they can handle it. People watch horror movies. Calling war horrifying is still, in a way, glamorizing war. But even though war, the reality of war, does contain horror, war is not, I believe, on the whole, horrifying. It is instead (I suspect) boring .…

The article is not a sociological or psychological treatise, but if you put some credence at all into what is partly (but not exclusively) anecdotal evidence, it makes the case that for many (probably the majority) who find themselves in infantry combat, it is worse than they feared or imagined. If it is protracted (and a figure of ~200 days is given), essentially all the survivors are traumatized, often profoundly.

During the 82-day battle of Okinawa, I believe American lieutenants were in combat on average less than two weeks before being killed or becoming a casualty through traumatic injury (and it was worse for the Japanese troops), which cannot be passed off as long periods of boredom. The article is specifically about front-line experience, which (it is claimed, plausibly) is very different than even that of rear-echelon troops, and commingling the two does a disservice to the former.

I feel fairly confident in saying that watching a horror movie is nothing like any of it.

Post reply on HN