feedmegin posted:This is also true of Britain, and no doubt France (though it's usually both world wars not just the first). Hell, the secondary school I went to, with a student body of ~1000 kids, had a big wooden board up in the assembly hall with the names of about 100 Old Boys who died in the wars. Somber Brass plaque, with like 20-30 names for my secondary school  .Man, WW1 in real life is just incredibly incredibly depressing. I go through so many cardboard backed out black and white slightly formal/informal pictures of dudes in casual dress or uniform that were in the DCLI and part of me just knows they didn't see 1918 or after .
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Jun 29, 2016 15:37
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Kemper Boyd posted:The casualty figures aren't the whole story there. The Finnish troops were demoralized as gently caress and less than willing to fight for a lot of the time. A friend's relative died the day that his unit was demobilized and they were being sent back from the front - the lorry he was in drove into a mine.
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Jun 29, 2016 15:55
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feedmegin posted:This is also true of Britain, and no doubt France (though it's usually both world wars not just the first). Hell, the secondary school I went to, with a student body of ~1000 kids, had a big wooden board up in the assembly hall with the names of about 100 Old Boys who died in the wars. There are monuments like these in many villages in Russia. It's weird to see a list of several dozen names that died out of a village of maybe 150. Among those several dozen, you have maybe five different last names too. Entire families died fighting.
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Jun 29, 2016 16:28
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Britain definitely still lives and breathes the Second World War - the referendum debate (and immigration debate) have often been framed in the concept of either "Britain, alone against Europe" or "Britain and Europe against fascism". The Second World War is not just a political football (both remain and leave factions in the referendum used Churchill quotes), but a fundamental contributor to what it means to be "British". Our Britishness is defined either in direct war terms - the spirit of the blitz! - or in concepts like the post-war consensus, Britannia never being enslaved, our self reliance or even our special relationship with Brother Jonathan. Even stuff like bunting, that ubiquitous British summertime decoration, is so common due to the inspiration of that particular myth of the endless summer of '40. It's an indelible part of how we think of ourselves, how our politics is framed - even, now, how we will be governed in the post-brexit fiasco, so deeply rooted in a little-England mentality that while it pre-dates 1939 by decades, is now seen through the black-and-White filter of a camera, photographing a bride in a parachute silk wedding dress, as the spitfires streak overhead. It's a bit gauche to quote myself but I liked how I wrote that ages ago: quote:
Teaching the First World War is interesting in comparison. The second has in effect blotted out the folk memory of the first, reducing it to these little snapshots of blood and mud and trenches, women working in factories, possibly (if you're more in the know) a little about the Knights of the Air, Lawrence twirling around Arabia, maybe something about the Easter Rising. Because the myth is less concrete, and because the popular image is overwhelming negative and also because really, the twilight of Imperial Britain is alien to people in a way that 1939-45 isn't, it's easier for people to find and fill in the gaps in knowledge. It's easier to say "hey there were people who didn't want to fight" for WW1 because the national memory is itself conflicted over it. It is solidly concreted for the Second World War - hell, try telling someone that Hurricanes outnumbered spits 2:1 in 1939. It doesn't stick - not because it's a minor issue, but because the Spitfire is so firmly embedded in the consciousness of what the war was. Hell, there's even a lovely beer named after it.
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Jun 29, 2016 16:48
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that was not gauche, my dude, it was good, and i'm thinking all sorts of inchoate ideas about the folk memory of the 30yw, its vernacular commemmoration, and german fairy tales now
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Jun 29, 2016 16:56
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lenoon posted:It's easier to say "hey there were people who didn't want to fight" for WW1 because the national memory is itself conflicted over it. It is solidly concreted for the Second World War It helps that this was like the one war in our entire history where our opponents were capital-E Evil and the war completely justified. And we have quite a lot of ethically-dubious wars in our past at this point...
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Jun 29, 2016 16:58
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feedmegin posted:It helps that this was like the one war in our entire history where our opponents were capital-E Evil and the war completely justified.
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Jun 29, 2016 17:01
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I totally get why the British valorize the second world war - the nation really came together and was united in a way it's never been since. "Britishness" and the UK was given an enormous test - and managed to pass and thus justified the whole structure. (If you can imagine where Britain lost the war, the upper class all went fascist and the working class went communist and the middle class were the poor blighters in between, you can imagine what it is like when a country looses a big war. )
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Jun 29, 2016 17:01
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Absolutely the case that WW2 COs are less of an easy sell for that reason, even for me - though I'll always have a soft spot for the hilarious Molotov-Ribbentrop objectors who joined up immediately after Barbarossa. On the unity of Britishness point, the centenary commemorations will end before museums and other groups around the country see the cost of the First World War on British society. There very nearly was a (localised) communist revolution in Glasgow, or at least the authorities thought so, and the army was mobilised (with tanks) as protests grew. It led to a general strike, and eventually to a Labour government - albeit a fragile and easily destabilised one. The First World War cast Britain "together" at incredible cost, something the '45 election managed to avoid (because Attlee, Bevan and Bevin were 100% godly and I will hear no two words about it).
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Jun 29, 2016 17:12
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To me sadly it seems the modern UK seems very disconnected now with all the political events and movements of the past and such short term thinking and ignorance seems to have led to the weirdly self destructive present we've got going now. I'm seriously pissy right now hearing about the sudden increase in hate crime all of a sudden. Part of me wants the ghosts of the past to come back and give everyone a proper telling off.
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Jun 29, 2016 17:23
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HEY GAL posted:that was not gauche, my dude, it was good, and i'm thinking all sorts of inchoate ideas about the folk memory of the 30yw, its vernacular commemmoration, and german fairy tales now Don't think, post.
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Jun 29, 2016 17:30
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Yeah there's a current of "my grandad fought a war to keep Britain British!" When really it's "your grandad fought a war because he was conscripted, but incidentally he fought against poo poo like yours you total bastard, also the Poles, Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Jamaicans, Africans, Gurkhas and Maori of the empire were on our side and when we bother to remember them we remember them as rock hard bastards, you racist piece of poo poo"
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Jun 29, 2016 17:33
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Cythereal posted:Being from the South, I have mixed feelings about it due to the HERITAGE NOT HATE (it's totally about hate) types who fly giant Confederate flags everywhere, but I do understand that yes it was an incredibly traumatic war for everyone and a lot of these tiny rural towns and downright villages had few if any slaves and were filled with the poor white people who ended up doing most of the fighting for the Confederacy. This is true but we're also 150 years removed from it at this point. In 1920? Yeah lots of people living with the human consequences. Even in 1960 you have grandma talking about how hosed up her grandma was over it Once an event is as far out as the ACW is for us, though, anyone making hay with it has a political rather than personal motivation. Your great-great-grandfather losing four brothers to The Yankees has about as much emotional impact for you personally as any other random horrible poo poo happening to strangers I feel some abstract sympathy for my wife's dirt farmer North Carolinian ancestors who died for someone else's "property" but the guys with stars and bars bumper stickers can go gently caress themselves.
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Jun 29, 2016 17:34
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lenoon posted:though I'll always have a soft spot for the hilarious Molotov-Ribbentrop objectors who joined up immediately after Barbarossa. Can you elaborate? I've never heard of this.
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Jun 29, 2016 17:37
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Elyv posted:Can you elaborate? I've never heard of this. I assume literal Stalinists, who considered the war to be a capitalist enterprise right up until Barbarossa where they suddenly did a 180.
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Jun 29, 2016 17:39
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Cyrano4747 posted:I feel some abstract sympathy for my wife's dirt farmer North Carolinian ancestors who died for someone else's "property" but the guys with stars and bars bumper stickers can go gently caress themselves. Part of it is the people on that end of the story who really warrant sympathy were directly getting hosed by the CSA and its whole deal, so even flying that flag as a remembrance isn't exactly cool, let alone as a political statement.
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Jun 29, 2016 17:42
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wdarkk posted:I assume literal Stalinists, who considered the war to be a capitalist enterprise right up until Barbarossa where they suddenly did a 180. Like Pete Seeger.
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Jun 29, 2016 18:17
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Sometimes I think about how weird and atypical it is to live in an area that (unless I'm forgetting something) hasn't seen battle since, what, Evacuation Day? I'm 100% positive there's lots of others I'm forgetting about, but the only famous war memorials in Boston I can think of off the top of my head are the Bunker Hill Monument and the memorial to the Massachusetts 54th Regiment by the State House.
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Jun 29, 2016 18:18
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Empress Theonora posted:Sometimes I think about how weird and atypical it is to live in an area that (unless I'm forgetting something) hasn't seen battle since, what, Evacuation Day? I'm 100% positive there's lots of others I'm forgetting about, but the only famous war memorials in Boston I can think of off the top of my head are the Bunker Hill Monument and the memorial to the Massachusetts 54th Regiment by the State House. Most of western North America? The only thing I can even think of on the Canadian side of the border would be Louis Riel's North-West Rebellion, and the biggest battle involved barely more than 1000 people. Plenty of low intensity violence, but nothing that compares to stuff from Eurasia or the populated Americas.
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Jun 29, 2016 18:39
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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wdarkk posted:I assume literal Stalinists, who considered the war to be a capitalist enterprise right up until Barbarossa where they suddenly did a 180. Yep! But not just Stalinists, lots of the other fellow travellers on the left fringe did the same. It's a big split in the British communist movement, between the smash-fascism-now brigade and the smash-fascism-when-Stalin-says brigade.
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Jun 29, 2016 18:40
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wdarkk posted:I assume literal Stalinists, who considered the war to be a capitalist enterprise right up until Barbarossa where they suddenly did a 180. Yeah, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact put a lot of communists in Europe in a really awkward position. Apparently the communists in the French resistance did absolutely nothing until 1941 because of this. Although I would still like to hear more about WWII COs.
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Jun 29, 2016 18:43
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PittTheElder posted:Most of western North America? The only thing I can even think of on the Canadian side of the border would be Louis Riel's North-West Rebellion, and the biggest battle involved barely more than 1000 people. Plenty of low intensity violence, but nothing that compares to stuff from Eurasia or the populated Americas. Probably a certain amount of battle between Native Americans (and between Native Americans and white Americans when they turned up) though...
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Jun 29, 2016 18:50
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PittTheElder posted:Most of western North America? The only thing I can even think of on the Canadian side of the border would be Louis Riel's North-West Rebellion, and the biggest battle involved barely more than 1000 people. Plenty of low intensity violence, but nothing that compares to stuff from Eurasia or the populated Americas. I'd imagine the vast majority of battlefields in the North American west are in Mexico/Texas
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Jun 29, 2016 19:02
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Cyrano4747 posted:Once an event is as far out as the ACW is for us, though, anyone making hay with it has a political rather than personal motivation. Your great-great-grandfather losing four brothers to The Yankees has about as much emotional impact for you personally as any other random horrible poo poo happening to strangers Confederates In The Attic, which is an excellent book, shows that people have really weird relationships with the ACW even today, tho.
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Jun 29, 2016 19:04
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Kemper Boyd posted:Confederates In The Attic, which is an excellent book, shows that people have really weird relationships with the ACW even today, tho.
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Jun 29, 2016 19:14
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Cyrano4747 posted:This is true but we're also 150 years removed from it at this point. In 1920? Yeah lots of people living with the human consequences. Even in 1960 you have grandma talking about how hosed up her grandma was over it You're right that it is at best....hollow...to claim some sort of emotional tie to a casualty of the war, but I don't think it is that ridiculous to say that the war still has a lot of meaning for a lot of people. In a lot of ways it was the final, or at least the largest, step in the gradual descent of the south from social and political dominance to a more or less permanent place of inferiority, and so people naturally latch onto the war as this touchstone moment where it all went wrong and was all downhill from here, etc. Maybe that's what you meant by "politically motivated" but there really are some pretty deepset and long standing social and political ills that you can trace pretty directly back to that era.
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Jun 29, 2016 19:14
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SeanBeansShako posted:Somber Brass plaque, with like 20-30 names for my secondary school I went to a very minor public school. Perfect age and social class to volunteer, especially as officers. 900+ enlisted, 320 officers and 230 dead. Even teenage me was somewhat sobered by that display. Edit: Public school here in the sense of private school everywhere else, because  that's why.
Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Jun 29, 2016 |
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Jun 29, 2016 19:45
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PittTheElder posted:Most of western North America? The only thing I can even think of on the Canadian side of the border would be Louis Riel's North-West Rebellion, and the biggest battle involved barely more than 1000 people. Plenty of low intensity violence, but nothing that compares to stuff from Eurasia or the populated Americas. For the Western US you'd have the Mexican-American war, the Indian Wars, and for the southwest some of the battles in the Trans-Mississippi theater of the Civil War.
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Jun 29, 2016 19:57
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HEY GAL posted:i have a weird relationship with the thirty years war right now Napoleonic Wars won't return my calls  .
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Jun 29, 2016 19:57
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Empress Theonora posted:For the Western US you'd have the Mexican-American war, the Indian Wars, and for the southwest some of the battles in the Trans-Mississippi theater of the Civil War.
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Jun 29, 2016 19:58
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SeanBeansShako posted:Napoleonic Wars won't return my calls
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Jun 29, 2016 19:58
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HEY GAL posted:the 30yw gets stalkery And I imagine it doesn't pay for all the wine it takes from the kitchen in the early morning too. Rude.
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Jun 29, 2016 19:59
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HEY GAL posted:
Waited to post this, currently I'm on vacation in a very small place, not more than 300 inhabitants. They have a WW2 memorial and there's like 50 names on it. Lots of people from the same families. One lost like 4 or 5.
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Jun 29, 2016 20:24
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SeanBeansShako posted:And I imagine it doesn't pay for all the wine it takes from the kitchen in the early morning too. Rude. Hey now, it paid for the wine it took at 9:20am. You surely can't expect it to pay again at 9:30 and again at 9:40 and again at 9:50! That's just not how this early modern world works, my laddio!
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Jun 29, 2016 20:28
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"I wish I knew how to quit you." --Ferdinand
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Jun 29, 2016 20:30
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feedmegin posted:Probably a certain amount of battle between Native Americans (and between Native Americans and white Americans when they turned up) though... I grew up in Lafayette, Indiana (Tippecanoe County), and there's a memorial near there to William Henry Harrison heroically slaughtering a bunch of Indians. "Tippecanoe, and Tyler too"
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Jun 29, 2016 20:53
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pthighs posted:I grew up in Lafayette, Indiana (Tippecanoe County), and there's a memorial near there to William Henry Harrison heroically slaughtering a bunch of Indians. We've given the US astronauts, Guns and Roses, and the War of 1812
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Jun 29, 2016 21:04
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Empress Theonora posted:Sometimes I think about how weird and atypical it is to live in an area that (unless I'm forgetting something) hasn't seen battle since, what, Evacuation Day? I'm 100% positive there's lots of others I'm forgetting about, but the only famous war memorials in Boston I can think of off the top of my head are the Bunker Hill Monument and the memorial to the Massachusetts 54th Regiment by the State House. I took a closer look at the war memorial outside my office, and it looks like it's for all those brave lads that died helping suppress the Phillipine insurrection.
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Jun 29, 2016 21:15
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Isn't there some horrifying Soviet WW2 memorial where instead of names of individuals, it's villages?
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Jun 29, 2016 21:17
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Oh huh, Hideaki Tojo resigned in 1944. Totally didn't know that.
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Jun 29, 2016 21:21
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