A Warrior?

[rigney]

Battle Wise, Heart Driven and weary, brave young men of every nationality and country have fought many wars of what they thought to be liberation and deliverance from abstract tyranny. Were they wrong in their beliefs? As a VFW member, I have met many of those who served in WWII and have discussed with 'some'; their exploits in battle. (mine were mostly confined to Rathskellers, 53/55). These guys just wanted to remember drinking a warm glass of wine in Bordeaux, or discoverig a Wiener Scnitzel in Mannheim, with a cool stein. Some from the Pacific Ops. were a little less open with their thoughts. But most just wanted to forget the hurt, and remember the good stuff.

The one thing 90% of these guys didn't want to talk about, or even discuss; was politics. Can you believe that? To a man; the one thing they most feared to discuss was something they had risked their lives to save and protect, "Politics"!. Battle weary, and lucky to be alive, politics was almost taboo to talk about among them. "And still is"!. The link below is only an excerpt from things too dark to fathom. In no country will these memorials ever go away. Especially those dedicated to politics.

 

(http://media.causes.com/1060527?p_id=175378540)

Edited May 18, 2011 by rigney

[Phi for All]

I think soldiers need to believe in what they fight for. Maybe politics reminds them that belief can be manipulated?

[TonyMcC]

I feel inclined to respond to this post although perhaps I am not qualified. I was in the British Armed forces for 22 years. However, my time was over a quiet and mostly peaceful time and ,as a radar technician, the only time I handled a loaded weapon was on the firing range. Looking back I am grateful for that. The point I wish to make is that although we believed we were doing a worthwhile job protecting Queen and Country I don't remember ever getting into any real discussion about politics as such. It didn't seem that important "who was in charge". It may be different under warfare conditions and I would be interested to know whether people presently fighting in Afghanistan spend much time discussing politics.

[Marat]

Aside from those very few situations in world history where a civilised, humane nation was struggling to prevent its conquest by a barbaric invader who would have extinguished the culture and large numbers of civilians in the defending country, the justification for most wars is questionable. The magnitude of the human misery caused by a single premature death in war for the victim and the surviving relatives is probably often greater than any human happiness that could be achieved by winning the average war. Bertrand Russell in 1939, to cite one extreme example, said that Britain should just let Germany invade and occupy it, since having a bad government for a while would be less costly than fighting a war to avoid a change of government.

 

A better case can be made for arguing that World War I was utterly meaningless, essentially just a conflict among the European elites for control of markets and colonies, and fought by sacrificing the lives of millions of poor and middle-class men. The United States was even so surreal as to argue that it was joining the war "to make the world safe for democracy" (how?) and "to ensure freedom of the seas" (limited only in the war zones for te duration of the war). President Wilson even offered the nearly psychotic reasoning that the U.S. should intervene in the European war to put a stop to the fighting by a neutral armed intervention, which would of course have to land in the only ports available, which were all in the hands of the Allies, so, ah, ... well, I guess it would have to be a neutral, armed intervention to stop the fighting in cooperation with the Allied belligerants only, since otherwise, you see, how we would get their permission to land, and, er, well ... . (Never mind that New York banks were heavily invested in the war loans they had granted Britain and France and would fail if Britain and France were defeated and unable to pay them back.) To think that Americans actually volunteered to fight and die for this palpable nonsense!

[JohnB]

Marat, then Bertrand Russell should have been shot. What he was suggesting was in reality to save the white population by sacrificing the jews and other "undesirables". The crimes of the nazi regime were known in 1940. A good movie about what might have happened is Fatherland.

 

Phi, men believe in what they fight for, home and principles. Politics reminds them that the world isn't about principle but about accomodation. Try to imagine how those who liberated Dachau felt to be told that the guards were to be treated as normal POWs and not mechanics of a machine for mass murder. To fight for a principle and to see the result diluted for political expediency leaves a great distaste for politics.

 

To quote George S. Patton;

Better to fight for something than live for nothing.

 

His words as applied to this thread;

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

 

And in general;

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

[DJBruce]

Marat, then Bertrand Russell should have been shot. What he was suggesting was in reality to save the white population by sacrificing the jews and other "undesirables". The crimes of the nazi regime were known in 1940. A good movie about what might have happened is Fatherland.

 

Bertrand Russel did eventually change his stance to one of relative pacifism, and to some extend did support World War 2. Also it is questionable how much the general population knew about the Holocaust as it happened.

 

Marat, one thing thing about your characterization of World War I is that during the lead up to the start of the war a few countries especially had incredibly vocal and widespread support for going to war. In fact some historians have speculated that had Kaiser Wilhelm II not declared war that he may have face such a large public backlash that Germany might have descended into revolution. So I am not sure if I would characterize World War I to be strictly the work of European elites.

As for rigney's original question. I am not that surprised that soldiers did not discuss politics because I can see that in state of war discussing politics has few advantages, and in fact probably has more disadvantages. When soldiers discuss politics I feel that they would more than likely question either why they are fighting or how the war is being managed. Discussing either one of these things would in my opinion lower morale and/or make fighting more difficult. When in a time of war either one of these can prove deadly to soldiers, and my guess is that they realize this and so do not bring politics up. Also the strict nature of the military does probably to some extent deter people from discussing things like politics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell

Ecksteins' Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age