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srheywood on "How we remember them: the 1914-18 war today "

srheywood — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:24:10 +0000

It is certainly true that the 1914-18 war is popularly seen as the "bad war" and 1939-45 as the "good war." I think the one view is sustained in order to support the other. Although no expert, it seems to me that in reality the two world wars were marked more by their similarities than their differences (Europe-wide military/imperial rivalry causes collapse of inadequate alliance system > Germany invades everywhere > everywhere invades Germany). However, there is an extreme reluctance in Britain to admit that WW2 was anything other than a Manichean struggle between the elves and the orcs, so WW1 becomes a kind of dumping-ground for a lot of suppressed anxiety and guilt which might otherwise accrue to our role in WW2 - just as it might in any war. So we make a donkey out of Haig in order to sustain hagiographic views of Churchill. "Remembrance" of both wars continues to be a central feature of British public consciousness to an extraordinary, almost religious degree, and I think this has a nostalgic angle as well: if "we" squint a bit "we" can still tell ourselves that it was "our" last gasp as a global power.

Personally I think it's all incredibly dodgy. "Remembrance," it seems to me, is always carried out in a spirit of tacit acceptance that the "remembered" war was a good thing. Like practically all of the media representation of the current war, Remembrance Day is a show of "sympathy" for the troops which is actually about preventing objective views of particular wars (and war in general) from finding purchase in the public consciousness. It works because it's a highly politicised ritual which is presented as being above politics and therefore above criticism. All these things are ways of manipulating the suffering of service personnel past and present as a means of emotionally blackmailing critics of government into silence. I reckon anyway.

stefrigotti on "How we remember them: the 1914-18 war today "

stefrigotti — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:50:09 +0000

A well thought out treatise on how to understand a very complex few years which can and have been portrayed far away from their realities. The fact that research on and descriptions of the conflict (and more so the reasons for its existence) are depicted in many languages (not often not translated) makes it difficult for the ordinary European to get a more balanced view.

A8w94los21 on "How we remember them: the 1914-18 war today "

A8w94los21 — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:29:26 +0000

My mother emigrated to the US just before WW 1 broke out. She totally banned anything that looked like war toys. She heard too much from those she left behind. I had nightmares after she told me about the poison gas.
But just before I retired from government service and as a union volunteer someone told me the story of a man still living at the time around 1980, who was the only one who survived the attack of chlorine on his battalion. He was a patient at a Veteran's hospital across the state but surviving the gas when his friends perished was the only thing he talked about. He still saw and heard nothing else.
Of course the they keep talking about it in England.
The trauma of the whole thing was why they listened
so long to Chamberlain.
But then there were those like my mother who just didn't want to hear about it.

Peter Jackson on "How we remember them: the 1914-18 war today "

Peter Jackson — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 03:41:11 +0000

Thank you for that - it sums up a lot of what I've thought following my study of WW1 as an amateur over the last few years, partly as a response to the 'Oh What a Lovely War/Blackadder' approach that has been common since my youth, and emphasised more recently in my daughter's school history work.

I shall pass the link around where I can.