War in HD

Quote: Face

It doesn't tell you of what it's like on the boat, knowing that 1 of every 2 of you, or 2 in every 3, are going to die.

War, unfortunately, is a big part of history. Many developments were a result or consequence of war. Rome's "progress" can be pretty much marked by wars: The wars against Etruria, the Latin Wars, The Samnite Wars, the Punic Wars, the Social Wars, the Slave Wars, Caesar's and Octavian's civil wars against Pompeii and Mark Anthony, etc.

Alexander's career was one long war. As was Napoleon's (though both did much more than fight and, mostly, win).

A couple of years ago I listened to an audiobook of "Inferno" by Max Hastings. It's a history of WWII told through diaries, letters, and other testimony from the people who lived through it. All sorts of people: civilians, soldiers, sailors, airmen, doctors, nurses, inmates at the concentration and extermination camps, anyone.

It's quite brutal, depressing and heartbreaking. And it should be mandatory reading in high school.

BTW, I can't think of a single great power in all history which got such a status without fighting wars. Carthage was largely a commercial empire without even a native army (they employed mostly mercenaries). But it, too, made conquests and ultimately was destroyed in three disastrous wars against Rome (who else). Or take Rome. During the reign of the Five Good Emperors, in the Second Century CE, there developed the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace. And yet every single one of these "good" emperors, except perhaps Nerva (who reigned briefly), engaged in war because that was how one gained everlasting glory. Not defensive wars against border raiders, thought that also happened, but wars of conquest, or attempted conquest.

Quote: Tropicalelectri

Thanks for starting the subject and giving me a chance to share!

You bet, and welcome to the forum and also for sharing =)

My grandpa likewise served in WWII and also Korea. Sadly I know little to nothing about his service, as he died when I was 7 or 8. Pops was a Vietnam era vet, fortunately not coming of age until the worst was over. Navy man, but damned if I can remember his ship. I remember its focus was electronic warfare, but the name escapes me. I'll have to dig for pictures one of these days, I know they're in the house somewhere.

I remember once saying I was gonna follow the footsteps and he reacted unlike he ever had before or ever would again. Needless to say, my military career never came to be. I should probably thank him. I'd have been a terrible soldier.

Quote: Nareed

War, unfortunately, is a big part of history.

It totally is, which is part of why I want FrG to have a sit and watch this series.

We all know it's fundamentally wrong. And looking back on history, a lot of it seems so asinine. Like Hitler, thinking he could father some master race. The Japanese thinking that Hirohito was a living god. ISIS thinking they're doing god's work (or something, I'm still not sure.) The US thinking we're some sort of moral police. Either way you slice it, it's always over some idealistic nonsense that makes no sense.

The religion threads touch on morality every other day, and one thing is certain, every human has some sort of guiding light where that is concerned (clinical psychopaths aside). Yet when we get big, when we get into groups, it's like we go mad. When I ask "wtf is it all for" and "do we even know", I meant to look deeper than "it's in our best interest". What is our best interest? Why is it our best interest? And why does it come to war when it's involved?

I know my hippie side is showing, I don't care. Often I can just accept it as "cuz that's the way the world is" and go about my day. But certain things, certain times in my life, they make me question the root of it all. I guess it's sort of like any other problem, be it drugs, guns, or whatever. It feels like we address the problem but never seek its root, and its root is where real progress can be made. It's almost as if this fact should be as obvious as the nose on your face, but we just keep on doing the retarded things we do.

It just makes me wonder. So I ask.

Quote: Face

We all know it's fundamentally wrong.

There's an ethical dilemma there.

It is wrong to start wars. It's even more wrong not to fight in self defense. Imagine if Britain had surrendered to Germany in 1940.

This brings up another point. Until WWII, wars were complex affairs but rarely involved ideology (except for religious wars, which is why they were worse than regular war). WWII was the first big ideological war, in which the various powers sought to impose an ideological system, form of government and concept of society on everyone else, not merely to gain territory, or wealth, or prestige or a trade route, etc. And this made fighting back against the Nazis a moral imperative.

Before this happened, though, wars had become total. That is, wars required a great deal of time, effort and wealth from all of society, even if only a relatively small part of the population actually fought. Partly this was a consequence of industrialization, partly of the increased scope some wars were taking. Before the XX Century, several wars were fought in several parts of the world at once. The Napoleonic wars are a well*known example, but even as far back as the XVIII Century, the French and English fought across continents (ie in Europe, the Americas and Asia).

WWI was total warfare. Entire population involved, most recruits mowed down by machine guns, home front laws and customs devoted to the war, no shirkers or evaders, any man of military age not in uniform handed a white feather, intense propaganda, danger to German businessmen in the UK during and after the war.

Sinatra took a huge amount of flak because
he was 4F. The hearing in his left ear was
damaged during birth and it kept him out
of the military. A lot of people thought he
was faking it. It didn't help that Walter
Winchell got a bad tip that Sinatra had
paid for his exemption.

"The 4F inquiry was conducted in 1944 after Winchell forwarded to the FBI an anonymous letter outlining the allegations. The FBI concluded that Capt. Joseph Weintrob, the medical officer who examined Sinatra at a Newark, N.J., induction station, was justified in exempting Sinatra from military service because the singer had a perforated left eardrum and related ear problems."

Wow. Of course the war ended with The Bomb, and I carried on learning the history of that little number. Wow.

Watching the development, use, and fallout of making the A-bomb was pretty eye opening, especially from not only the first hand account from survivors in Hiroshima, but also from the Americans who developed and used it.

But most surprising was what happened after that. The H-Bomb.

I didn't really realize was a "megaton" was. I of course have seen a hundred time the testing of "Mike", the first ever H-bomb, equivalent to 5 megatons. But without actually hearing from those on the spot, it was just a cool kaboom. After... wow. What a nightmare. Instant vaporization of everything within miles. People being burned some 30 miles away. Burned, just from standard heat, to say nothing of nuclear fallout. Then they made Bravo, a 15 megaton bomb? Good lord. The wave of destruction that unleashed. The hole it blew in Bikini Atoll. The height that cloud reached. And then there's the Tsar Bomb, Kruschev's puffing of his chest. 50 megatons, which was dropped to 50 from its original output of 100 due to its developer's fear of ending the world. And it's output was enough to kill anyone in a 20 mile radius, 20 MILES, instantly, to say nothing of the heat, shock, and fallout that would spread for hundreds of miles in every direction.

Unreal. That was the 60's, when all you grew up. Un. Real.

To put it all into context:
I went thru the cuban missal crisis and the Kennedy assasination before I was 11 years old. We actually had air raid drills in elementary school. I had 10 brothers and sisters and i could see the sheer terror in my mom's face during the nightly news with Walter For fear that Dad would be called back to the marines!
All the school kids knew that we could face a nuclear blast at any time.
Less than three months after Dallas, She Loves You by the Beatles came on the radio...... And we began to see pictures from Vietnam on TV and we began to look forward to the draft.
Is it any wonder that we began to focus on music instead of reality?

Some people, including many historians, are convinced we haven't had WWIII yet because there are nuclear weapons now.

The power of the bombs coupled with the "delivery systems," make winning a war against an opponent willing to use nukes impossible. I won't get into talk about a "disarming fist strike," except to say it's not even a remote possibility against nations like the US, China, Russia, France and Great Britain. Probably also not against smaller powers like India or Pakistan, either.

One reason world war is no longer feasible is
we have a world economy now, which we
didn't have in the 30's. We are all dependent
on each other, especially China.
Russia would collapse without it's exports.

There was surely an international economy in WW2, but turning off Japan's supply of scrap metal to force Japan to attack the US, was simply a tool to end the German oppression of the Jews.