Illuminati-R-Us

Anyone else going to be watching/burning this series?

Currently at the main branch of our local library, we are having a Saturday series of talks by WWII veterans. I've interviewed many vets over the years - I always love to hear their stories, even the horrible ones. Just a fascinating period in history for me.

Woof - Scott

Don't know if I will see his show. Most of his movies tend to be as long as the events they portray. But I am fascinated by WW2. Without making it sound nice, to me it was the last "gentlemans war". Sides are clear and fought each other conventionlly. Oh not intimating it was nice and polite and followed rules, but it was a war to follow on paper, like the Civil War. Only WW2 was of the modern era.

Today's wars are not so defined. WW2 was like a football game, whereas today we have wars like a bunch of jocks running around in the night vandalizing things, or burning churches.

A gentleman's war - that's it in a nutshell.

What we have today ... well ... not even the Japanese in their darkest moments would recognize the depths to which things have sunk.

Mind you, I'm not disparaging the Japanese of today, but their practices in WWII and before were not what we know now.

Woof! - Scott

Enzo wrote:..., to me it was the last "gentlemans war".

It looks different from here. Sure, on the Western front, or rather, where Americans were involved, some decorum remained, and there was certainly gentlemanlike behaviour on the part of the Americans towards their German POWs (so unlike today).

Maybe I misunderstood you and you meant it was the last war America fought genlemanlike?

From the european perspective, it all looks very different - looking at the horrible fate of The Soviet POWs, the extermination of the Polish intelligentsija, the indiscriminate killing of civilians, especially in Poland, the Baltic states, the USSR and Balkans; summary executions of entire villages (Italy, France, Greece, Eastern front), sometimes burning everyone alive after locking them up in the local church; and the terrible revenge by the Red Army during their advance. Coventry, Dresden... gentlemanlike?

And these are only the acts of war in the "traditional" sense. I didn't even begin to mention the Shoa, because that was not an act of war, but pure and unadultered evil barbarism. Include that, and any notion of civility is gone. "Untermenschen", anyone...?

Oh no, Arneb - I wasn't dismissing that in any sense. Horrible, horrible things were done on all sides, but again - not quite like today. Today is the age of purposefully targeting civillians with random violence and planned annihation.

I'd rather not get into a pissing war about treatment of prisoners, but at least the sides back then made some effort at rules and we didn't see a return to the chemical warefare of WWI (my uncle, by the way, was one of the chemists who made chlorine gas for the Allies), but I doubt we'd see such restraint today if it was possible for some to get their hands on it.

And yes, not everyone - not even those in the military or intelligence community - in the US agree with what has happened these past few years. There were and are better ways of dealing with this situation, but, unfortunately, they're not even on the table at this point in time.

Perhaps what is meant by a gentlemanly war is that the sides were fairly broadly drawn (though perhaps not seen as such by the Axis?) and the citizens of the Allied countries were, by and large, supportive of the mission of both their militaries and themselves.

Woof! - Scott

Exactly. I did not mean the demeanor of the participants so much. Not referring to decorum or adherence to Geneva. Just the structure of the war. Maybe gentleman was the wrong metaphor.

I look at the wars of our revolutionary era, and I see battle lines drawn up, rows of troops facing each other. They are ordered to advance, and then the opposing generals, safely perched upon nearby hillsides, perhaps even with their wives, get to watch as the battle unfolds to see how their strategies work.

On the field it is carnage, but to the generals, it is pretty much a large chess match between gentlemen.

Now WW2 was a whole lot uglier than that, but it still I think could be characterized as pretty well defined sides occupying pretty well defined territories with reasonably well defined movements. Certainly the generals left the wives at home, and it was not so much a battle for the honor of... well something. So this gentleman's war was not so gentlemanly.

But while in WW2 there were commando raids, spies, and what not, for the most part you knew where each side was, and could follow the war on the map.

Modern wars are more geurilla wars: no defined fronts, no large sweeping troop movements, etc. The Iraq war, for example. Get out a map, and now how would we follow the "progress" of this war? Other than moving pins around the map to represent todays hot spot, I don't think it is easily done.

Kinda like the difference between washing the dinner dishes versus picking up after a couple three year olds full of sugar. One is a fairly well defined task, the other is not.

I see your point. Maybe we can say that the obfuscation of frontlines, the spilling of war as "armies fighting each other" into "general bloodshed and carnage" was a development that began in this WW2 - the Eastern Front and the summary executions in France, Italy etc. being the best examples.

Maybe this "orderly" kind of warfare was just an interlude. Perhaps we are again on the slippery slope into "war as barbarism": Modern war may resemble the 30 year's war more than they resemble WWW: Sure, there was "armies fighting each other", but for a city or village it was more or less insignificatn which particular army moved through it - it was death, rape, looting and after that, famine and disease pretty much regardless of who came by.

A dark scenario...

but for a city or village it was more or less insignificatn which particular army moved through it - it was death, rape, looting and after that, famine and disease pretty much regardless of who came by.

Hmmm ... that sounds an awful lot like our Civil War!

Or Enzo's vacation ...

Woof! - Scott

Speaking of more or less insignificant, here he is folks: Scott.

Enzo wrote:Modern wars are more geurilla wars:

[pedant mode] "Guerilla" was coined as a term for the popular revolt and low grade insurgency during the Peninsula Campaigns at the turn of the C19th. (spanish for "little war") [/pedant mode]

Also parts of the Thirty Years War were hardly ordered or gentlemanly despite being in the mid-C17th. Has anyone seen the film "The Last Valley"? Ok, get past Michael Caine's accent and it is a decent film.

Arneb wrote: Coventry, Dresden... gentlemanlike?

I've been to Coventry, what the Luftwaffe did qualifies as civic improvements. :D

Thank you, thank you, - let's hear it for Enzo.

Funny thing is, the Japanese I've spoken to about the war never want to talk about it - it seems to be a hushed subject that they don't wish to discuss with an American. I've never read any of their "official" history about it, either - has anyone here?

I do have a very dear friend whose first wife's grandfather was in the SS. She writes him off with "He could be a real asshole." My other German friends are pretty much the same: we lost our minds, what were we thinking, politcs vs. sanity, etc.

There are plenty of irrational apologists out there who will rant on about how so-and-so was right and there are plenty of histories that offer the textbook reasons, but it would be really fascinating to me to hear from a participant what they were thinking at the time and how they perceive the situation now.

Woof! - Scott

And the dimwits who look at something out of context like a good highway system and procaim "Hitler wasn't so bad..."

He liked dogs, and kittens . . .

Heid the Ba' wrote:He liked dogs, and kittens . . .

You already pointed out the good work he did in Coventry.