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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Is World War 1 a special war?
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Saul the Apostle
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# 13808
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Posted
Whatever our view of war, World War 1 and it's centenary will soon be upon us.
We have the BBC putting on all sorts of special programmes, many very moving.
But what about the war; was it an outpouring of evil the like of which we've never see before? It it a seminal event?
The evangelist J John said this below (a quote which is quite a long one). Much of what he says I agree entirely. Yet in some respects I am also adrift; evil is present in the husband who in a calculating way, kills his wife and leaves 3 children without a mother and so on.
Is World War 1 a special war?
Saul the Apostle
quote:
J.John - Evangelist - There is something terribly compelling about the First World War. Like some ghastly pile-up on the motorway, you can’t help but stare at the horror.
Continued here
Quote snipped, and link inserted -Gwai
[ 13. May 2014, 15:09: Message edited by: Gwai ]
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"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
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cliffdweller
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# 13338
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Posted
I don't know that WW1 is "special"-- what Johns says seems applicable to any war. That being said, the quote is brilliant-- so perfectly encapsulates IMHO a thoughtful theological response to war in general. I particularly liked this:
quote:
The First World War speaks to us about how evil needs to be both recognised and resisted. Yet it would be an extraordinary folly to simply think that the lessons it teaches us about evil are solely applicable at the level of international conflict. All of us live or work in situations where there is tension. We all live in potential conflict zones and we can all make decisions and take actions in such settings that will make things either better or worse.
I'd love to have a link to the full article if you have it.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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Beeswax Altar
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# 11644
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Posted
All wars are "special" to somebody. World War I was the end of an era in Europe. The whole nature of war and politics changed. Defining the era that ended is a bit harder. The era ended by World War I went back at least to the end of the Napoleonic Wars perhaps further. World War I really becomes important if World War II is seen as a continuation of World War I.
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monkeylizard
Ship's scurvy
# 952
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Posted
WWI was the first full-scale mechanized war. In that way, it shocked the consciences of those who faced it. For the first time in human history, we had the ability to kill on massive scales in a very short period of time. Soldiers faced death in ways no soldier before them had: machine guns, tanks, airplanes, poison gas. Previous wars and conquests (Mongols, Qing dynasty, Napoleon, 30-years war, etc.) had high casualties but stretched over decades or centuries. Losing that many people in such a short period of time was unprecedented in its day.
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Bishops Finger
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# 5430
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Posted
On a slightly-related tangent, our Church has been encouraged to grow/cultivate poppies in our grounds/gardens (no graveyard, WW1 or otherwise) in commemoration of WW1.
No seeds that we have sown have yet (AFAICS) germinated.........................
Ian J.
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
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Stetson
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# 9597
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Posted
Had any modern war prior to World War I given rise, at least among the intelligentsia(*), to such a pronounced sense of disillusionment in the victorious nations? Serious question, not rhetorical.
(*) Growing up in in an average 1970s/80s middle-class Canadian milieu, the whole dadaism/Lost Generation/Waste Land thing was something I only read about in books. Most people who were around for World War I just seemed to take the accepeted rationales at face value, albeit with not quite the same enthusiasm as the fight against Hitler.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
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Bishops Finger
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# 5430
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Posted
On a slightly-related tangent, our Church has been encouraged to grow/cultivate poppies in our grounds/gardens (no graveyard, WW1 or otherwise) in commemoration of WW1).
Ian J.
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
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Raptor Eye
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# 16649
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bishops Finger:
On a slightly-related tangent, our Church has been encouraged to grow/cultivate poppies in our grounds/gardens (no graveyard, WW1 or otherwise) in commemoration of WW1.
No seeds that we have sown have yet (AFAICS) germinated.........................
Ian J.
Poppy seed may remain in the soil for many years and only germinate when the ground is disturbed. That's why so many come up when graves are dug.
Ref the op, no war can be special, all are evil imv and I don't think it helpful to grade evil into degrees. Sometimes we can find greater excuses for a war than others, even to the point of calling one 'just', but all go against the principle of loving others as ourselves.
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
I suspect the UK has a slightly different response to the First World War (and the Second) from France and Germany. The last military campaign in the UK itself was Culloden, one hundred and fifty years earlier. For the UK, the main difference from previous wars was the ability of the state to conscript and mobilise young men to fight. As a result, there were a lot of people who knew a young man who died.
For France and Germany I suspect it wasn't that different in its effect from the Thirty Years War. I don't know; I haven't read any French and German accounts of it. But I don't think war poetry is a thing in French and German in the way it is in English. (Maybe that's just because English poetry was not yet as dominated by the avant-garde, and so a seriously talented poet like Owen could still be a relatively conventional personality.)
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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lilBuddha
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# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Had any modern war prior to World War I given rise, at least among the intelligentsia(*), to such a pronounced sense of disillusionment in the victorious nations? Serious question, not rhetorical.
The war ended as much through exhaustion as through military victory. The causes of the war were far from simple and so was the apportionment of blame. None of the main participants were truly innocent victims. Illusion was rightfully shattered. Pity it lasted so short a time.
WWI is not special, unfortunately.
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Saul the Apostle
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# 13808
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Posted
Gwai,
thank you for trimming a very lengthy quote. I shall have to learn how to post a link!
Saul the unready technophobe Apostle ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by monkeylizard:
WWI was the first full-scale mechanized war. In that way, it shocked the consciences of those who faced it. For the first time in human history, we had the ability to kill on massive scales in a very short period of time. Soldiers faced death in ways no soldier before them had: machine guns, tanks, airplanes, poison gas. Previous wars and conquests (Mongols, Qing dynasty, Napoleon, 30-years war, etc.) had high casualties but stretched over decades or centuries. Losing that many people in such a short period of time was unprecedented in its day.
I think that's not quite right. The same "mechanisation" also allowed large populations to exist prior and during the war. I think devastation is more a relative than an absolute measure. The Mongol conquest of Eurasia killed around 30 million people, WWI killed about 40 million people. But for WWI that's only about 4% of the total population of the countries involved in the war (see here, I'm actually doubling there estimate of casualties based on other sources). For the Mongol conquest that is over 10% (see here, I'm assuming less than 300 million affected population in the 14thC). And in the 30 Years War German countries lost between 25% to 40% of their population (see here).
I don't think "mass killings" are anything new. There always have been "mass killing", presumably as far back as the cavemen. The difference is that what a "mass" of people means numerically has been exponentially growing. Civilian and military technology are generally roughly on par, what one manages to sustain the other can destroy. In an absolute sense indeed the scale of killings indeed increases, but in a relative sense not really. And if we consider "body count" to be an indicator of general devastation, then arguably it is the relative number that counts most. That determines how many of your people are still around, and it probably reflects also better the indirect effects on your livelihood (i.e., destruction of fields, industries, etc.) In that sense then, WWI was not so special. It's certainly in the "top 100" and maybe in the "top 10", but it is probably not number one (or number two after WWII). In fact, one could argue that any successful genocide (of which there were a good many in history) beats any typical war in devastation: wars do not otherwise obliterate (close to) 100% of the community.
WWI was a massive war measured in modern scales, that in many ways changed the culture of its time, and is only now fading from living memory. That's why it still looms relatively large (larger in the places that "won", I should add...).
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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Kwesi
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# 10274
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Posted
Cliffdweller quote:
I don't know that WW1 is "special"-- what Johns says seems applicable to any war. That being said, the quote is brilliant-- so perfectly encapsulates IMHO a thoughtful theological response to war in general. I particularly liked this:
John quote:
The First World War speaks to us about how evil needs to be both recognised and resisted.
I must confess to finding the quotation rather confusing. In what sense does WWI “speak to us about how evil needs to be both recognised and resisted”? Is the argument that the war was necessary to challenge an evil act committed by one party or another, or that war is an evil to be resisted? Having read the full article, in which the author indicates he is not a pacifist, I’m still not clear as to whether his argument was that the war was intrinsically evil, a necessary evil, or an inevitable evil. In any event it does not seem to me that WWI was unique, except in its particulars, as in the case of any war.
Much is made of the carnage of WWI, but consider this: According to Wikipedia there were an estimated 37 million casualties, including 16 million+ military and civilian deaths in WWI, but there were an estimated 500 million victims of the influenza epidemic of 1918, which took between 50 and 100 million lives, 3-5 per cent of the world’s population. The estimated dead in WWII ranges between 50-85 million, of which 38-55 million were civilians and 20-25 million were in the armed services. Consider, too, that while it is fashionable to deplore WWI many consider WWII to have been necessary and just.
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monkeylizard
Ship's scurvy
# 952
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
WWI was a massive war measured in modern scales, that in many ways changed the culture of its time, and is only now fading from living memory. That's why it still looms relatively large (larger in the places that "won", I should add...).
That's true. I hadn't thought if it in terms of % of population, so thank you for that.
I still think that WWI was a pivotal point in human history. Those other wars took longer periods of time to kill so many people. The 30-years war (30 years), Mongol conquests (150-160 years), etc. WWI was the first time humans had the ability to bring that much destruction so quickly. It changed the way we fight wars. That makes WWI unique, just as the first wars which employed gunpowder were unique from their sword/archery predecessors, and the first wars with steel were unique from their bronze age predecessors, etc. It moved war "forward" into its next age.
Note that I'm saying it was unique or "special" from a functional war-making perspective, not from any philosophical or theological terms.
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The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. ~ Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903)
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TurquoiseTastic
Fish of a different color
# 8978
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Posted
I don't think the article is arguing that WWI was a uniquely evil war. I think it is arguing that in certain ways, WWI makes the evils of war particularly obvious. And I think this is true. He mentions the dehumanising effect of various military technologies, and the way the war gained its own momentum, growing vaster than any of the combatants expected. He could also have added the futility of trench warfare, with such huge casualties incurred for such small gains, and the appalling conditions it generated.
I think WWI tends to loom large in Britain because:
- it's relatively close to home (in time and space)
- it's vast in scale
- it intruded on a society which was not expecting a war to be like that resulting in a huge clash between ideals and reality
- horrific aspects such as those listed above capture the imagination
- these aspects are well illustrated by a large number of memorable poems
- there is an absence of an obviously worthwhile cause, which in the case of WWII and the American Civil War offset the sense of futility to some extent
Possibly in other European countries WWII was so much more traumatic than WWI that the memory was over-ridden somewhat.
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Saul the Apostle
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# 13808
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Posted
The WW1 was a very very mechanised war: barbed wire, trench warfare, machine guns, large artillery peices, the first submarines and naval blockades, had all been done some 45 years previously in the American civil War, which had/has a profound effect on the USA to this day.
The intensity of WW1 and the mass carnage, was fairly unique in a sense, in that it was the first war to have a cinematic element. There were early cinemas across the UK and this also had a distinct effect. Also press coverage although not new was extensive too.
It was also the first war where indiscriminate bombing from the air (of civilians) took place via the Zeppelin airships.
So it does seem to have a unique place in our collective psyche.
Saul
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"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
Cultural and social historians have also sometimes seen WWI as a kind of watershed, when the modern age really began. See for example the famous book, 'The Strange Death of Liberal England', (Dangerfield).
But this is a rather Anglo-centric view, since after the war, it is said that Britain began to lose its foremost place in the world, industrially and politically.
So it is a dodgy thesis, but you still see it expounded. Certainly, the 20s saw the rise of the avant garde, in different cultural forms, novel, painting, music. But I don't think WWI caused those things; they are all symptoms not causes. But maybe the war added to a sense of dislocation and rootlessness.
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I don't know that WW1 is "special"-- what Johns says seems applicable to any war. That being said, the quote is brilliant-- so perfectly encapsulates IMHO a thoughtful theological response to war in general. I particularly liked this:
quote:
The First World War speaks to us about how evil needs to be both recognised and resisted. Yet it would be an extraordinary folly to simply think that the lessons it teaches us about evil are solely applicable at the level of international conflict. All of us live or work in situations where there is tension. We all live in potential conflict zones and we can all make decisions and take actions in such settings that will make things either better or worse.
I'd love to have a link to the full article if you have it.
Pond difference, and this time Canada is on the other side of the Pond. WWI killed more Commonwealth personnel than WWII did. My church's Roll of Remembrance is longer for WWI than WWII and that's typical. The US didn't participate in the "Guns of August"; Canada did. There wasn't the mass mania FOR war on all sides at the start of WWII that there was in WWI.
In the Commonwealth WWI saw women granted right to vote, universal suffrage without property qualification and in the UK and Canada the end of the Two-Party Liberal/Tory system. In Canada it was also the end of the period of settlement of the Prairies. 1918 really was the end of the 19th Century in Canada.
My great-grandfather served in WWI in the Canadian Army. He was gassed in the trenches, survived, but his health was shattered for the rest of his life. I never knew him directly, he died in the 1950's of pneumonia, but I did know by great-grandmother very well, she didn't die until 1995 when I was 13. She had been widowed for forty years and it was very, very hard on her. I am the last generation to have any direct family knowledge and link to that era.
It is fading away into the history books.
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
Sober Preacher's Kid - Kate Beaton, the cartoonist from Nova Scotia and former museum worker, has done quite a bit about WWI and remembrance culture (she primarily does literary and historical cartoons).
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
I am in the process of reading Vera Brittain's memoir, Testament of Youth. Her life was severely disrupted; both her fiance and her brother were killed.
The pre-war years are tranquil, and when the war starts, she assumes, along with everyone else, that it will end soon. People keep assuming for years that it will end soon. I think that expectation makes things much worse; there are constant let-downs.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
or if you prefer the original
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
@OP
It is significant and special in Canada. In 1914 the population of Canada was 7½ million. 620,000 served, of these almost 40% killed or wounded. A very high proportion served and died. It changed the demographics of the Canadian prairies (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta) postwar from an English-Scottish demographic to an eastern European descended one.
The Battle of Vimy Ridge is commemorated in nearly every prairie town with a list of the boys who died. If you ever have a chance to drive the west, you will find a stone cairn in pretty well all of them. It is particularly poignant to see the names of obviously brothers in such lists, all dead.
Vimy solidified the independence of Canada. quote:
Quote from the wiki link above
"The image of national unity and achievement is what initially gave the battle importance for Canada... "The historical reality of the battle has been reworked and reinterpreted in a conscious attempt to give purpose and meaning to an event that came to symbolize Canada's coming of age as a nation. "The idea that Canada's national identity and nationhood were born out of the battle is an opinion that is widely held in military and general histories of Canada."
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Quetzlcoatl wrote:
quote:
So it is a dodgy thesis, but you still see it expounded. Certainly, the 20s saw the rise of the avant garde, in different cultural forms, novel, painting, music. But I don't think WWI caused those things; they are all symptoms not causes. But maybe the war added to a sense of dislocation and rootlessness.
Modris Eksteins' book The Rites Of Spring is dedicated to those questions. If I recall, he posits a sort of symbiotic relationship between the war and broader cultural developments.
The detail I recall best is Eksteins' observation that the Auld Lang Syne parody "We're here because we're here because..." had a dadaist ring about it. I am generally not a fan of books which centre their theses around such subjective connections, but Eksteins makes a fairly convincing case.
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
To clarify...
quote:
The detail I recall best is Eksteins' observation that the Auld Lang Syne parody "We're here because we're here because..." had a dadaist ring about it.
That parody was sung by soliders marching through the European countryside during World War I. That most of them were unlikely to have been familiar with dadaism makes the echo all the more telling.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
@OP
It is significant and special in Canada. In 1914 the population of Canada was 7½ million. 620,000 served, of these almost 40% killed or wounded. A very high proportion served and died. It changed the demographics of the Canadian prairies (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta) postwar from an English-Scottish demographic to an eastern European descended one.
The Battle of Vimy Ridge is commemorated in nearly every prairie town with a list of the boys who died. If you ever have a chance to drive the west, you will find a stone cairn in pretty well all of them. It is particularly poignant to see the names of obviously brothers in such lists, all dead.
Vimy solidified the independence of Canada. quote:
Quote from the wiki link above
"The image of national unity and achievement is what initially gave the battle importance for Canada... "The historical reality of the battle has been reworked and reinterpreted in a conscious attempt to give purpose and meaning to an event that came to symbolize Canada's coming of age as a nation. "The idea that Canada's national identity and nationhood were born out of the battle is an opinion that is widely held in military and general histories of Canada."
It may have, though that is a bit of trying to put lipstick on a pig, as the broader Battle of Arras was a failure.
In fact the Somme deserves equal billing with Vimy, though it will never get it. The high command of the Canadian Corps was appalled by the utter waste and futility of Somme. They conducted an extensive after-action analysis and vowed it would never, ever happen again. The result was Vimy, a singular example of a planned battle with combined-arms tactics. The troops loved that their commanders cared enough and cared enough about them to try something new, and "faster, better, cheaper" was exactly what the politicians in Ottawa, faced with the devil of conscription wanted to hear.
It was the first time that Canada and Canadians told the British that we were going to do it our own way and told them face-to-face.
Also, the genie of Quebec separation was first let out of the bottle in 1917. It was broached in the Legislative Assembly of Quebec over the Quebec Easter Riots about conscription which were put down with 5000 troops.
More personally, Peterborough is one of two cities in Canada (the other is Stratford) with a cenotaph designed by Reg Alward, in fact Peterborough was the immediate commission prior and the city council insisted it be completed notwithstanding the national project. ![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif)
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NDP Federal Convention Ottawa 2018: A random assortment of Prots and Trots.
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Saul the Apostle
Shipmate
# 13808
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Posted
SPK
the demographic you mention about Canada is also reflected in the UK experience.
UK population was 45 million and nearly 1 million killed (approx.)
Canada's population was 8 million and 67,000 killed (approx.)
The statistics are bleak and anonymous, and of course unlike say Poland in WW2 all of these casualties were military personnel, hardly any civilians were killed in WW1 in the UK or Empire.
There are but a few villages and towns that escaped the carnage in the UK.
It shaped psychological views as well as political outlook, after all the ''understanding with Mr.Hitler'' we now call appeasement was shaped by Prime Minister Chamberlain's abhorrence of war - specifically the 1st World war.
Saul
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"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
You're right to say that there were very few British civilian casualties. But there were some and perhaaps the psychological importance of this - or rather of the attacks on the British mainland, the coastal bombardments and then the air raids- shouldn't be underestimated. This was the first foreign war in which British civilians (in some places) were not safe in their beds.
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by monkeylizard:
I still think that WWI was a pivotal point in human history. Those other wars took longer periods of time to kill so many people. The 30-years war (30 years), Mongol conquests (150-160 years), etc. WWI was the first time humans had the ability to bring that much destruction so quickly. It changed the way we fight wars. That makes WWI unique, just as the first wars which employed gunpowder were unique from their sword/archery predecessors, and the first wars with steel were unique from their bronze age predecessors, etc. It moved war "forward" into its next age. Note that I'm saying it was unique or "special" from a functional war-making perspective, not from any philosophical or theological terms.
I would make pretty much the same comment again. The "acceleration" that we see there is simply the overall acceleration of human development in modernity. We can look at this in terms of recovery. Just how long did it take for the participants in the war to return to pre-war population and general production levels? On average, that is - of course in any war there are "winners and losers" who are better / worse off than before the war, which tends to be much of the point of war. The Mongols may have take a lot longer to kill their 30 million people, but it also took the affected areas a lot longer to get back to their old strength.
Wars are like showcases of civilisation, they demonstrate what people are capable of doing because they tend to funnel the entire civilisation output into this. WWI and WWII are remarkable as showcases of just how far modern technology had advanced at that stage. But the same technology both limited the relative effect and powered the recovery. At least WWI is not really "different" in that sense. I think with WWII and Hiroshima / Nagasaki we have a more serious deviation. Nuclear technology does not mean a great leap forward at the civilian level, but it is a lot more destructive in war. If we would fire the nuclear weapons of the world now, the body count would completely dwarf what has gone before and it would be over in hours. But there is no reason to believe that we would recover from this in days, i.e., "nuclear tech level" does not also boost our resilience as significantly. Probably there were such cases of unbalanced technology before, but their significance is not purely relative precisely because they are unbalanced.
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
UK population was 45 million and nearly 1 million killed (approx.)
Canada's population was 8 million and 67,000 killed (approx.)
As horrible as these numbers are, and as much individual suffering as they hide, they are unfortunately not all that extraordinary in the context of the human history of war. I would say that they are fairly typical for "big wars", relatively speaking.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by TurquoiseTastic:
I don't think the article is arguing that WWI was a uniquely evil war. I think it is arguing that in certain ways, WWI makes the evils of war particularly obvious. And I think this is true. He mentions the dehumanising effect of various military technologies, and the way the war gained its own momentum, growing vaster than any of the combatants expected. He could also have added the futility of trench warfare, with such huge casualties incurred for such small gains, and the appalling conditions it generated...
..an obviously worthwhile cause, which in the case of WWII and the American Civil War offset the sense of futility to some extent
Think you're right that WW1 was a particularly futile waste of human life and human endeavour.
If it were possible to rank all wars on a moral spectrum, seems to me that near one end you would have the wars which are self-defence (or defence of smaller weaker nations against larger stronger nations) on one side, and naked territorial aggression by a megalomaniac - a Hitler or a Napoleon - on the other side.
At the other end of the spectrum you would have WW1 - a war where evil intent by either side seems largely absent, resulting instead from human pride, folly, stubbornness, and collective stupidity. Where with hindsight the path of negotiated settlement was by far the better one to take.
And a grey area in the middle where one's view depends on how reasonable or otherwise the various stated positions of the two sides appear.
In my view the US Civil War is towards the WW1 end of the spectrum. Once you get past the propaganda about freeing slaves.
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
If it were possible to rank all wars on a moral spectrum, seems to me that near one end you would have the wars which are self-defence (or defence of smaller weaker nations against larger stronger nations) on one side, and naked territorial aggression by a megalomaniac - a Hitler or a Napoleon - on the other side.
At the other end of the spectrum you would have WW1 - a war where evil intent by either side seems largely absent, resulting instead from human pride, folly, stubbornness, and collective stupidity. Where with hindsight the path of negotiated settlement was by far the better one to take.
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Different countries get involved in wars for different reasons. I'd agree with you that the First World War should have been avoided, but do you actually know why the UK joined in?
[code]
[ 15. May 2014, 10:27: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
It was the first time that Canada and Canadians told the British that we were going to do it our own way and told them face-to-face.
It solidified our "brand" eh?
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Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
If it were possible to rank all wars on a moral spectrum, seems to me that near one end you would have the wars which are self-defence (or defence of smaller weaker nations against larger stronger nations) on one side, and naked territorial aggression by a megalomaniac - a Hitler or a Napoleon - on the other side.
At the other end of the spectrum you would have WW1 - a war where evil intent by either side seems largely absent, resulting instead from human pride, folly, stubbornness, and collective stupidity. Where with hindsight the path of negotiated settlement was by far the better one to take.
...
Different countries get involved in wars for different reasons. I'd agree with you that the First World War should have been avoided, but do you actually know why the UK joined in?
[code]
In formal terms the UK entered the war becuase Germany violated Belgian neutrality contrary to the treaty of 1839. Informally the European powers had been spoiling for a fight for years; there had been the naval construction race, which coined the term "jingoism" and the Boer army had been supplied by Germany, Krupp artillery and Mauser rifles playing a major part there.
If anything made it a special war then it was probably the last one into which so many entered voluntarily. That didn't apply everywhere but IIRC Britain didn't have to enforce conscription until 1916. people vol;unteered for WW2, but that was often to get some choice of service.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
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Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
In my view the US Civil War is towards the WW1 end of the spectrum. Once you get past the propaganda about freeing slaves.
It was not propaganda. Many southern states wrote maintaining slavery into their succession documents. Slaverly shwped Americsn politics, it is revisionist fiction to suggest otherwise.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
But surely it was initially about limiting the spread of slavery, rather than freeing those who were already enslaved? Even by 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to slaves in Confederate territory.
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Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
But surely it was initially about limiting the spread of slavery, rather than freeing those who were already enslaved?
Lincoln felt slavery would be brought to an end later. His initial goal was to preserve the unity, even at the cost of leaving slavery intact for the time. Slavery was the southern economy.
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Even by 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to slaves in Confederate territory.
because those in Union territory were already free.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Prester John
Shipmate
# 5502
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Even by 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to slaves in Confederate territory.
because those in Union territory were already free.
That was not true in some of the border states such as Kentucky.
Posts: 884 | From: SF Bay Area | Registered: Feb 2004
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Um, nope, lilBuddha. Not in the Border states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri), and not in the main Union-controlled bits of the Confederacy, either (Tennessee, New Orleans, what was becoming West Virginia).
[ 15. May 2014, 14:43: Message edited by: Albertus ]
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Alright, conceded for the moment that it was not simple. Kentucky was neutral because it had divided ideology.
Regardless, stating slavery was merely a propaganda point instead of a main cause is ignoring what the Confederacy itself stated as a main cause.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
re: the motivations for the US Civil War.
The revisionist historians, in trying to refute the hagiographic view of Lincoln and the Union, always take it too far in the other direction. They make it sound as if Lincoln sat down and said...
"Okay, we gotta stop the south from seceding over that tariff dispute, but we need a moral angle to sell our war. Uhh, is child-molesting legal down there? No? Damn. That woulda been good. Hey, I know! They have slaves, right? Let's tell everyone the war is about stopping slavery!"
The actual facts, however, are a bit more anbiguous...
-Lincoln, for his part, did not regard blacks as in any way equal to whites. However, he did think it was morally wrong to hold people in bondage. This is not an a priori contradictory view, since most people, even today, can probably think of groups they don't regard as deserving full rights(eg. children and prisoners), but would not want to see enslaved.
-Lincoln's moral objections dovetailed nicely with the economic interests of certain sections of capital(who preferred free labour), as well as the racist views of some whites who hated slavery because it meant having contact with blacks(a group Lincoln was happy to pander to).
-Lincoln was elected on a platform of halting the westward expansion of slavery. This created panic in the south, where people feared that slavery itself was endangered, and led to the south's seccssion.
-Lincoln fought the war for no other reason than to save the Union, but in the process(and for reasons largely strategic and political) freed the large majority of slaves, and took steps to ensure their continued emancipation post-war(as shown in the Spielberg movie a while back).
So, while it is technically true that the war was not fought to end slavery, in a broader sense, it was pretty much "about slavery", from beginning to middle to end.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Yup, it was about slavery. But it was not, until a rather late stage (if then), about freeing the slaves. It was about attempts to contain slavery, probably with a view to creating the conditions under which it would die out. That's not the same thing.
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Stetson, Albertus,
Agreed. Though I will say it appears Lincoln's views evolved, vis-a-vis his relationship with Fredrick Douglas.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Yup, it was about slavery. But it was not, until a rather late stage (if then), about freeing the slaves. It was about attempts to contain slavery, probably with a view to creating the conditions under which it would die out. That's not the same thing.
Really? I would say it is prescisely the same thing, only with a more nuanced realism re the most effective political strategy used to accomplish the desired result.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume V, "Letter to Horace Greeley" (August 22, 1862), p. 388.
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Yup, it was about slavery. But it was not, until a rather late stage (if then), about freeing the slaves. It was about attempts to contain slavery, probably with a view to creating the conditions under which it would die out. That's not the same thing.
Really? I would say it is prescisely the same thing, only with a more nuanced realism re the most effective political strategy used to accomplish the desired result.
No, no. Ending an institution now, and limiting it with a view to it dying out over time, are different ways of achieving the same long-term end, but that long term may be so long as to make them effectively different aims.
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Yup, it was about slavery. But it was not, until a rather late stage (if then), about freeing the slaves. It was about attempts to contain slavery, probably with a view to creating the conditions under which it would die out. That's not the same thing.
Really? I would say it is prescisely the same thing, only with a more nuanced realism re the most effective political strategy used to accomplish the desired result.
No, no. Ending an institution now, and limiting it with a view to it dying out over time, are different ways of achieving the same long-term end, but that long term may be so long as to make them effectively different aims.
I don't see how. You have a common goal. You develop a strategy to accomplish that goal. That strategy may be long term or short term, but it is the same goal regardless. Lincoln was clearly strategic in the way he approached the challenge of slavery, including in his public addresses such as the oft-quoted one Russ provided above.
[ 15. May 2014, 16:21: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Russ,
No one doubts Lincoln's initial motivations. He did not initiate the hostilities. Fear his election would put the final nail in slavery did.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
Seems to me that one can draw quite a strong parallel between the scope for a negotiated settlement between North and South that would have prevented the American Civil War - and why it didn't happen - and the scope for a negotiated settlement in Europe in 1914 - and why it didn't happen.
The Lincoln quote contradicts the idea you sometimes hear that the US civil war was a moral war (on one side and thus an immoral war on the other side) because it was a war to end slavery.
I'd agree that slavery was one of the main causes of tension between North and South. In Europe in 1914 the causes of tension were different. But the collective stupidity, the (with hindsight) flawed decision-making, the futility of the war seems much the same.
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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