I know, it’s only Wikipedia, but better than nothing.
Thanks for the information. It has been most helpful
Doc!
As Antony Beevor (author of Berlin, Stalingrad, and D-Day–which I am reading now) states it best when discussing the “victimhood” status of raped German women:
Nickdefresh wrote:
Other historians such as Richard Overy, a historian from King’s College London, have criticised Russian “outrage” at the book and defended Beevor. Overy accused the Russians of refusing to acknowledge Soviet war crimes, “Partly this is because they felt that much of it was justified vengeance against an enemy who committed much worse, and partly it was because they were writing the victors’ history.”[8]Beevor has stated that German women were part of a society that supported Hitler and thus can’t be seen as victims in the same way than Jews, Poles and Russians.[10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_BeevorThen it will be fair when it comes to russian “victimhood” status to consider that they were part of a society that supported Stalin who killed far more russians than Hitler himself?
A victim is a victim; wartime produces a lot of different types of victims, all of which suffer horribly.
As for the original question, consider these things as well.
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WW2 was the last “good war”. Part of the reason for that is that it was a pretty straightforward affair. Germany (and the Axis) was bad; the US (and the Allies) were good. Where’s the proof? The Germans invaded everyone (generally speaking) and–look!–when we defeated them we found out they were actually practicing genocide on the Jews. (Yes, the government probably knew this beforehand but the general population didn’t). Hence, the Jews were/are a central pillar in the general knowledge that this was a “good war”.
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For years we didn’t care that 20 million Russians died in the war. They were godless commies during the Cold War and we didn’t like them. So why would we in any way glorify their efforts? I find that most people still don’t realize how many Russians died during this conflict.
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Simplicity. If you can summarize the conflict in simple, short terminology (and ideology) then it is easier to “sell” the package. I’m not saying that the government needed to sell the US on the war (not after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor anyway) but initially there was some worry that the American public would be all set to go to war against Japan but not against Germany. Fortunately, Hitler solved that issue by declaring war on us. However, the “simple” messages of WW2 have continued to this day; there is very little interest (outside of history forums and general history geeks) to delve deeper into the reasons for the conflict and add layers to the atrocities and/or heroics of that period of time.
Just my thoughts.
And probably the first, or not a good war at all, if we discount other wars regarded as ‘good’ by one or more of the participants, such as the Crusades or the American War of Independence.
The problem with the concept of WWII as a ‘good war’ is that, like all other ‘good wars’, it is good from one side, but it depends upon which side you’re on. From the Japanese or German perspective, their initiation of conflict in WWII could be seen as ‘good’ as they were reacting to the ‘bad’ actions of their enemies which generally had acquired colonial possessions by formal or informal military action or related expansion (e.g. India, Texas, Philippines) but which denied Germany and Japan the same expansion.
WWII wasn’t any different to any other wars. It was about a contest for territory, trade, and a clash of political / ethnic / religious beliefs. It just happened to be fought on a vastly larger scale of combatant nations and across more geography and killed many more people than previous wars, but it wasn’t any more a good or bad war than any other except to the the extent that the Allies were less brutal than the Nazis and Japanese, although the Allies had in their own pasts been just a brutal on a smaller scale (e.g. British response to Indian Mutiny; American conquest of indigenous lands and peoples).
However, from my perspective, which is undoubtedly influenced by my upbringing in an Allied nation, I think it was a good war to rid the world of the Nazis and Japanese militarists, if only because their genocidal brutality and systematic inhumanity forfeited all right to consideration as reasonable human beings. Which happens to be the same sort of mentality which allowed them to regard other people as lesser beings undeserving of moral or humane treatment.
So, in the end, it’s questionable whether any of us can justifiably claim the moral high ground because it’s all a question of perspective from one’s standpoint.
Pretty much like some Muslim martyrs are currently regarded by their brethren as heroes but by me and many others as religious ****wits who should be given every opportunity to fulfil their desire to blow themselves up, albeit without hurting anyone else.
“Good war”… Terms like “good war” or “righteous war” etc. are in the end propaganda slogans. War is never good. Every side claimed in this (and every other conflict) to have been fighting the righteous war against evil. That is the only way to make the own nation follow into war, giving them the feeling to do something good.
To come to the initial topic, well, it depends what you are watching or reading etc.
For example, I saw some german documentaries dealing with this matter:
One was about the Holocaust. The focus was of course on the Jewish victims of the concentration camps, the concentration camps themselves and the Nazis who were involved.
Another one was about the fate of German civilians during the war. Initial propaganda and cheering about the early victory, later the bombardements, massive destruction and death, emotional damages, how people lived through all this. And in the end, the nearing end of the war, the battles in Germany itself, behavious of Allied troops (for all sides positive and negative).
And one dealing with the whole war (more than 4 hours long), dealing with the suffering of all nations.
“Good war”… Terms like “good war” or “righteous war” etc. are in the end propaganda slogans. War is never good. Every side claimed in this (and every other conflict) to have been fighting the righteous war against evil. That is the only way to make the own nation follow into war, giving them the feeling to do something good.
My point was more about public perception than any actual fact about the nature of war. We view, in general, WWII as a “good war” and part of that is to vilify the opponent in the claim that we were the good guys. That is often done by showing how they treated others worse than we did (whether you agree with this or not) and that is illustrated, concerning WWII, with the German treatment of the people in occupied countries–primarily focusing on the Jews (and Poles).
This is one reason why there is no “equality in death”; we view the war from the point of us being righteous in almost everything we do and our opponents being evil.
I don’t disagree with that, except that the comment “we view, in general, WWII as a “good war”” implies that the ‘we’ who view it as a good war are probably among the English speaking nations.
I doubt that the Soviets saw much in their experience of it to suggest that it was a ‘good war’, not least because their experience of it included appalling civilian experiences which none of the English speaking nations experienced as attacked or occupied nations.
Numerically, the focus should be on the Russians and others in the East under attack and occupation by the Germans.
But there is also the problem that much of the mistreatment of Jews was not unique to the Nazis as there was an undercurrent of hostility to the Jews in many nations which facilitated the Nazi programs against the Jews. With the exception of the Dutch and in some surprising respects as an Axis power Italy, and perhaps the Belgians about whom I know nothing, there aren’t many nations in Europe which can demonstrate fairly clean hands in their dealings with the Jews under the Nazis and local fascist governments.
Agreed.
My point was that righteousness depends upon one’s standpoint.
Was Hitler’s righteousness any less valid than Stalin’s, or Churchill’s, once we accept that they were all pursuing national and related, such as political doctrine, objectives?
It’s only when we choose which national and related objectives to support that most of us will decide which of them was righteous. And that’s an arbitrary decision which has little moral content in the sense of some sort of absolute morality, whatever ‘absolute morality’ might mean.
Well, you are talking about the US standpoint. That is how it was seen in the US. But other countries had other views.
I am Croat for example.
Croats had different points of views.
Those who supported the Axis saw the Serb-ruled Yugoslavia (and therefor the Serbs) as evil as well as communism, which were to be fought merciless.
Those who supported the Allies saw the Axis as the evil, but not really because of the treatment of Jews, but because of the own treatment received. There were not that many Jews in Yugoslavia before the war like Poland for example. Even though they were nearly exterminated in Yugoslavia, they were not a major reason for the Yugoslavs.
True, the US for example didn’t go so far like the Germans (by far not so far). But still, you can find some points that were not so noble etc. (just like about everyone else)
To give again the point of a Croat, one thing not so noble was the support of the Četniks by the US (and the Commonwealth) with the reason that they were royalist and therefor not communist. They worked very often together with the Axis (later in the war practically always) and the commited many war crimes on the civilians population.
This was not meant to offend you or so, but to give you maybe another point of view, how it looks in other nations, just as you presented the point of view in the US.
For what I know the Albanians also quite successfully saved their Jews, with most of them surviving the war. Also Bulgaria comes to my mind. But generally, most of the collaboratours did their best to satisfy their new masters.
Yes, I spoke from the US perspective but my impression was that the original question was basically from the US perspective. Looking back at the first post, I see it was more general than that and the reference to The History Channel, etc… was later. My apologies for that.
I am very aware of the losses in other countries during WWII and have been for years. My intention was not to belittle those losses but to address, in short form, why they are not really well known (in the US).
As I said, it was more thought to present another point of view (I find such things highly interesting for example).