world war 2 wrecked the world

[Totenkopf]

Toughen up, mnazter! Jodl vs. Zhukov provides some great entertainment. And during the toughening process, recall WC Williams' sound advice to scribblers (sound, though not necessary): no ideas but in things.

[e_dog]

"WWII wrecked the world..."



But World War Three 'll fix it!



REAL PATRIOTS INVADE IRAN.

[stilltrucking]

Churchill was pretty entertaining too

Human Smoke

The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

Not long ago, because there is no winter baseball in this country, I was channel surfing in search of amusement and ended up watching a debate of Republican presidential candidates. Sen. John McCain was attacking Rep. Ron Paul for opposing the Iraq war. He called Paul an "isolationist" and said it was that kind of thinking that had caused World War II. How old, I asked myself, is John McCain, that he is keeping alive this ancient World War II canard? Is it going to pass down to subsequent generations? All wars have to be sold, but World War II, within the memory of the pointless carnage that then became known as World War I, was a particularly hard sell. Roosevelt and Churchill did it well, and their lies have been with us ever since.



Churchill is a dominant figure in "Human Smoke," depicted as a bloodthirsty warmonger who, in 1922, was still bemoaning the fact that World War I hadn't lasted a little longer so that Britain could have had its air force in place to bomb Berlin and "the heart of Germany." But no, he whined, it had to stop, "owing to our having run short of Germans and enemies."

Churchill was not driven by anti-fascism. In his 1937 book "Great Contemporaries," he described Hitler as "a highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary with an agreeable manner." The same book savagely attacked Leon Trotsky. (What was wrong with Trotsky? "He was still a Jew. Nothing could get over that.") Churchill repeatedly praised Mussolini for his "gentle and simple bearing." In 1927, he told a Roman audience, "If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism." Churchill considered fascism "a necessary antidote to the Russian virus," Baker writes. In 1938, he remarked to the press that if England were ever defeated in war, he hoped "we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among nations."
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/l ... 3134.story

[Totenkopf]

Yeah yr sort of correct Sir L: Winnie Kinghill was no great hero. He like many brits supported Il Duce at first. The eastern front was a nasty mess, but maybe V2s weren't so wrong after all.

[stilltrucking]

ok

[Totenkopf]

You derailed another thread, Sir Lampshade. Gut arbeiten.

[mnaz]

Well, maybe not entirely. Some wars may be judged necessary, but be careful exalting their goodness.

World War II, the good war,
the greatest stand against evil,
A Roman numeral etched deeper in stone.
A war to end them all, the just denouement.
It stripped us, ripped out modernity's heart.
So close on the heels of the first world meltdown,
a planet's empty savagery and blood lust laid bare.
The second one saw a civilized world as deluded myth.
Exposed a walking dead race for what it had become.
Started the clock.

I have no stomach for it,
the willful slaughter and low suicide.
But that was the point of the good war,
to end suffering, to vanquish evil for all time.
True warriors fight the good war to end endless pain,
town by town, misery by misery, until Hitler himself falls,
and cold-blooded obscenity of doctrine is finished.
Wild celebration. Ticker tape grieving. Time lost.

And then, a year or two of hope.
Reparation. Reconstruction. Hope.
Some say of exhaustion, or contrition of spirit,
or of ambition frustrated, or conquest delayed.
War teaches us how to get better at war.
Stakes get higher, almost heaven-sent.

Okay, enough poetic liberties. I've got nothing against subduing the Nazis, stopping genocide, and paving the way for steady enlightenment-- if that's the main path we'd chosen, after witnessing vast portions of the earth sent up in flames, with the hint of much greater annihilation at our fingertips, hinged on collective bombed-out consciousness and the whim of charged phrases devised in our mad laboratories. The sheer mass of 20th Century misery in the name of Izzms bent on saving the earth in their image seemed to rob us of us, seemed to insure that we either fade or be rescued from without.

Or maybe it's just me. Maybe it's my natural deep distrust of Izzm in general and fatalist religious doctrine in particular. World War II is often pegged as the first real sign of end times prophecy starting to coalesce. It hastened, indeed necessitated the push for more migration of Jewish refugees into Palestine and eventually the formation of modern Israel, which is key to fundamentalist doctrines of end times (yes, all of them). All eyes on the Temple Mount. I'm sure it's nothing I should worry about, right? After all, they're just some ancient prophetic words, right?

[stilltrucking]

Freud was such an optimist in 1915.

When once the mourning is over, it will be found that our high opinion of the riches of civilization has lost nothing from our discovery of their fragility. We shall build up again all that war has destroyed, and perhaps on firmer ground and more lastingly than before.

Freud’s Requiem