Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

Discussions on all aspects of the First World War not covered in the other sections. Hosted by Terry Duncan.
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Graeme Sydney
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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#106

Post by Graeme Sydney » 09 Jan 2016, 06:18

CJK1990 wrote:
Attrition wrote:Ah, you believe in the undeserving poor rather than the parasitic rich. That's protestantism not chris.
Actually I believe in reciprocity. The people respect property and provide income to the rich and in exchange the rich respects people's rights.

I also used to think that Christianity was about helping the poor and that Protestantism was a gross distortion of it. But actually that really isn't true. Medieval Islam was far more "egalitarian" than medieval Catholicism. And we all know how that turned out.
I think that you're wrong about the role of the state, it's just a glorified mugging device, hence my disdain for the fools, frauds, pinps and perverts who compete to control it rather than flush it down the u-bend of history.
You do realize, though, that your view is a conspiracy theory, right? All over the world at some point in history people who were armed to the teeth settled down and submitted themselves to a state of their own free will. We're they all just bamboozled by an elite conspiracy?
Where do you guys get this from, neither are describing how societies form and function. The concepts you compare don't relate. e.g. the poor are neither deserving nor undeserving - other factors are in play. Religion does not determine egalitarianism - other factors are in play. Etc.

As to any religion, it is the construct of man, not God - God has never talk to any man; God has never told anyone to kill anything is His name. And there is absolutely no empirical evidence to remotely suggest that He has. But people believe He has. And worst still people act in that believe. And worst still people convince and manipulate others to act in the belief that God wants them to kill.

And to give it a forum twist (before we get nuked) the irony of ironies is that all belligerents in WW1 and WW2 were supported by their religion 'to kill the other guy'.

As with all things construed by man, religion can be used for good or for evil, and is used for good and evil.

A pox on all religions and isms I say :milwink: .

I'm a nontheist with a simple pray; God save and protect me from all zealots. :milsmile:

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Attrition
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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#107

Post by Attrition » 09 Jan 2016, 10:06

Actually I believe in reciprocity. The people respect property and provide income to the rich and in exchange the rich respects people's rights.
You aren't a mediaeval casuist who fell into a time-warp by any chance are you?

Since when has a description of the bleeding obvious been a conspiracy theory? Temperamentally, like you I favour the cock-up theory of history but being a history man, I can't help noticing that most of the cock-ups are failed conspiracies. (First and Second Balkan Wars, Suez anyone?)

As for religions, in my exiguous experience of religious people (I live in England) the genuine ones are all pietists - they live their lives according to the religion that has many generic features - mind your manners, don't thieve, be excellent to each other. It's the institutionalised fraudulence of organised superstition that revolts atheists (and real religious people). It was mocked quite well in Oh! What a Lovely War if you're interested (Good entertainment, rubbish history but who cares when Maggie Smith does her turn?).


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Terry Duncan
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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#108

Post by Terry Duncan » 09 Jan 2016, 14:21

Ok, before anyone more senior does 'Nuke' you all, can I suggest you all do get back on topic as far as possible. Why are the two World Wars seen so differently, why is WWI seen so negatively compared to WWII etc. This can involve discussion of the governments involved or even where religion played its role, but we do not need to go into the personal beliefs held by posters here.

Terry

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Attrition
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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#109

Post by Attrition » 09 Jan 2016, 17:13

Volkskrieg, recruiting people for million-man armies, requires a cause somewhat more fundamental than nicking Silesia off the Habsburgs or inflicting genocide on the Irish.

The Big Two is treated different because it's expedient for the western apres-post-colonial-neo-imperial states, that made an effort against the Axis but had plenty of choices of where and when, because the Chinese and Russians didn't. Had the British and French fought the Germans from 1940 to 1945 like they did from 1916-1918, could they have dispensed with terrorism against their own men? Could the casualty rates of 1944-1945 been sustained like they were in Russia and China 1937/39-1945, without post-war disillusion a la 1930s? Could the war of attrition against the partial working-class emancipation conceded after 1945 in the west, have begun so soon (1949 in Britain)?

The Big Two has a good name because it suits the western states to pretend that it was a moral war against nazism, rather than an ordinary war for the balance of power.

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#110

Post by Sid Guttridge » 09 Jan 2016, 18:16

Hi Attrition,

I would suggest that the two types of war are not mutually exclusive.

In WWII, what began as a conventional war over the European ballance of power was turned into a moral one by Nazism's racially-based genocidal policies.

While it is more difficult, though not impossible, to differentiate between "goodies" and "baddies" in WWI, Hitler made it much easier in WWII.

In my opinion, WWII is the first half of a larger struggle between Liberal Democracy and Totalitarianism. In WWII one totalitarian power, Nazi Germany, was destroyed at enormous human expense largely by the other - the USSR. The Liberal Democracies then outcompeted an exhausted USSR during the Cold War. At the cost of "only" about a million dead between them, the Anglo-Americans had destroyed their main Totalitarian rivals by 1990.

How the Libreral Democracies will do against hybrid powers like modern China is another matter.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Attrition
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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#111

Post by Attrition » 10 Jan 2016, 01:24

I don't deny nazi crimes but few of them were qualitatively different from the respectable western racist imperialists or their second rate copies in the USSR, that lasted for much longer than the 12 years of the nazi regime. Emphasising nazi crimes against Jews and ignoring the other 54 million dead, came after the wartime generation had got old and electorally less significant, when the revival of western racist imperialism began to accelerate in the 1970s.

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jluetjen
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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#112

Post by jluetjen » 10 Jan 2016, 18:54

CJK1990 wrote:Is he saying that because the governments were all capitalist that means there were no differences? Well that's clearly wrong, obviously there are differences, otherwise they wouldn't have been organized differently in the first place. The Imperial German government did not permit representatives to rule as they did in Britain, France, the U.S. So it was in some sense an arbitrary regime.
Maybe I'm nitpicking, but Capitalism is an economic system where buyers and sellers make individual economic decisions on their purchases and investments and the government has a relatively small and limited role. As a result the economic system of Capitalism can co-exist with countless forms of government, for example with a republic, or a direct democracy, a Federal system or a parliamentary system.

Fascism, Socialism and Communism on the other hand are both a form of government (in many cases), and a form of economic system (in all cases). The underlying theme that connects these ideas is that Government takes a large and leading role in economic decisions at all levels of the economy. Since by definition the individual citizens' choices are limited by the government, the choice of who runs the government also becomes very limited resulting in the economic elite (in the case of Fascism), the intellectual elite (in the case of Socialism) or the political elite (in the case of Communism) determining who will run the government. So for all intents and purposes they are all forms of autocracies.

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Attrition
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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#113

Post by Attrition » 10 Jan 2016, 19:06

I think one point of disagreement is the importance of the differences compared to the similarities. I am of the school that sees only small quantitative differences between qualitatively identical states. Inevitably that makes me sceptical of the school that sees German innenpolitik being more significant than domestic concerns elsewhere.

~~~~~Fascism, Socialism and Communism on the other hand are both a form of government (in many cases), and a form of economic system (in all cases). The underlying theme that connects these ideas is that Government takes a large and leading role in economic decisions at all levels of the economy.~~~~~

You left out their parents, capitalism and liberalism.

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jluetjen
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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#114

Post by jluetjen » 10 Jan 2016, 21:49

Attrition wrote:You left out their parents, capitalism and liberalism.
Actually -- I did discuss capitalism. It's an economic system -- remember?

In regards to liberalism... I'm not sure what that means -- even after reading the Wikipedia page on it. Yeah I get the freedom, liberty, equality thing. But what does that have to do with modern "Liberalism" which is really a system of using the government to enforce one group's idea of "doing the right thing" on other people, while ignoring the other people's wishes, needs and beliefs.

Going back to the basic premise of the thread -- that WWI is seen more negatively compared to WWII, I think that the fact that we've been arguing over it for 8 pages is indicative of the answer. In WWII everyone agrees that Hitler invaded Poland and France, and that Tojo invaded China, Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines and attacked Pearl Harbor. The result of these actions was that the rest of the world fought back.

No such pithy summary can justify WWI. Somehow "An Austrian has been killed by a Serb in Bosnia" doesn't satisfy the question.

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jluetjen
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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#115

Post by jluetjen » 10 Jan 2016, 21:56

Sid Guttridge wrote:In WWII one totalitarian power, Nazi Germany, was destroyed at enormous human expense largely by the other - the USSR.
Uh... need I point out Japan and Italy?

While the USSR certainly did suffer huge losses, it's not clear to me that this was the result of the effort involved, or the methods and intelligence (or the lack thereof) used to execute that effort*.

Keep in mind that Russia didn't engage Japan until the last days of the war, and barely engaged Italy during WWII, unlike the English speaking allies. So I think that your summary conveniently ignores some facts which don't support your conclusion.

(* This is meant as a knock on the USSR's leaders, not the efforts of the individual soldiers which by most accounts were significant.)

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Attrition
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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#116

Post by Attrition » 11 Jan 2016, 01:12

jluetjen wrote:
Attrition wrote:You left out their parents, capitalism and liberalism.
Actually -- I did discuss capitalism. It's an economic system -- remember?

In regards to liberalism... I'm not sure what that means -- even after reading the Wikipedia page on it. Yeah I get the freedom, liberty, equality thing. But what does that have to do with modern "Liberalism" which is really a system of using the government to enforce one group's idea of "doing the right thing" on other people, while ignoring the other people's wishes, needs and beliefs.

Going back to the basic premise of the thread -- that WWI is seen more negatively compared to WWII, I think that the fact that we've been arguing over it for 8 pages is indicative of the answer. In WWII everyone agrees that Hitler invaded Poland and France, and that Tojo invaded China, Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines and attacked Pearl Harbor. The result of these actions was that the rest of the world fought back.

No such pithy summary can justify WWI. Somehow "An Austrian has been killed by a Serb in Bosnia" doesn't satisfy the question.
Perhaps you did and I missed it; it isn't an economic system though, it's a myth.

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#117

Post by Sid Guttridge » 11 Jan 2016, 18:46

Hi jluetjen,

You can throw in relatively second line powers like Japan and Italy, or any others like Croatia or Slovakia, if you wish, but they were minor by comparison with Nazi Germany and the USSR. The point I made remains good.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#118

Post by Sid Guttridge » 11 Jan 2016, 18:54

Hi Attrition,

I don't know what the following has to do with this thread?

"I don't deny nazi crimes but few of them were qualitatively different from the respectable western racist imperialists or their second rate copies in the USSR, that lasted for much longer than the 12 years of the nazi regime. Emphasising nazi crimes against Jews and ignoring the other 54 million dead, came after the wartime generation had got old and electorally less significant, when the revival of western racist imperialism began to accelerate in the 1970s."

The "few" you mention were qualitatively rather significant, but then you apparently don't want us to further mention the industrialized genocide against the Jews.

OK, so some 54 million other people died. How many, one one wonders, were at the hands of Totalitarian powers? Half that total alone consists of Soviet citizens who died at Nazi German hands. And we haven't even begun to count other dead resulting from Nazi actions, or any resulting from Soviet actions.

Give me "Western racist imperialists", by comparison, any day!

Cheers,

Sid.

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Attrition
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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#119

Post by Attrition » 11 Jan 2016, 21:02

Perhaps we should continue this by PM before we get blammed?

I think you're confusing form with content; murder is murder and dead is dead; you also inferred motive, revealing more about you than me.

That several million of the 60 million people who were killed in the war, were murdered by a novel form of murder, doesn't make their fate any more or less revolting than the other 54 million; they were all made dead by people who controlled states, because that is what states are for. The quasi-industrial massacres by taking people to a murder factory in a C19th form of transport, was no more or less quasi-industrial than carrying bombs to them in aeroplanes, a C20th form of transport; the methods had identical results, the manufacture of mass death, hardly unique to the mid-C20th. Your good western imperialist "Sir" David Steel, will eventually have a bigger body count than bad nazi Heinrich Himmler.

Notice as well that all of the great powers in both world wars were totalitarian (i. e. C19th liberal, with a few new superficial flourishes) and the western racist imperialists are still at it, having started in the C15th. Ask the Palestinians.

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Re: Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

#120

Post by michael mills » 12 Jan 2016, 04:41

In both world wars Germany was only beaten after its armies had been worn down through attrition.
Not so. In the First World War the German armed forces did not suffer the same degree of attrition as they did in the Second. There was no equivalent of Stalingrad, or the Falaise Gap, or the annihilation of Army Group Centre during "Bagration".

The reason why the German military commanders asked for an armistice in October 1918 is that they realised that the Home Front was on the point of collapse, that there would be revolution if the war continued, and that they needed to bring their troops back relatively intact in order to restore order at home.

At the time they asked for an armistice, the German army was making a fighting withdrawal in good order and was not showing any real signs of disintegration. The Allied commanders were not expecting a quick end to the war, and believed that the fighting would continue for at least another year at enormous cost. Indeed, the British and French commanders were concerned whether their troops would be able to stand the strain of another year of fighting, and some thought that a compromise peace might be necessary in order to bring the war to an end and avert social unrest. The memory of the widespread mutinies of 1917 in the French Army and of the collapse of the Russian Army was still keen.

Thus, the Allies were taken completely by surprise by the German request for an armistice, and had to scramble to define terms, they being essentially decided by the French.

In the case of the Second World War, there was no collapse of the German Home Front, at least until the very end, when Allied armies had advanced deep into German territory. As a result, the German military commanders did not surrender until the Red Army reached Berlin and the greater part of Germany had been conquered, despite the huge attrition their forces had suffered.

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