Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?

[Attrition]

I thought it would be a laugh to forestall the mod squad. ;O)) The prose leaves something to be desired but it's free. There are others there too.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Attrition,

You write, "Actually no, you offered a monocausal explanation which excluded deliberate European agency or culpability....."

No I didn't. I pointed out accurately that it wasn't European genocide that caused the massive (±90%) loss of population in the Americas. It was disease. It was be incorrect to attribute this to European imperialism. If the Amerindians had reached Europe first, the same diseas loss would have happened to them.

You ask, "You don't seriously believe that Amerindian, American and African societies had no reason to blame Europeans do you?" Nope. But they also have reasons to blame themselves. The Spanish, cruel as thery were, were more benevolent rulers than the Aztecs. And the Europeans did not capture African slaves, they bought them from other Africans. Nor did the Europeans introduce imperialism to the Americas, or Africa.

Certainly European imperialism has a case to answer, but so have all others. European imperialism's biggest distinction was its, historically brief, global success, not its originality.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Attrition]

What do you blame Europeans for?

[BDV]

What do you blame Europeans for?

I am unsure why the Junta tolerates this type of racist/racialist trolling to continue.

[Attrition]

Europeans aren't a race and it ill-becomes you to exploit the evil of racism to carp at me. Shame on you.

[Terry Duncan]

OK people, please calm down and return to the subject of WWI as much as possible. I am sure a conversation could be had by PM about various issues raised here or maybe even on a board devoted to governments and colonial activities, but here really isnt the place.

Terry

[BDV]

OK people, please calm down and return to the subject of WWI as much as possible. I am sure a conversation could be had by PM about various issues raised here or maybe even on a board devoted to governments and colonial activities, but here really isnt the place.

Terry

I was under the impression racism/racialism is not tolerated at AHF.

Unfortunately it appears that posters based in England/Great Britain are given a larger berth than others, not only at posting insults; that was (
bedauerlicherweise) obvious; but now they are tolerated when engaging in crass racialism and racist trolling.

[michael mills]

I did not discern any element of racial prejudice in the exchange of views between Sid and Attrition, just diametrically opposed interpretations of history.

Anyway, I suggest we get back to the topic at hand, which as I see it is the essential nature of the First World War and its significance in European history.

[Terry Duncan]

I am not too sure where anyone has indulged in racism to be honest, there are aspects in the past of the European nations and the American ones that are regretable, saying so is little more than stating the obvious. It is difficult to overlook that in the 16thC-19thC period, even small states like Belgium aquired large overseas holdings, and often did not behave too well in them. I also do not see where I have tolerated people from Europe or the UK to a greater degree than any others, it would seem everyone has had something to say that is rather a long way off topic, and I have posted a suitable warning as soon as it became clear things were becoming heated. I think you will find that what you are calling 'trolling' happens to be another posters genuinely held beliefs, even if others do not agree with them.

The subject matter at hand is supposed to be 'Why is WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?', if nobody has anything to say on that subject I will close the thread.

[Terry Duncan]

I did not discern any element of racial prejudice in the exchange of views between Sid and Attrition, just diametrically opposed interpretations of history.

Anyway, I suggest we get back to the topic at hand, which as I see it is the essential nature of the First World War and its significance in European history.

Thank you Michael.

[Attrition]

Perhaps the discussion has meandered but that always happens in long threads; as long as the readers find it interesting, what's the harm?

Clearly some of us think that the antecedents of European imperialism are pertinent to the war that began in 1914, especially on the question of the relative "civilisation" of the participants. I'm not a Marxist but I can't deny that comments that one gang of gangsters began wars with another gang of gangsters, over the spoils derived from the world-system of plunder established with monumental cruelty by Europeans since the C15th, have merit. I was rather surprised to see this called racist and trolling.

~~~~~the topic at hand, which as I see it is the essential nature of the First World War and its significance in European history.~~~~~

Quite, it seems to me that the relevance of the history of European imperialism and colonialism before 1914 is continuity. In the historical writing on the Great War, there was (and to an extent still is) a rhetoric of exception, yet for a non-European the bloodbath would have been depressingly familiar. That pdf I added the other day echoes comments earlier in the thread, about the vulnerability of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires and the fears of their boss classes, that they were declining into helplessness against external predators. It had happened in recent years to China and the Ottoman empire; some European places like Ireland had always been colonial fiefdoms, look what happened to them.

The Second World War can be passed off as a war against nazism, a necessary war against a great evil, rather than the last war of the European state system that emerged after the Thirty Years' War.

[wm]

People have been conquering other people and waging wars from the dawn of time. What the Europeans were doing wasn't any different, any more cruel than the others were doing. Even the so called Great War is not that great if we compare it for example with the Taiping Civil War.

A war over the spoils derived from the world-system of plunder, and a war driven by the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires and the fears of their boss classes seem mutually exclusive - both Russia and Austro-Hungary weren't colonial empires.

It should be noted that in 1939 Germany wasn't especially evil in the grand scheme of things. A few thousand victims of the Nazis were nothing in comparison with the bloodbaths in the Soviet Russia, Mongolia, China even Mexico.

[michael mills]

both Russia and Austro-Hungary weren't colonial empires.

Russia was a sort of colonial empire, except that its colonies were reached overland rather than by sea. Siberia was settled by colonists in much the same way as the Americas or Australia.

Even the southern parts of present-day Russia and Ukraine were originally colonial territory settled by colonists. Odessa for example was founded a few years after Sydney.

The Second World War can be passed off as a war against nazism, a necessary war against a great evil,

Except that the main power fighting the war against Nazi Germany was another "evil empire", an equally great evil, if not an even greater one.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Attrition,

You write, "Clearly some of us think that the antecedents of European imperialism are pertinent to the war that began in 1914.....". Well, yes, to a degree..... in so far as they affect why "WWI seen so negatively compared with WWII?".

You also continue, "...... especially on the question of the relative "civilisation" of the participants." I wasn't aware that this was under discussion at all.

To go back to first principles.

The perceived futility of a static war of a static attrition is a particular perception of the participant in the Western and Italian fronts in WWI.

WWI is often viewed negatively compared with WWII because there is a mistaken impression that it was somehow more meritorious or creditable to the participants in WWII that the front was in nearly continuous motion in WWII, and less meritorious or creditable to the participants in WWI that their front was relatively static, at least in the West.

What is overlooked in this simplistic analysis is that after five and a half years of such movement in WWII the front was where it began - on the borders of Germany - and that several times as many people had died to achieve this as the similar result after four years of relatively static warfare on the Western Front in WWI.

Cheers,

Sid.

[jluetjen]

The Second World War can be passed off as a war against nazism, a necessary war against a great evil, rather than the last war of the European state system that emerged after the Thirty Years' War.

I have to chuckle at how the entire Pacific theater in WWII is dismissed -- for no other reason than it is not in Europe. Japan was well on it's way in what would become WWII in the 30's, but since the "Western" powers were not involved it doesn't count. It only seems to count after Pearl Harbor. But to the Japanese December 1942 was merely the next step in one long campaign.