What do/should the World Wars mean to us now & in the future?

[Cloo]

With poppy fury brought to a head by Braverman's antics I was thinking about this. When I was a kid in the 80s, 'Poppy Day' was a big deal. Most of us had living grandparents who had been through or served in WWII, some of us even had great-grandparents alive who recalled WWI.

But now the WWI veterans are gone, as are most of those of WWII; yet we still seem to act in the UK as though it was not that long ago, as though those who witnessed it first hand are as much with us as they were 30 or 40 years ago, it's this weird anachronism. And there's this uncomfortable mixture of mawkishness ('Our heroes') and a sort of emotional fascism ('Why isn't she wearing a poppy?', 'Why don't young people respect X and Y?!') which is what is so offputting to a lot of people - it's not that people hate poppies or veterans or the British Legion, but they are sick and tired of the political discourse around them, IMO.

Yet those in power, in RW media seem to act as though of course everyone should have the same feeling and reverence for is as we did decades ago, despite the fact it's totally reasonable, as things get further in the past, for them to mean less. The Right act as if veteran-hating lefties have killed off poppy day, but it's just the passing of time, surely? There are fewer sellers because it's just not that meaningful to a lot of people, plus we have fewer people with time to volunteer and fewer active retirees now that so many people can't afford to stop working until they're mostly dead.

I find very interesting the conjecture of a historian that in a few decades time, WWI and II will be thought of as just one early 20th C war - that seems quite plausible to me. But at the moment people are still acting as though they ought to be fresh in our minds, as though the Blitz should be the forefront of everyone's family lore when it is, as it should be, something that is passing out of memory. I know remembrance weekend is on some level supposed to be for all wars and service people, but TBH I'm not sure it means shit to anyone a generation or more younger than me. Most people just don't know any service people, and all the wars of living memory have be distant and restricted to people who chose to join up.

I wonder if we will see Remembrance weekened gradually becoming something purely for the military, rather than a national event. That seems more apt to me as the wars of the 20th century get further and further away.

 

[Pickman's model]

given that we seem to be on our way to a new world war the simplicity of the previous conflicts will i think take on a nostalgic glow

 

[DotCommunist]

ww1 needs to be remembered as a slaughter of conscripted, voteless men on behalf of a ruling class who considered them barely sentient. And petain came out of verdun. Ever since I read about verdun its loomed larger in my head than ypres or the somme.

 

[yield]

remembrance day is veterans day in the US.

 

[marty21]

Remembrance day was quite solemn when I was younger, can remember it in the 70s - when a lot of the veterans were still relatively young - probably still in their 50s someone of them - I worked for a veteran in the late 70s when I was a teenager - he ran a grocer's - he had fought in the desert with Monty. There wasn't any of this poppy criticism - even the folk who insisted on white poppies were tolerated . Now that there are very few veterans, to have fought in WW2 unless you were drastically lying about their age, would have to be at least 96/97 and there are unlikely to be many attending.

There are new generations of veterans though - Korea ones are still kicking around (Michael Caine is 90) Falkland vets are my sort of age (late 50s/early 60s) and then the Irag/Afghanistan vets who are relatively young. But those vets appear to be treated differently to the WW1/WW2 vets.

 

[Johnny Vodka]

remembrance day is veterans day in the US.

To be renamed in the UK as "make them homeless without even a bloody tent Day".

 

[Aladdin]

remembrance day is veterans day in the US.

Same here.
There is a remembrance Sunday in November for Irish soldiers who fought in the world wars.

There is a commemoration day in July for thos who died in te civil war 1921

People wear a lily/ lily badge to commemorate the heroes of 1916 at Easter.

I have not seen any poppy wearing here. It would be considered a British / commonwealth thing?

We learned about the world wars in school ... but up until relatively recently Irish soldiers who died in the world wars were not really rememberd officially. Mostly because they were predominantly serving as soldiers in the British army. And there was naturally a hatred of the British army for what was done in 1916 and after.

The civil war was something we wanted to forget for a generation and we are only now opening up about the atrocities carried out all over Ireland. The civil war is not something many want to actually remember and I suspect its not something we commemorate. It was a very very dark time and the repercussions are still under the surface in many small towns and villages throughout the country.

I would hope people would learn from past wars. But it does appear that history is repeating itself and we are all heading into a more turbulent time with the terrifying prospect of world wars that could exterminate vast populations.

Commemorations of wars should carry with them the horrors and death tolls...the debating of the horrendous impacts that wars have. They should be opportunities to push for peace everywhere. To do everything necessary to ensure peace worldwide. Tall order? Probably. But it would be far more beneficial to commmorate and celebrate times of peace, and peacemakers, than times of war and those who mongered it.

 

[PTK]

Once upon a time, the commemoration, and the two-minute silence, was actually on 11 November. Then sometime after the Second World War, it was moved to the nearest Sunday. Then, about ten or fifteen years ago, there was a campaign in the popular press to re-introduce a two minute silence on the 11 November. This was to counter the unpopularity of the war in Afghanistan. So, now we have the absurd practice of having two two-minite silences: one on the 11 November, and one on the nearest Sunday.

 

[Pickman's model]

Once upon a time, the commemoration, and the two-minute silence, was actually on 11 November. Then sometime after the Second World War, it was moved to the nearest Sunday. Then, about ten or fifteen years ago, there was a campaign in the popular press to re-introduce a two minute silence on the 11 November. This was to counter the unpopularity of the war in Afghanistan. So, now we have the absurd practice of having two two-minite silences: one on the 11 November, and one on the nearest Sunday.

or you could have a lie-in and ignore the bloody virtue signalling

 

[Cloo]

Discussing this on Threads and an American user made some excellent point that the right assumes that if you don't venerate veterans then you don't care about them. I added that they often seem to venerate without actually caring - and she pointed out that veneration is free, care and support is expensive.

It's basically the ultimate in virtue signalling.

 

[Cloo]

Basically, we are just way past the 'collective grief' remembrance stage, but we don't seem to have acknowledged that. When I was a kid yes, very large numbers of people were still mourning lost relatives from the wars, but that's just no longer the case

 

[tony.c]

Three of my uncles were soldiers in Burma, North Africa and Italy in WW2, but I don't remember them saying anything about it. Nor any of my teachers who were involved.

 

[newme]

Discussing this on Threads and an American user made some excellent point that the right assumes that if you don't venerate veterans then you don't care about them. I added that they often seem to venerate without actually caring - and she pointed out that veneration is free, care and support is expensive.

It's basically the ultimate in virtue signalling.

The US, well some louder parts of it do this a lot "Thoughts and prayers". Sounds like caring without having to do anything.

My grandad was a Lancaster pilot in ww2, he survived while seeing people around him did continually. Ruined his substantial brain with alcohol (Wernicke-Korsakoff) he nearly burned his house down while inside it and he had been a commercial pilot so ended up far better off than most that survived by far. Only him and his mate made it through of his intake of idk how many it was but far too many. Ww2 is seen as a defensive war here so its viewed differently to just about all since then

My dad was raf and then merchant navy, it was a job choice there was no one attacking. My cousin was a US marine, she was a lead helicopter tech of some description and once worked on something to do with one Obama was on. If you didn't know already then you wouldn't know they were ever in.

Since ww2 it seems almost every conflict UK or US has been involved with has had some huge question marks over being there at best. Ww2 is a history fact to learn now. The US is fucking weird about veterans. So much so a lot of them really dislike being thanked for their service, it also sounds disingenuous and like thoughts and prayers. There's a fair number who say I was in a shithole town with no prospects, it was healthcare, education and a salary, with an early pension if you could stick it out that long.

 

[Cloo]

I think the fact that more recent wars are distant and widely seen as fought for dubious reasons definitely matters. People don't really want to commemorate those because they leave a nasty taste in the mouth.

 

[Pickman's model]

I think the fact that more recent wars are distant and widely seen as fought for dubious reasons definitely matters. People don't really want to commemorate those because they leave a nasty taste in the mouth.

all wars are fought for dubious reasons. it's not like aulder wars were fought for better reasons, a glance through the flashman papers demonstrates how flimsy were the excuses for many wars in the past eg the opium wars. the first world war certainly wasn't fought for any great moral principles even though many have been applied in retrospect. wars in malaya, kenya, ireland, libya, iraq, oman and so on have all been tawdry affairs in which neither the state nor the armed forces and its volunteer members emerge with their character unstained.

 

[YouSir]

With poppy fury brought to a head by Braverman's antics I was thinking about this. When I was a kid in the 80s, 'Poppy Day' was a big deal. Most of us had living grandparents who had been through or served in WWII, some of us even had great-grandparents alive who recalled WWI.

But now the WWI veterans are gone, as are most of those of WWII; yet we still seem to act in the UK as though it was not that long ago, as though those who witnessed it first hand are as much with us as they were 30 or 40 years ago, it's this weird anachronism. And there's this uncomfortable mixture of mawkishness ('Our heroes') and a sort of emotional fascism ('Why isn't she wearing a poppy?', 'Why don't young people respect X and Y?!') which is what is so offputting to a lot of people - it's not that people hate poppies or veterans or the British Legion, but they are sick and tired of the political discourse around them, IMO.

Yet those in power, in RW media seem to act as though of course everyone should have the same feeling and reverence for is as we did decades ago, despite the fact it's totally reasonable, as things get further in the past, for them to mean less. The Right act as if veteran-hating lefties have killed off poppy day, but it's just the passing of time, surely? There are fewer sellers because it's just not that meaningful to a lot of people, plus we have fewer people with time to volunteer and fewer active retirees now that so many people can't afford to stop working until they're mostly dead.

I find very interesting the conjecture of a historian that in a few decades time, WWI and II will be thought of as just one early 20th C war - that seems quite plausible to me. But at the moment people are still acting as though they ought to be fresh in our minds, as though the Blitz should be the forefront of everyone's family lore when it is, as it should be, something that is passing out of memory. I know remembrance weekend is on some level supposed to be for all wars and service people, but TBH I'm not sure it means shit to anyone a generation or more younger than me. Most people just don't know any service people, and all the wars of living memory have be distant and restricted to people who chose to join up.

I wonder if we will see Remembrance weekened gradually becoming something purely for the military, rather than a national event. That seems more apt to me as the wars of the 20th century get further and further away.

I suspect it'll go the opposite way as it becomes completely subsumed as a political-cultural marker rather than any kind of active remembrance. As you say, distance dulls the relevance to people but the Right are desperate (and in parts very successful) in turning it into a different sort of artifact in the public consciousness. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Labour and Tories both trying to create more mandatory involvement in some flag waving form of ceremony over the next few years and even if that has no real meaning to people it will start to embed itself in the social fabric. The US has far more visible veneration of veterans and I'm fairly certain 90% of that is accepted as necessary performance rather than being deeply considered. Veterans boarding early on planes for example, or people getting thanked for their service, these aren't heartfelt acknowledgements of sacrifice but the low level reverence they impose socially isn't nothing.

 

[Serge Forward]

WW1 - Both my grandads were were on the Western Front, one of them was also at Gallipoli. My maternal grandfather saw his brother blown up in front of him.

I used to visit a junk shop in a pit village I lived in in the early 80s. An old bloke ran it. We always chatted about random stuff. One occasion we ended up talking about the war, don't know how we got on to it. Suddenly he started sobbing uncontrollably.

WW2 - my uncles who were in the war all came out mostly unscathed, although one had a particularly hard time as a POW on the Burma railway. Another talked about horrors of Monte Cassino. He was also a witness to seeing Mussolini's corpse being strung up. Much as he hated the fascists, he said seeing that was upsetting.

My mam and dad were still kids/teenagers during the war. Both were evacuees for some of the time. My mam's house was destroyed in Salford during the blitz. No one was hurt. My dad was invited to a birthday party but instead he went off smoking with a mate who had some ciggies. The party was hit in a daytime bombing raid and all the kids died. The spot was never built on but was made into a garden.

My youngest son's grandad was in Buchenwald before the war (arrested at Kristallnacht). He managed to get out and Escaped to England. He later joined the Alien Pioneer Corps and later still joined the Leicestershire regiment. He was in North Africa and Italy. His brother went on the run to Holland but was later picked up by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. He managed to survive. Their father was murdered at Sobibor.

I used to buy a poppy once in a while, red or white. It seemed like a nice thing to do as a personal act of remembrance. Now it's all become some sort of patriotic, war glorifying halloween type event, never again.

 

[Cloo]

My British grandfather turned 16 in 1941, trained up north as an RAF navigator, got shipped off to Yemen to guard oil reserves and the war never got that far so luckily for him he didn't see much action.

He had met my grandma by then and they kept up correspondence by post until he could get home and marry her. She had to endure the Blitz, I'll never forget seeing how shaken she was when we went to an exhibition about it at the Imperial War Museum.

My other grandfather was already an adult at the start of the war, did a mad dash from Hungary to Palestine with his sister thus avoiding the virtual extermination of the rest of their family by the Nazis. The British imprisoned them as in Palestine illegally by he was released to join the Czech Free Army in France and then UK (where he met my grandmother). He saw way, way too much action for anyone frankly and was awarded a number of medals for basically surviving at least one massive slaughterhouse (the Dukla Pass) and we believe he was with the Red Army as Berlin fell.

But basically, ever since I was made aware of the Holocaust, that is what WWII is to me. Much more than the Blitz or keep calm and carry on.

 

[PTK]

My parents were adults in the Second World War and lived in London. My Dad was in a “reserved occupation”. I was born in the late 1950s. (My parents were in their late thirties by then). I knew nothing about the genocide of the Jews of Europe until my mother told me about it when I was about 7 or 8. Her “voice went funny” (as I would have put it at the time) as she became upset telling me about people being put in gas chambers and medical experiments being performed on people. I was wondering some years ago why she decided to tell me this, at that age, and I came to the conclusion that I must have mentioned the “jokes” that I heard in the playground about the treatment of Jews in the Second World War, which I did not really understand at the time, because I had no idea of what happened. I probably would not have been able to define the meaning of the word “Jew”.

My parents were communists, and thought that the Poppy Appeal and Remembrance Sunday were a lot of tosh. My mother would tell people that if they were to campaign for benefits for veterans in need, then she would support them, but she did not see why ordinary people should donate money when it was the responsibility of the state to look after people who had been in armed forces.

 

[brogdale]

I wonder if we will see Remembrance weekened gradually becoming something purely for the military, rather than a national event.

A good thread and, like the poppy one, capable of annual re-generation!

My two penny-worth is, no I don't think remembrance will become something purely for the military, rather than a national event. As I see it the state sees national acts of remembrance as important in maintaining the belief that the armed forces exist to protect the population from real/imagined external threats and that, as such, we must all express our gratitude for those that 'made the ultimate sacrifice'. This, of course, disguises the nature of war and the responsibility of state actors for such colossal loss of life. The other aspect of remembrance that irks is the fund-raising for the out-sourced care of those damaged by the state's wars that piggy-backs on the 'sacred day'.

That said, every remembrance day I do find myself dwelling on my paternal Grandfather's experience of war and his belief that he had landed in Normandy to defeat fascism.Though that may completely undermine my own critique of the whole edifice, for me it does afford a moment when I reflect on his story of clearing the dead and what was left of the dead on Sword.

 

[krtek a houby]

Apart from 1916, senseless slaughter and some excellent films, not a lot.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

I think the fact that more recent wars are distant and widely seen as fought for dubious reasons definitely matters. People don't really want to commemorate those because they leave a nasty taste in the mouth.

I usually buy and wear a poppy, not to commemorate wars, but the victims of wars, which includes the veterans. An ex-bf was deployed in Operation Desert Storm, ie the first Gulf war.

I'd split up with him just before and he wrote me some heart-rending 'blueys' (those airmail letter-and-envelope-in-one thingies) asking me to give him another chance, telling me how scared he was and he couldn't tell his mum or she'd worry too much. Some of his comrades were killed. Think they died in one of the American 'friendly fire' incidents. (iirc, we did meet and chat after he came home, but I couldn't/wouldn't get back with him because he'd cheated on me, but compounded it by lying so the trust was gone.)

Anyway, I don't consider that I'm commemorating a war in any way that glorifies it. I'm lamenting the fact that young men (and women) in northern post-industrial towns were still targeted by army recruiters, sold a li(f)e of adventure and excitement, but in reality they're cannon fodder for the higher ranks and the feckless and duplicitous politicians who get us into wars based on lies, rapacious greed for money, whether that's oil and fossil fuel-based or from selling £€$billions in weapons, profiting from death.

I think the whole military-industrial complex is immoral and corrupt - and have protested against war, the arms trade and nuclear weapons and been arrested for protesting - and the average infantryman is arguably as much a victim of it as other more innocent victims of war. They've been manipulated and brainwashed, lured in by calculating careers officers and recruitment campaigns who know they have few options in some parts of the north-west, also north-east, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Travel the world! Learn a trade! Have a career! * whispers * getshotatandmaybedie

I don't like how it's co-opted by right-wing extremists. I don't like the poppy fascists who complain about television presenters not wearing it.

If I see the white poppies on sale, I also buy and wear one of those.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

So far as I'm aware, the Royal British Legion does some good work supporting veterans (and their families), many of whose lives have been curtailed or wrecked by their experiences and PTSD, etc. Lots of ex-military suffer from mental health problems are more likely than average to be homeless, etc. RBL supports them financially and practically.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

Personally, I spend the two minute silence thinking about my great-grandfather who was killed in WW1, leaving a widow and 5 children in abject poverty, and relying on the mercy of the state. The very state that had sent their husband and father off to be slaughtered.

 

[Cloo]

Oh, I definitely don't think remembrance is 'glorifying war' and I cringe a bit when people take that attitude, just as I cringe when right wingers get all misty eyed 'This Was The Best of Britain' about it.

 

[brogdale]

So far as I'm aware, the Royal British Legion does some good work supporting veterans (and their families), many of whose lives have been curtailed or wrecked by their experiences and PTSD, etc. Lots of ex-military suffer from mental health problems are more likely than average to be homeless, etc. RBL supports them financially and practically.

I'm sure that's correct, but the whole poppy thing disguises the fact that there is an employer that has caused its 'workforce' to be killed/damaged and then outsources to a charitable organisation to fund and effect the (after) care necessary.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

I'm sure that's correct, but the whole poppy thing disguises the fact that there is an employer that has caused its 'workforce' to be killed/damaged and then outsources to a charitable organisation to fund and effect the (after) care necessary.

Yes, of course, you're quite right. It's abhorrent that the politicians/government that get us into those wars then abnegate their responsibilities to those who have suffered and continue to suffer harm as a result of their decisions.

It shouldn't be necessary, but sadly it is.

 

[brogdale]

Yes, of course, you're quite right. It's abhorrent that the politicians/government that get us into those wars then abnegate their responsibilities to those who have suffered and continue to suffer harm as a result of their decisions.

It shouldn't be necessary, but sadly it is.

Yes, my personal experience of discussion with family (older) & friends confirms that few people see that aspect of the spectacle. It's the unthinking, uncritical nature of the mass acceptance of the whole poppy show as a somehow sacred & patriotic contribution that bothers me.

 

[bellaozzydog]

I'm sure that's correct, but the whole poppy thing disguises the fact that there is an employer that has caused its 'workforce' to be killed/damaged and then outsources to a charitable organisation to fund and effect the (after) care necessary.

This

Does the penny never drop that the government avoids dealing with the fallout and damage of their operations by relying almost entirely on charity

Armed forces charities are basically a stealth tax on society to paper over the gaps left by lack of government provision for support of damaged ex military

It’s insane if you think about it. Squaddies/ex squaddies/squaddies families running up mountains with fridges or skydiving octogenarians to generate donations to support service personnel who have been damaged in the line of policy

 

[mojo pixy]

When I was a kid, WW2 seemed so long ago, then around the millennium I realised my birthday was as long ago as the end of the war had been when I was born. Now of course if I imagine stuff that happened 27 years ago, that only puts us in 1996, which adds to the perspective of how WW2 looked to the grownups in my world in the year I was born.

Both my grandads did military service, my dad's dad (a card-carrying communist no less) had it easy, stewarding in the RAF at a big base near Calcutta. From what he said about the experience, his biggest problem was the prickly heat.

My mum's dad had a much harder war and had z bunch of medals to show for it. After serving a few months in prison for going AWOL in 1940 he ended up a courier in North Africa in the 8th army and was at El Alamein. He was in Italy after that, and finally was on Gold beach at D-Day. He was invalided out when his bike was shot by a German sniper near Caen, and it crushed both his legs. My mum had his army paybook which was covered in dried blood, and a note inside stated he had been discharged in June 1944 as being 'unable to fulfil his duties'. That really struck me as heartless, as a kid.

My granny (his wife) also talked about a cousin of hers who was a gunner in the air force. He was one of the very few observant jews in the extended family and was captured after his bomber crashed. He spent a year in a special camp (later research revealed this might have been Buchenwald?) and was lucky to come home. She said he slept on the floor for years afterwards, and never talked about what he saw in the camp. Both he and my mum's dad the ex-courier, had died before I was born, so I actually never met either of them.

I wear a white poppy because a lot more than just servicemen died during the wars.