The consequences of World War II
World War II is often considered the last good war. In contrast to the wars that followed, Korea and Vietnam, it is said that mainly World War II had a clear purpose: the crushing of Nazism and fascism and all the horrible things represented. The description of ‘last good war’ also implies that the result, unlike later wars, was an unequivocal victory for the United States and its allies: a victory for freedom and democracy. Korea is still divided. Vietnam unified under chi minh.
But in World War II, good triumphed over evil. Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and imperial Japan were complete. And France and the rest of Western Europe were released from tyranny.
Unfortunately, history is not so simple and the consequences of World War II are much more complex. A complete accounting is a serious matter that makes registration less decisive in regard to freedom and truth. This does not imply that the defeat of Nazism and fascism was not a good thing, but only to indicate that even a war with such a result can have bad consequences.
In 1989, Paul Fussell wrote Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, a book in which he described some of the immediate consequences of war. The book was widely criticized for tarnishing the image of World War II. To be assumed that Fussell was not surprised. He wrote that even those who fought in the war "knew that in their representation to the laity what was happening to them was systematically sanitized and Norman rockwellized, not to mention Disneyfied …
The United States has not yet understood how World War II was and, therefore, it has not been able to use that understanding to reinterpret and redefine national reality and reach something like public maturity ”. America continues protected from the real war for works such as Time-Lifeserie. Only a small number of people realizes that the last good war was really horrible;that the allies, as well as the powers of the axis, committed obscene atrocities;And that both parties made horrible mistakes.
‘How is it possible that these data are common places only for a small number that had some direct experience with them?’Ask Fussell. “A reason is the normal human talent to look at the positive side, not to receive information that can cause anguish or cause an important review of normal ethical, political or psychological assumptions. But the most important reason is that the great audience in times of war never knew these things. Typography correspondents, radio broadcasters and the people of the cinema who perceived these horrors kept silence on them in the name of the war effort ‘.
Decades of such public relations treatment have had its effect on the American people. "Now, fifty years later," writes Fussell, "there has been so much about" the good war ", the justified war, the necessary war and things like that, that young and innocent could have the impression that it was reallyIt is not something so bad after all. Therefore, it is necessary to observe that it was a war and nothing else, and therefore, stupid and sadistic … ".
There is a simple reason for all the effort dedicated to portraying World War as ‘Nothing so bad after everything’. Ultimately, the State consolidates its control over society promising to repel the barbarians who always seem to be about to assault the doors of civilization. And if we believe this, we will anxiously deliver freedom and treasure to state officers in exchange for security.
And in case we ask ourselves if the barbarians are really conspiring to assault the doors, the State can point out recent episodes when they really did it and when the State protected us from them. Therefore, the function of the "World War II line as the last good war" is to prevent people from asking uncomfortable questions about the legitimacy of Leviathan.
The war was charged about 50 million lives. More civilians died than combatants. Horrible deaths died due to explosion, fire storm, vaporization, suffocation, exhibition, starvation. Historian Ralph Raico has asked. ‘If capitalism is criticized for treating human beings as merchandise, what can we say about an institution, the State, which treats human beings as garbage?’
The historian c. Hartley Grattan wrote in 1949: “Of the material costs [of war], the major undoubtedSpecific was directed. The assault on homes is one of the great horrors of war … Air attacks of terror and destruction were considered successful almost in proportion to the number of people who lost their homes. ”.
According to another historian, William Henry Chamberlin, “approximately twenty of every one hundred residences in Germany were destroyed. Two million and a quarter of homes were destroyed in Japan and 460.000 in Great Britain. One in five Greeks was homeless and 28.000 homes in Rotterdam were razed … Ironically, the French suffered more for the bombings of their US and British liberators ’than for the air attacks of their German invaders‘.
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