Public opinion and conflict seem to have a complex relation and
predictable phases that follow the seasons of war.
Before the show starts, jingoism is emergent and it ought to be
illegal to rattle sabres and call for blood where peace is still
possible. That changes quickly, there is a definite threshold.
Once the game is on, one has to move with the crowd. To not support
the war is demoralising, treacherous even. And this rises as the first
body bags come home and mothers weep.
In the middle phase, people are stoic and quiet. Soldiers have "a job
to do" and we must "grin and bear it".
Without swift victory, then comes the point of fatigue and economic
pain. Too many dead children on the TV. But the protestors are in a
minority and need great courage to point the way to an exit. That's
when tactical silencing of dissent can happen. The idea that opposing
the war is the same as siding with the enemy comes to the fore.
As the tide turns, even millions on the streets (Vietnam, Iraq), or
the advice of generals (Afghanistan) cannot overcome the pride of
miscalculating leaders. But at that point public opinion has passed
the threshold the other way.
By the end it is shameful to still support a lost war (and sometimes,
depending on the cost, even a victorious one).
Long before it ended WWI was universally seen as "insane" by all
sides.
Perhaps my historical education is wanting, but only the second world
war seems to have a clear narrative of victory over evil, with a
constancy of support for Allied triumph which I think even the
exhausted Germans and Japanese felt toward the end. That "just war"
model is wheeled out and is still active apropos Ukraine.
WW2 as a just war is only true to an extent. To an Indian, an Arab or an African, it was not a war of liberation.
Let's not forget that Britain worried about the loss of its colonies, that the Soviet Union started and ended the war as an invader, that France was as worried about the socialists at home as they were about the Nazis at the border, that Paris was liberated by colonial troops, but it's the Europeans who got a parade on the Champs Elysées, that everyone bombed civilians, that victors made immoral concessions in preparation for the next war, that the faith of entire nations was decided on a napkin in Potsdam.
War is messy. Geopolitics are rarely a history of good guys and bad guys.
Hope I'm not misunderstanding your comment and over-egging the reply.
Irony isn't a particularly useful concept when dealing with speech on
the internet, which is fragmented and in ambiguous contexts.
And it goes against HN guidelines to proffer the most generous and
sincere writing/interpretation possible.
There's a difference between irony and sarcasm, prevalent here, and
both definitions are largely abused or misunderstood these days.
Look for words like "seemed", which invokes the concept of appearance
and therefore implicitly casts doubt on appearances.
What I am conveying here, by "narrative" (story/account) is that as a
mature person, with some experience of the matters, I have many
reservations about the way things were told to me growing up by
"authority" figures from my past.
That's not really irony. More of a sceptical tone. Sceptical about
the whole way that "war narratives" and public opinion is spun.
I can’t speak to Japan, but your account of Germany leaves out some major details.
Germany was allowed heavy industry after the war, but defaulted on its reparation payment in 1923. France and Belgium thought Germany was holding out on them, and decided to “confiscate” (by occupying with soldiers) German industry.
This was pretty agregious, but Germany responded by the government asking workers to passively resist, more or less triggering a general strike, with the government printing money to cover the wages of all the striking workers. Naturally, if only a few workers are still making things, but the government is paying everyone their salary, it should be no surprise that this triggered hyperinflation.
I don’t know what you mean about “the west” pushing its ideology on Germany when Germany itself is part of that intellectual and cultural group. In fact, the Weimar Republic was culturally quite rich, and relatively progressive compared to other western nations. Unless you’re talking about how the Nazis took inspiration from the segregation in the United States, but I don’t think the US was particularly interested in exporting it.
If you dig deep into the origins of Nazi ideology (this book is a good source [1]) it’s obvious 99% of it came from historical European sources and regional issues. Often German thinkers but also across Europe (including France and Italy). There was enough local cultural and economic anxieties to draw from.
The Germans using America’s racial conflicts was usually mentioned in passing for analogy or for propaganda purposes. But it was hardly the ideological source of the antisemitism, German border fears, anti-Russia, and Lebensraum.
It’s trendy to compare America to 1930s Germany. But trying to spin the ideological origin of Nazi thought as being inspired by fringes of the US shows a severe lack of historical research. There was more than enough cultural sources at home in Germany.
I do read widely and appreciate your suggestion. What do you recommend
as the must-read, accessible and honest and intelligent account of
civilian life in Germany during that period. Thanks.
Rather than giving specifics I’d try to focus on popular (translated) speeches from the time from Germany, Russia, France, UK, US. Read old news papers if you can as well (there are archives online). That’ll give you more of a “heart beat” of what’s going on.
The geopolitics of the time I developed from reading probably a hundred or so books on it. When you get a history book they have citations, go through those and find a few to read. You’ll get closer to the source material.
Sorry for being “loose” in my particulars of recommendations. I really do think for understanding civilian life newspapers might be the best basis (it’s most of the original source material).
I’m not the OP but like reading about the interwar period, particularly in Russia.
You really can’t view The Second World War in isolation, as it was directly related to World War One, particular in Germany and Russia.
It was utter chaos politically and following any thread though the period is very complicated.
It isn’t really about Germany, but gives an idea of the complexity of the era and of German politics, Lenin on the Train by Catherine Merridale is a good read.
I thought I would also suggest the Iron Dice podcast and specifically the “fight for the republic” numbered series episodes, which cover the power struggle in Germany between WW1 and WW2:
https://www.theirondice.com/
> Similarly, the US cut off oil and resources to Japan.
The US ""cut off"" oil to Japan by having possession of the Philiphines, which was situated directly between Japan and the Dutch East Indes. The Dutch East Indes had the oil, the Dutch didn't want to sell it to Japan, and Japan intended to take it by force so they could fuel their conquest of China. The American-occupied Philippines were between the two, so Japanese military leadership decided to eliminate the American Navy first.
Japan were not victims in this. It was their imperial ambition that did them in.
This post is repugnant, and wrong as a matter of historical fact. You’re brazenly attempting to whitewash the monstrous crimes of Nazi Germany. I’ve never seen “Lost Cause of the Third Reich” historiography, and I’d never expect to see it on HN.
WW2 was an imperial war of aggression waged by a revanchist fascist state that felt entitled to land that other people were already living on, and resources other people already owned - a problem they attempted to solve by simply murdering all of them.
Boxed in? Boxed in by what, exactly? The inconvenient existence of the Czechs and Poles? Germany somehow manages to be far richer today than it was in 1933 - and it does this with less land / resources, and the overbearing influence of the Anglo-Saxon culture you openly deride. If Germany today can resist going on to murder millions of people for land and resources, it’s unclear to me why the larger and more resource-filled Germany of 1933 couldn’t similarly restrain itself. (Hint: because WW2 had nothing at all to do with any justifiable need for resources, but instead the jingoistic ambitions of a culture that saw itself as the master race, deserving of a place atop all others, and seething at its failure to secure the privileges it felt it was owed by reason of its own racial supremacy.)
Worst of all is your casual suggestion that Germany would be better off if it had retained more of its pre-1945 culture. I struggle to put this in any other way, but you’re saying you wish Germany today was culturally more like Nazi Germany, and I honestly don’t know what to say to that. As someone who would have been murdered for about three different reasons by the refined bearers of pre-1945 German culture, I have some choice words in mind.
Before the show starts, jingoism is emergent and it ought to be illegal to rattle sabres and call for blood where peace is still possible. That changes quickly, there is a definite threshold.
Once the game is on, one has to move with the crowd. To not support the war is demoralising, treacherous even. And this rises as the first body bags come home and mothers weep.
In the middle phase, people are stoic and quiet. Soldiers have "a job to do" and we must "grin and bear it".
Without swift victory, then comes the point of fatigue and economic pain. Too many dead children on the TV. But the protestors are in a minority and need great courage to point the way to an exit. That's when tactical silencing of dissent can happen. The idea that opposing the war is the same as siding with the enemy comes to the fore.
As the tide turns, even millions on the streets (Vietnam, Iraq), or the advice of generals (Afghanistan) cannot overcome the pride of miscalculating leaders. But at that point public opinion has passed the threshold the other way.
By the end it is shameful to still support a lost war (and sometimes, depending on the cost, even a victorious one).
Long before it ended WWI was universally seen as "insane" by all sides.
Perhaps my historical education is wanting, but only the second world war seems to have a clear narrative of victory over evil, with a constancy of support for Allied triumph which I think even the exhausted Germans and Japanese felt toward the end. That "just war" model is wheeled out and is still active apropos Ukraine.