Nearing the end of wars in general, people usually think of one stereotypical thing: that a particular country will win and another will suffer a loss, usually a bigger loss than they thought they could repay. However, this isn't necessarily the only perspective that we should look into when talking about wars. So what exactly makes up wars? Country disagreements, weapons, cannons, bombs, large amount of casualties (sometimes even more, like a couple millions), soldiers, generals, and definitely a whole bunch of PTSD's (which stands for post traumatic stress disorder) after the war is over, whether from the winning or losing side. It all starts with a country either being unreasonable or wanting to fight for their values, which probably offends some other country and they would start gathering up their military and weaponry, train the soldiers (and in some cases, put up signs around the neighborhood for young men who want to help the country, for the adventure, expectations of the family, and other reasons), and etc.
One of these examples come from the film we finished watching last week, "The Doughboys". In the film, a couple veterans from WWI talked about their experiences during and after the war. Being a soldier, the veterans had all mentioned, was basically putting your life on the line for the freedom of the country, even when knowing there's a possible chance that they might not succeed. Seeing hundreds of their comrades die each day forced them into the mindset of living each day as if it was their last. While during the war itself, the majority of the soldiers had no time to react or use their emotions to dictate their actions, even if it meant heavy consequences or such. They had to kill the enemy like killing an object, in another word, dehumanize the enemy, even if that person might be a father, husband, a son, or etc. After the war ends, the rush of guilt comes back to haunt these soldiers that lived on to tell the tale with full force, with varying degrees of it. Some have nightmares about killing a man who was only trying to plead for help rather than cause harm or accidentally killing one of their own friends in battle. Others constantly feel the guilt of not being able to save their friends when they were just a couple steps away, and etc. At the end of the film, many veterans who were speakers concluded altogether that going to war was a really dumb thing to do, losing so many lives and families just to prove a point, and the results sometimes isn't even what we hoped for in the first place. "War is hell" they had spoken.
War is sometimes inevitable with different countries existing at the same time. There will always be strong differences in opinion and values. I think a lot of the cause of war is nationalism and ethnocentrism, where someone thinks their country is the one and only good and their values and customs are superior. They think that they are "correcting" and "helping" other countries that they attack. I do agree that war is dumb but there is no way to prevent it from happening ever.
ReplyDeleteI think that the outcome of a war really depends on what the war was about and who was in the war. For example, a small war over a border dispute is going to be a much smaller outcome compared to one country completely overtaking another.
ReplyDeleteI think that World War I was interesting in that towards the close of the war, there was more talk about "peace without victory" then there was about "victory". The Allied troops simply wanted peace, while the Central powers were still looking to win the war and proclaim victory. This probably affected the soldier's motivations in the last couple of years of WWI, as Allied troops were not fighting for victory but Central troops were.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I feel like the Central troops were trying to protect their pride and a bit too arrogant to admit to losing so they keep fighting to preserve that. But then if the Allied troops wanted peace, couldn't they just have worked out something with treaties of some kind to stop the war? Or was that inevitable at the time?
DeleteI think that many soldiers had a misconception when deciding to join the military. In ads, serving in the military was glorified, and people decided to enlist with their friends with the expectation that fighting in the war would be something "fun." However, once people actually got to war, that misconception they had changed quickly, as they learned that war would be something scary rather than glorious.
ReplyDeleteI think that the view of the soldiers in the documentary really depict the realities of war. Many soldiers went to war because they thought it could make them heroes with their group of friends. The obvious problem was that if a group of friends was put in a bad situation, many of them would get killed. This was very hard on the group because they had to leave their friends to die on the battle field. In the end, war was a big disaster for all the soldiers that went to war, even though they made it back alive.
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