WWI - Not so bad after all...according to Dan Snow

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

BBC and Dan Snow doing their bit to make this centenary a more joyful occaision? I get the feeling there's gonna be more pageantry and bunting than the jubilee and royal wedding combined with the WWI 'celebrations'.

Much of what we think we know about the 1914-18 conflict is wrong, writes historian Dan Snow.
No war in history attracts more controversy and myth than World War One.
For the soldiers who fought it was in some ways better than previous conflicts, and in some ways worse.
By setting it apart as uniquely awful we are blinding ourselves to the reality of not just WW1 but war in general. We are also in danger of belittling the experience of soldiers and civilians caught up in countless other appalling conflicts throughout history and the present day.

Read the 'Top 10 Myths Debunked' here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25776836

[piet11111]

Whitewashing history is a good start in preparing for another war.

Especially handy is that virtually all the veterans who fought those wars have died off by now and the handful that might still be alive are easily ignored.

[Geiseric]

Wow BBC somehow keeps lowering my expectations from bourgeois ideology. What an asshole, I'd bet snow would rather pay for substitutes than personally die for imperialism.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Many young men enjoyed the guaranteed pay, the intense comradeship, the responsibility and a much greater sexual freedom than in peacetime Britain.

Yes, wasn't all that rape wonderful? Great sexual liberty! Take what you want! I hate this fucking tool. I saw him on those awful documentaries with his father. While his father was all right as far as a presenter was concerned, whenever this feller himself showed up it'd be some silliness and I felt embarrassed for even watching.

[tallguy]

BBC and Dan Snow doing their bit to make this centenary a more joyful occaision? I get the feeling there's gonna be more pageantry and bunting than the jubilee and royal wedding combined with the WWI 'celebrations'.

Much of what we think we know about the 1914-18 conflict is wrong, writes historian Dan Snow.
No war in history attracts more controversy and myth than World War One.
For the soldiers who fought it was in some ways better than previous conflicts, and in some ways worse.
By setting it apart as uniquely awful we are blinding ourselves to the reality of not just WW1 but war in general. We are also in danger of belittling the experience of soldiers and civilians caught up in countless other appalling conflicts throughout history and the present day.

Read the 'Top 10 Myths Debunked' here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25776836
We are being culturally prepared for WW3.

[ChrisK]

My favorite is the last one. If you didn't have to fight on the front, it was pretty awesome. All the meat and fucking French girls you could want without having to deal with that pesky artillery (which also wasn't that bad).

[ed miliband]

I remember on Christmas Day as part of the news the bbc aired a segment about some generals on Christmas Day in the trenches. I can't remember the exact details, but what made me sick was the way they said that 'unlike other men' these men refused to socialise with 'enemy forces'. Of course, it's not particularly surprising, but the sheer hatred one could hear in the narrators voice almost took me aback.

That other cornerstone of liberal Britain the new statesman recently published a piece on how the British upper class faced a bigger share of the brunt than the working class. I despise these people.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

To be fair, I think one of his points is reasonable - WWI wasn't in every way worse than every other war in history, which is an equally reactionary idea thrown around. It makes it out to be that WW1 was somehow more Imperialist and worse for the soldiers on the front than, say, the Imperial wars in Africa. I don't think that dying in the trenches to German gas was that much worse than dying in Ghana fighting the Ashanti to yellow fever. It plays into this idea that WW1 was somehow an aberration, and that soldiers in other wars didn't suffer as much or that the motives of their leaders was no less driven by desires for Imperial economic dominance. The only thing that was an aberration in WW1 was that the two sides were more evenly matched, meaning that a much greater proportion of the population of both sides ended up suffering for a longer period of time.

IMO that historical myth has played as much of a role in justifying Imperialist war as some of the claims which he is making could. It minimizes the suffering that soldiers on one or both sides will face in a modern war, and it minimizes the imperialist motives of one or both sides in current wars. Granted, the better way to make that argument is to emphasize the problems with these other wars than minimize the costs of WW1.

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

To be fair, I think one of his points is reasonable - WWI wasn't in every way worse than every other war in history, which is an equally reactionary idea thrown around. It makes it out to be that WW1 was somehow more Imperialist and worse for the soldiers on the front than, say, the Imperial wars in Africa. I don't think that dying in the trenches to German gas was that much worse than dying in Ghana fighting the Ashanti to yellow fever. It plays into this idea that WW1 was somehow an aberration, and that soldiers in other wars didn't suffer as much or that the motives of their leaders was no less driven by desires for Imperial economic dominance. The only thing that was an aberration in WW1 was that the two sides were more evenly matched, meaning that a much greater proportion of the population of both sides ended up suffering for a longer period of time.

IMO that historical myth has played as much of a role in justifying Imperialist war as some of the claims which he is making could. It minimizes the suffering that soldiers on one or both sides will face in a modern war, and it minimizes the imperialist motives of one or both sides in current wars. Granted, the better way to make that argument is to emphasize the problems with these other wars than minimize the costs of WW1.

A fair point, other wars seem to be viewed with much less scrutiny and with less horror, especially the 'here we come to save the day' wars from Korea to Kosovo and the wars of outright conquest in Africa and elsewhere.

[Sea]

We are also in danger of belittling the experience of soldiers and civilians caught up in countless other appalling conflicts throughout history and the present day.How the fuck does one prevent whitewashing the horrors of war by whitewashing the horrors of war?

[IBleedRed]

WWI enabled the Russian Revolution to happen, so at least there's that.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It's just terrible history. He should be ashamed to be associated with that article, riddled with half-truths and obfuscating, misleading statements.

[goalkeeper]

From the article:
Although more Britons died in WW1 than any other conflict, the bloodiest war in our history relative to population size is the Civil War which raged in the mid-17th Century. It saw a far higher proportion of the population of the British Isles killed than the less than 2% who died in WW1. By contrast around 4% of the population of England and Wales, and considerably more than that in Scotland and Ireland, are thought to have been killed in the Civil War.

So 2% of the population died in WW1 and 4% in the Civil War. The comparison is silly though. In the Civil War both sides of the casualties are factored into that 4% of British population, considering it was...a civil war, whereas the WW1 statistic is only showing one side of the belligerents in the war.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Two strong points:

1. WWI - not quite so wildly horrible a thing to fight in as the Crimean War, as described in Iron Maiden's The Trooper (http://www.revleft.com/vb/www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTaD9cd8hvw‎).

2. A whole lot of spoiled brat officers were gunned down in their prime. Hooray!

[Rugged Collectivist]

From the article:

So 2% of the population died in WW1 and 4% in the Civil War. The comparison is silly though. In the Civil War both sides of the casualties are factored into that 4% of British population, considering it was...a civil war, whereas the WW1 statistic is only showing one side of the belligerents in the war.

Maybe he only cares about British deaths.

[DasFapital]

Stupid whining proles only had to spend 10 days at a time in the trenches

[human strike]

Fucking TV historians! Why are they always so shit? Dan Snow, Simon Schama, David Starkey, Niall Ferguson, all of them, horrendous! I swear the only decent historians to ever appear on TV were Michael Wood and AJP Taylor.

[Invader Zim]

Yes, wasn't all that rape wonderful? Great sexual liberty! Take what you want! I hate this fucking tool. I saw him on those awful documentaries with his father. While his father was all right as far as a presenter was concerned, whenever this feller himself showed up it'd be some silliness and I felt embarrassed for even watching.

Umm, when Snow is talking about greater sexual freedom, he is obviously not referring to rape.

While some of his points are (highly) debatable, people criticizing him here don't have a clue what they are talking about. The fact is that the First World War, while a tragic waste of human life, which placed people in appalling conditions, has acquired its share of popular myths - most implying it was worse than even the most grievous of other wars. As noted Snow's points are in some cases open to debate, but his central argument is undeniably accurate.

[Chris Knight]

Opposing the official commemorations of the start of World War I and opposing future wars

12.00 - 1.00 pm, this Saturday, February 15 at the Bank of Ideas (Occupy London’s new space) 238 Grays Inn Road, WC1X 8HB Chancery Lane/King’s Cross tube

Meeting organised by ‘Remembering the Real World War I’

The next ‘Remembering the Real World War I’ meeting will be 7.30 pm, Thursday February 20, 88 Fleet St (next to St. Bride’s Church) EC4 1DH

For further meetings, articles, films etc. see therealww1.wordpress.com

[Psuedo reality prevails]

Interesting thread. I'm not sure I really want to bother listening to that Snow character, but I'm almost envious in a way of this sort of "debate". Down here in NZ the level of critical reflection is shockingly low. It doesn't seem to be any kind of issue that over 2700 NZers were killed in Gallipoli, without benefit to anyone. The war as such, what it meant, why we were involved etc etc is completely swept aside under a tidal wave of sentimental "remembrance". People just love to "remember" all those brave dead soldiers, the reality of the past doesn't get much of a look in.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

if we're talking about horrible wars why have I never seen a documentary on national telly about the Thirty Years War? Arguably that was the most destructive war in European history at least, knocked as much as 11% off the population through disease, famine and atrocities and wrecked the economy of the Holy Roman Empire in some places for three or four generations.

That said if we're looking at mad destructive 17th century wars the Thirty Years War looks like a bar brawl in comparison to the conquest of Ming China at (roughly) a similar time.

[exeexe]

Ofcourse WWI was worse than any other wars in history why? Because it was an attack on the working class. Whats the best way to kill a disobedient worker? Make another worker kill him. And so they did. Both sides just amazed huge armies of workers and ordered them to run into frenzy machine gun fire. And when they were in the trenches there were the artillery to take them out.

So why in 1914 and not earlier? The working class was waking up at that time, the ruling class had to do something. If they had waited a few more years the workers would had been ready to launch an international general strike and take down the bloody nightmare called imperialist capitalism in Europe.
The fact that Russia had a revolution at that time is a testimony to how dire the situation really was.

[Conscript]

Umm, when Snow is talking about greater sexual freedom, he is obviously not referring to rape.

While some of his points are (highly) debatable, people criticizing him here don't have a clue what they are talking about. The fact is that the First World War, while a tragic waste of human life, which placed people in appalling conditions, has acquired its share of popular myths - most implying it was worse than even the most grievous of other wars. As noted Snow's points are in some cases open to debate, but his central argument is undeniably accurate.

This might as well be a troll post :laugh: Why don't you elaborate instead of asserting and making snipes?

[ComradeOm]

Ofcourse WWI was worse than any other wars in history why? Because it was an attack on the working class. Whats the best way to kill a disobedient worker? Make another worker kill him. And so they did. Both sides just amazed huge armies of workers and ordered them to run into frenzy machine gun fire. And when they were in the trenches there were the artillery to take them out.

So why in 1914 and not earlier? The working class was waking up at that time, the ruling class had to do something. If they had waited a few more years the workers would had been ready to launch an international general strike and take down the bloody nightmare called imperialist capitalism in Europe.
The fact that Russia had a revolution at that time is a testimony to how dire the situation really was.It's something of a vanity of mine that I like to think I make constructive posts. I try, albeit not always successfully, to live by the maxim that you should say something useful or not say anything at all. But I'm about to break this rule.

This quoted text is quite possibly one of the stupidest posts that I've read in all my time on RevLeft. I'm struggling to come up with a redeeming aspect to it. The best that I can come up with is that exeexe may not be serious.

To blithely assert that WWI was a deliberate and coordinated attempt to stymie an international revolution via mass warfare is to ignore the growing polarisation and crisis of the early 20th C, the socio-economic analyses of imperialism and imperialist competition, the frantic diplomatic shuttling of the summer of 1914 and, generally, all common sense. It is to disregard history entirely and indulgence in the emptiest of conspiracy theories. I return to the word 'stupid'.

Let's think about this for a moment (and not one more). What you're suggesting is that:

1) The imperialist powers decide to put aside decades of mutual antagonism and imperialist competition in order to put together a global and shadowy conspiracy against the working class. This is despite the fact that in 1914 there is no sign of a mass proletarian revolution breaking out across Europe.

2) The various governments decide against employing their armies domestically (as per 19th C norms) or building police states (as would happen in the 1930s).

3) Instead they decide that the best way to tackle this revolutionary chimera by declaring war on each other. Not only that, they'll deliberately look to rack up massive losses by making the proles "run into frenzy machine gun fire."

4) The result of this concious and coordinated decision to crush the working class is that four of the European empires collapse (triggering a revolutionary wave in the process) and both France and England suffer immense economic damage. Nice job, guys.

I'm going to stop there. I can't even go into how this fantasy is complete lacking in evidence and ignores, well, pretty much everything we know about the war and the events leading to it. This is getting me down. [Edit: And yeah, I'm an asshole. Sue me]