They actually saved the world:

This might come as a bit of a shock to some, but the united states wasn’t the only country fighting against the nazis. In fact the US was actually quite content to sit back and watch Europe get pummeled for a few years until Pearl Harbor, then swoop in at the last minute and take all the credit.

Many nations paid in blood, bone and bodies. However the root problems of scarcity, and a lack of education caused the war. World war one, left germany in a terrible state.

You can’t have all the cookies
But you also can’t have no cookies.

Starving uneducated war orphans don’t choose the best friends, or leaders.

Epic deprevity breeds bitter jealousy.

Lock incoming in 3…2…1…

WWII was really just WWI act II. The problem with WWI was that the nations involved were trying to use old school tactics with new age weapons, they really didn’t have any experience fighting large scale wars with machine guns and mortars. Ultimately things boiled down to trench warfare in which after months of fighting one side was lucky to have gained a few feet worth of territory.

Eventually the nations at odds realized the pointlessness and Germany felt they ended up with the short end of the stick, but really most nations involved suffered great losses. With the advent of the airplane trench warfare became obsolete.

I wouldn’t say anyone was particularly uneducated compared to anyone else, neither would I say there was any reason for jealousy between nations, while Germany was hit hard by the Great Depression so too were many other nations including the United States.

Like between any two given wars the break between WWI and WWII was merely an intermission for which the opposing sides recouped their losses, entered into an arms race and then went to war when at least one felt they had the upper hand.

The cycle has repeated itself quite a bit in our brief history. Prepare for war, go to war, sign treaty, prepare for war.

The United States, Russia, the UK, Germany, France, etcetera are hardly the worst offenders of this cycle, merely willing participants like any other.

Edit: No one ever wins though

the russians broke the nazis back when hitler decided to invade moscow in the cold season. the toll on lives on both sides was astronomical.

I agree, Hitler’s decision to invade Russia was a huge mistake. Was it the single mistake that cost him the war, possibly, but not definitely.

The interesting thing between arms races and wars is that they don’t always turn out the way you might expect. Germany basically won the arms race leading up to WWII, but lost the war.

Rather than side on the fence line, my subject material for this argument will be based on actuallity. It was through cities, forests and unclaimed lands that it was decided.

Attachments


This is an argument? I rather thought it was a discussion/analysis of WWII or The Great Patriotic War as it is known in Russia.

Do you people not have anything to render?

Old Ike used the words ‘Allied’ and ‘Allies’ in the first 30 seconds of his announcement. “…then swoop in at the last minute and take all the credit” I had a Uncle who hit one of those beaches in the 1st wave as a young man and that day wasn’t his first rodeo by the way.

The thread was intended to simply pay tribute to all the allied countries and those men and women who paid with their lives and service so many years ago. And, with that thought in mind I won’t be revisiting here again.

@theoldghost: My grandfather almost died via a Nazi grenade, to hear him tell the story he picked it up and threw it back. People the world over have very different takes on the war and I was merely trying to point that out. I meant no offense

@Kazinger: I really enjoy rendering, but I am a man of many talents. As much as I enjoy working with Blender I wouldn’t let it monopolize my time. :slight_smile:

As a side note I’m happy to admit that I did seem to wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning so I apologize if I seemed a bit uncouth. Not to get off topic, but I woke up to a message about getting booted from under my current roof if I didn’t comply with some order which irked me a good deal. The message was relayed to me via a third party who, as it turns out, made it seem a lot worse than it actually was. After viewing the original message I found it to be a rather cordial request as opposed to an ultimatum.

I thank each and every day I have not had to live through such terror. Some of the horror stories I’ve heard from my grandparents of Doodlebugs, the Russian Convoys, hiding from the bombardment during the Battle of Britain are enough to send shivers down your spine. Thinking about it, I wished my grandparents had lived in peaceful times, and that my parents did not have to endure the hardships of recovery afterwards, during the 50s and 60s.

The world does in fact need saving, from war, ignorance and inequity.

The wars that have been fought, and hard won, there is honor in serving and doing what you think is right, but the reasons for war are often found out too late.

Stopping the cycles of war and peace in favor of just peace is a lot easier said than done.

After the central powers were defeated in World War 1, the Geneva convention was held where one of its purposes was to place an international ban on war. This however was done in total disconnection from reality because a rogue nation still has full power to do whatever it wants, so if they wanted to build an empire, they’ll just walk their troops into other countries while not giving a poop on what the rest of the world thinks.

Anyway, the world is just not going to go into a state of utopia where high technology is everywhere and there’s nothing but peace and harmony, because the innate desire of the human being will allow new ideologies and brands of extremism to come up which will eventually lead to the birth of more rogue states. The best we can do then is at least isolate these unstable leaders so as to minimize the chance of mass conflict, the extent of human suffering, and the duration of the events because of their behavior.

Some good points all around.

Unfortunately the after effects of war last far longer than one might think. After the war the soldier himself is left with long lasting psychological damage that not only effects his or her own life, but their children and their children’s children.

The psychological effects of war on the individual are profound, one of the primary effects of this, I believe, is the objectification of the person or disconnection from emotional attachment to people. Now having been removed from emotional connection to people the soldier is tasked with raising children to which this psychological damage is passed.

I’m not going to go into great detail here, but I can assure you that my mother, whose father, my grandfather, was a soldier in the war, along with her two siblings had what I would refer to as extremely traumatic childhoods. Beaten with braided whips, emotionally beaten, and even picked up by their hair and thrown… By the very people who were supposed to love them the most.

This leads the child to have an emotional disconnection from people, to view people not as friends and confidants, but as enemies who are to be feared. While I believe the damage caused by war fades with each successive generation it is actually a great deal of time that must pass before the damage can be undone.

As far as rogue leaders bringing their nations to war, perhaps the problem lies in that people place too much trust in their leaders. For what person could start a war if he had no army to follow him? In reading about Native American culture war was not particularly common, moreover war itself was not particularly brutal in comparison to western civilization’s take on war.

In addition to that Native American tribes generally had no leaders, while there were chiefs and shamans, the individual themselves were not required to obey any one or more individuals. This made it hard when western civilization arrived on the doorstep of Native American culture, europeans were looking for someone to negotiate with, someone that could make decisions for the whole tribe, but there was none.

Native American’s, unlike their european counterparts, considered all people equals, not only from different tribes, but even men and women which is something that western civilization didn’t achieve until much later in life. Nonetheless western civilization labeled Native American tribes savages.

While the Native American tribes certainly weren’t perfect, I find their lack of “conform and obey” ideology made them considerably more peaceful and accepting. One reason western civilization found it so easy to take advantage of the Native American tribes is likely due to the tribe being more trusting and accepting of people. Europeans were used to distrusting one another, used to fearing one another while the Native Americans were used to trusting one another and having good reason to trust one another.

Native American’s quickly found that, unlike with one another, wherever they trusted the europeans they were lied to. When the europeans promised peace, they made war. Where the europeans promised trade, there was theft.

Moreover, unlike western civilization’s take on raising children, the Native American’s did not ever beat their children. They found european styles of parenthood barbaric. I would say that, unlike modern cultures, the Native American’s didn’t just say they believed in equality, they truly believed in and practiced it.

Edit:
Native American’s were not required to obey a chief. The chief was someone they looked to for social guidance, he gave advice, but did not dictate laws. An individual was in no way required to obey the advice given by a chief and it wasn’t at all uncommon for someone to go against the advice given by a chief.

Native American’s often took the advice, not because they had to, they didn’t, but because the advice was often pretty good. They looked to a chief for social advice, looked to a shaman for spiritual advice and looked to a warrior for advice on the battlefield, but were in no way required to obey any of this advice.

What was once a fairly peaceful and fertile land was brutally conquered by western civilization and is now one of the world’s most warring nations going to war, roughly on average, every eleven years. That average does not include the cold-war or the war on drugs. Heh, war on drugs, apparently traditional war wasn’t enough and they’ve taken to declaring war on inanimate objects too.

If you have control over the education system, you would be able to soak the populace in state-approved propaganda from preschool age so they believe whatever interpretation they say about anything. Once a person becomes an adult, it can be very hard to reverse a lifetime of misinformation being fed into them because they’ve been thoroughly conditioned and groomed to be cheerleaders of their nation and their leader’s decision.

This essentially means you guide a population into forgetting the past while feeding them a distorted and rewritten view of what happened, and there are some countries that are experts at doing this (North Korea anyone?).

That said, some of the possible alternatives like anarchy are even worse, a system of government and authority that dictates what is considered right and wrong is what keeps society from obliteration, and I don’t know if the Native American system would even work with 300 million people as seen in the US right now.

@Ace Dragon:
I really don’t know much about North Korea, from what I gather they seem to use a more physical method of subjugation as opposed to the psychological method’s you speak of, although I’m sure they do employ similar methods. As a child in the United States I recall being required to pledge allegiance to the flag every day in school.

The United States is the world’s largest producer of serial killers and their children are literally murdering one another. I know I pick on America a lot when I talk about problems facing society, but it’s only because I live here and know the problems facing American society well. In my studies I have found not one single nation where society is not plagued with depression, theft and murder.

The problem with any form of authority determining right and wrong is that you’d be hard pressed to find any two people that agree on what is right and wrong. Look at the republican’s and democrats in the US, they are at each others throats, things have boiled down to the point where, in many cases, they literally hate one another. This rings true not only for the politicians, but also for the average voter. Internet forums ban political discussion because when you get a democrat and a republican together in a room there’s going to be blood on the walls. Hell, I learned to speak both republican and democrat just so that when I get in a room with one or the other I can speak their language well enough not to get socked in the face.

It’s easy for me to have lost faith in any form of government, personally I feel that current american politicians act like children towards one another and I don’t find children to be very good leaders.

As for Native American culture I think it could work with 300 million people, maybe it just doesn’t seem that way because so many of those people have been deeply psychologically damaged from eons of war. I believe it takes many generations to heal the damage done by war, if we’re not going to stop refreshing that damage now then when? We now have the capability to completely destroy the entire planet, more than once even. If we’re not going to stop fighting now then when?

Edit:
As for things being passed down from generation to generation my girlfriend just reminded me of an article I read not long ago. The phenomenon is not limited to human beings.

The article I refer to was about deer living in a region where there used to be an electrified fence dividing the USSR from NATO. That fence is gone now and has been for quite some time, but the deer, none of which were alive when the fence was present, still avoid where the fence used to be.

The deer learned from their parents that the region was dangerous and even though the fence has been removed they still won’t travel to the region.

Edit:
Years ago I was stuck in a really bad relationship with someone. After years of fighting one day I finally said “what are we doing here? This obviously isn’t working.”

As a race of beings when are we going to reach that point? When are we finally going to throw in the towel and say what are we doing here? When are we finally going to look around us and say this obviously isn’t working. Centuries, nay, millenia of political bickering and brutal war. When are we going to say this isn’t working?

Years ago when I first took a really good hard look around I was pissed. I was really really angry. I felt cheated because I had trusted the government so much. Because I had believed in them so much and then to really look around and find out that in so long they had done absolutely nothing to fix anything.

Is this not something the moderators usually close? Now your talking politics. There are some things you just do not talk about in a room of strangers. I do not want to hear anybodies opinion of America or the democratic or the Republican party or your opinion of war. If you are not smart enough to not write about these topics here then you do not understand these topics.

Why are you trying to censor? Reason, you dont want people to start thinking!?