I am not a historian (yes, I know it’s ‘an’ historian but it really does sound pretentious) or a patriot, so I am not going to go on about this, but there are two things that bug the living shit out of me when wars are mentioned, and World Wars in particular. I think these points need to be made because they address the two most irritating misconceptions I tend to find people have about the World Wars, in particular WW2. The songs are really, really fitting too so please don’t just pop them on. Actually listen.
1: Surrender Monkeys
I hear this said about the French all the time by both Brits and Americans and it really annoys me. Germany invaded and overran France in WW2 and their advance ground to a halt there in WW1. In fact in WW1 the extent of the slaughter was unprecedented in the world, and the battles in Northern France are legendary for their brutality and loss of life.
We have a house in France, and in every village there is a war memorial. On every war memorial is a list of names. The list is so long, for both world wars, that it beggars belief the town could have been even half that big in the first place. In most cases families lose numerous men. Over the course of both wars which were, let’s not forget, only twenty years apart, many families suffered double figure losses, and this is in every single tiny little village for miles and miles around.
The UK and the US have no idea what it is like to resist an actual invading army – the Spanish Armada in 1588 is, I believe, the last time Britain has come even close – so we quite simply have no right to judge what we do not understand. Can you imagine German officers in your home town? Can you imagine almost every single man between the age of about 17 and 45 being killed defending his home – literally too, none of this ‘defending our country against Tourism’ bullshit? No you bloody can’t, so if you want to talk Surrender Monkeys do it well the fuck out of my earshot because you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
Leonard Cohen – The Partisan Lyrics (gut-wrenching)
The Men They Couldn’t Hang – The Green Fields of France Lyrics
2: We saved your goddam asses in the Second World War
You think so do you? Well, I am not about to deny that the Americans played a hugely important role in the Second World War because that would be stupid. But you want to know who ‘saved everyone’s asses’? Well, do you remember what happened to the Grande Armee de la Republique in 1812? What happened to the Germans in the First World War? The Nazis in WW2? I’ll tell you what, they all stupidly invaded Russia and their armies were slowly ground into submission in one long, horrific war of attrition after another.
How many Americans died in WW2? About half a million. British? Roughly the same. It sounds a lot doesn’t it. Well it’s peanuts – the Greeks lost a similar number. If you want to know who ‘saved our asses’ in WW2 consider that current estimates put Russian casualties of that war at about 26 million, split roughly in half between civilian and military deaths. Hitler was stupid enough to invade Russia before he’d polished off Britain and his army was ground down in one of the hardest, bitterest and most miserable campaigns imaginable. Over a third of all deaths in the Second World War were Russians. That’s who saved our asses in WW2.*
Funnily enough, the second on the casualty list? China, with 20 million, roughly 16 million of whom were civillians. Browsing that list I also notice that the Poles lost 20% of their population. Russia lost 13.4%. America lost 0.32% and Britain less than 1%. Sobering, isn’t it.
Billy Bragg – Think Again Lyrics
The Waterboys – Red Army Blues Lyrics
*Dear proper historians – no, I am not claiming it was that simple, just making a single, isolated point. And yes, I do know there was a war in the Pacific as well, but that’s a whole different story.
Erm, really sorry that this is so very, very late, but life rather caught up with me this week. So I never quite managed to find time to get my shit together until this evening, unfortunately.
I get more than a little jumpy writing things about stuff like this, because I am far from knowledgable and, as someone who is almost always against the wars that ‘we’ have fought recently, it can seem a bit rich to me, writing about the people who fought in them.
