{"id":6039,"date":"2004-06-02T13:42:40","date_gmt":"2004-06-02T20:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/06\/02\/history-lessons.html"},"modified":"2004-06-02T13:42:40","modified_gmt":"2004-06-02T20:42:40","slug":"history_lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/06\/02\/history_lessons.html","title":{"rendered":"History lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even “good” wars have messy endings<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Second World War, which has largely formed Western attitudes to war termination, ended neatly for simple reasons: both the Germans and Japanese had had the stuffing knocked out of them. Their cities had been burnt out or bombed flat, millions of their young men had been killed in battle, so had hundreds of thousands of their women and children by strategic bombing. The Japanese were actually starving, while the Germans looked to their Western occupiers both to feed them and to save them from the spectre of Soviet rule. Two highly disciplined and law-abiding populations meekly submitted to defeat.
\nBecause we in the Atlantic region remember 1945 as the year of victory over our deadliest enemies, we usually forget that the Second World War did not end neatly in other parts of the world. In Greece, the guerrilla war against the Germans became a civil war which lasted until 1949 and killed 150,000 people. Peace never really came to Japanese-occupied Asia. In China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Burma, the Second World War became several wars of national liberation, lasting years and killing hundreds of thousands. In Burma, the civil war persists.<\/p>\n

There’s a lesson there for both anti- and pro-war folks alike: don’t react to messy endings as a sign of particular <\/i>incompetence — and don’t assume you can cleverly manage a war without <\/i>messy endings.<\/p>\n

Of course lessons from World War II seem to be a dying breed, at least among youth, who are being taught less about battles and leaders than about the social history of the conflict<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tiffany Charles got a B in history last year at her Montgomery County high school, but she is not sure what year World War II ended. She cannot name a single general or battle, or the man who was president during the most dramatic hours of the 20th century.
\nYet the 16-year-old does remember in some detail that many Japanese American families on the West Coast were sent to internment camps. “We talked a lot about those concentration camps,” she said.
\n[…] Diane Ravitch, an educational historian at New York University, said the big emphasis in high schools today is on the internment camps, as well as women in the workforce on the home front and discrimination against African Americans at home and in the armed services.<\/p>\n

Worthy aspects of the history, to be sure, but I’m not sure they’re the most important aspects. Or maybe I’m just old-fashioned that way.<\/p>\n

(via Cronaca <\/a>and Cronaca<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even “good” wars have messy endings: The Second World War, which has largely formed Western attitudes to war termination, ended neatly for simple reasons: both the Germans and Japanese had…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":133221,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/06\/the-first-american-shots-fired-at-the-germans-in-wwi.html","url_meta":{"origin":6039,"position":0},"title":"The First American Shots Fired at the Germans in WWI","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 6-Apr-17 5:44pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Today is the centennial of the US declaring war on Germany in the First World War, and the excellent YouTube series \"The Great War\" features the first American shots fired -- half-way around the world from France, on an island that would be a lot more famous in the next\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3107,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/08\/08\/da_bomb.html","url_meta":{"origin":6039,"position":1},"title":"Da Bomb","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 8-Aug-02 1:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"As we reach the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, James Carroll in the Boston Globe takes the opportunity to call it \"a mistake and a crime.\" He...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9356,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/07\/21\/use_statistics.html","url_meta":{"origin":6039,"position":2},"title":"Use Statistics … for Victory!","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 21-Jul-06 2:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Cool story on how the Allies used statistics, in part, to win World War II. 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