3 ms·

Supporting your 1), it's a lot easier to read about stuff where your side had a clear victory. "Bob moved his units into position, they defeated Bill's units, B

by vacri 11y ago

Supporting your 1), it's a lot easier to read about stuff where your side had a clear victory. "Bob moved his units into position, they defeated Bill's units, Bob claimed the flag" is a clear victory story for Bobians, and set-piece battles are something they can visualise. "Bob's units moved off into the jungle, and they never really found the enemy, and never really won, and we didn't really understand why we were there in the first place" is a hard story to feel reflected glory from. I was told once that on the European continent, they're a bit puzzled over the Anglo obsession with WWII history. For the Anglos, it was almost a complete success story - a defensive war against a difficult (and demonic in hindsight) foe where we united unquestionably on the side of right and prevailed, and were never occupied. On the continent, the story was more about occupation, resistance, informants, people disappearing in the streets, secret police with frightening powers, so on and so forth. It was a much more painful experience, where people often couldn't even trust their neighbours they grew up alongside. And even after it ended, the continent was split in twain between two foreign superpowers bristling at each other. That kind of story is also hard to feel reflected glory from...

PaulHoule 11y ago
I think a lot of good stuff has been written about conflicts that were not so clearly victorious, such as the Vietnam war, "Black Hawk Down", the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, the botched air-raid at dawn after the 1983 Beirut bombings, etc. (See "Supercarrier" by George C. Wilson) On top of that background the story of how the U.S. rebuilt the force in the 1970s-1990s time period is all the more interesting. (See "Mud Soldiers" by Wilson.) Serious military accounts of Gulf War I also reveal a lot you did not see on CNN at the time. And as you say, accounts of WWII from the perspective of the losing sides ("Japan's Imperial Conspiracy", "Adolph Hitler" by John Toland, etc.) are deeply interesting too. I am a yankee and no fan of the Confederacy, but the Civil War too takes on a lot more life when you understand the impact it had on the South.
huffmsa 11y ago
Your war on the continent statement actually brings up a 3rd factor to my initial two. Those secret police, insurgency, proxy army methods are more or less how the US has executed war post-WW2. And no one (well not many people) want to brag in their biography that "yeah, I was totally in charge of turning brother against brother and leveraging ideological differences to cause the [pick your nation] war of 19XX." It's dirty warfare, but in a world where you can't violate a nations sovereignty, annex their castle and force your will upon its people, there really aren't many alternative methods. Edit: typos

by vacri 11y ago

PaulHoule 11y ago

I think a lot of good stuff has been written about conflicts that were not so clearly victorious, such as the Vietnam war, "Black Hawk Down", the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, the botched air-raid at dawn after the 1983 Beirut bombings, etc. (See "Supercarrier" by George C. Wilson) On top of that background the story of how the U.S. rebuilt the force in the 1970s-1990s time period is all the more interesting. (See "Mud Soldiers" by Wilson.) Serious military accounts of Gulf War I also reveal a lot you did not see on CNN at the time. And as you say, accounts of WWII from the perspective of the losing sides ("Japan's Imperial Conspiracy", "Adolph Hitler" by John Toland, etc.) are deeply interesting too. I am a yankee and no fan of the Confederacy, but the Civil War too takes on a lot more life when you understand the impact it had on the South.

huffmsa 11y ago

Your war on the continent statement actually brings up a 3rd factor to my initial two. Those secret police, insurgency, proxy army methods are more or less how the US has executed war post-WW2. And no one (well not many people) want to brag in their biography that "yeah, I was totally in charge of turning brother against brother and leveraging ideological differences to cause the [pick your nation] war of 19XX." It's dirty warfare, but in a world where you can't violate a nations sovereignty, annex their castle and force your will upon its people, there really aren't many alternative methods. Edit: typos