14 ms·

There is an interesting book on this grim subject - the book "Yes to Life" of Viktor Frankl. He managed to survive concentration camps and stay mentally sane pe

by eaa 5y ago

There is an interesting book on this grim subject - the book "Yes to Life" of Viktor Frankl. He managed to survive concentration camps and stay mentally sane person. He describes the life of prisoners there and what was helping them to survive. Sad but remarkable book on both history and psychology. Also, someone in this discussion said that as more and more people pass away there is less and less truth about WW2 and less and less respect to its lessons. There is also another interesting observation: the more related to WW2 people die the more Cold War #2 we see. Cold War hasn't become "hot" because during these times almost everyone except kids knew what is war and how it looks and that it causes. War heroes were not imaginary movie personalities, they were everywhere. And kids could hear real stories from someone who has seen it all with own eyes. And so, everyone knew that war is hell and that nuclear weapon can make war even worse, so that WW2 will look like a picnic. But what do we have now? Movies about WW2 with expensive SFX and cheap plot, Call of Duty, etc. War isn't scary anymore. People are eager to fight something. This mad mad mad mad mad world.

cm2187 5y ago
When you saw the wide support for communism after the war and the blindness to its own concentration camps and genocides, a lot of people who lived ww2 didn't really respect its lessons either.
- gotoeleven 5y ago
  We're fine with the ones in china because we get cheap stuff with two day delivery from amazon
  - whythre 5y ago
    I’m not fine with it, and Amazon’s practices are gross. I wish we as a global community would put more pressure on China rather than turn a blind eye towards their more heinous acts. Avoiding buying Chinese goods seems almost impossible, we have outsourced also much manufacturing now.
- d0mine 5y ago
  it is just the cold war propaganda
- eaa 5y ago
  Well, your post has no question, but I will comment anyway. First of all, I am not going to defend soviet concentration camps, USSR has had it's own share of sins. But comparison of Third Reich and USSR is an anti-communist propaganda cliché. For obvious reasons: no jew could become a member of national-socialist party, but anyone could become a communist. So, no matter how disgusting the stalinism was, it cannot be compared to nazism. As for popularity of communism, well, Red Army was victorious, USSR was one of those who survived and won, so it's ideology was gaining supporters. There were many true believers in ideas of communism. E.g in socialist Czechoslovakia there was an attempt to build "socialism with a human face." In USSR there was a generation called "sixtiers" who were true believers in communism but saw stalinism as something horrible that should never happen again. But, for better or for worse, it looks like believers was the last thing the communist party needed. By the way, the book "Monday begins on Saturday" by Strugatsky brothers is exactly about a RnD institute (almost) full of people sincerely trying to make world a better place. Strugatsky brothers were believers themselves. To the end of USSR they have become bitter haters. PS. I am not stating that communism is good or better than capitalism.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    The double agent Oleg Gordievsky was at heart a sixtier, and after hearing about the demise of the prague spring, while either drunk, stupid, or unbelievably brave - if I have the story right - actually indicated his desire to defect, while on duty as a KGB officer in Denmark, by phoning his wife and going on a tearful tirade against the Soviet Union. He knew the line was bugged, likely by both PET and the KGB. His cries were heard, and after a "chance" meeting at a squash game he became a double agent, years later stationed in London where he nearly became the rezident (~CEO) at the Embassy. He was betrayed by Aldrich Ames at some point around 1985, and went on to become the only (as far as I'm aware) person to be exfiltrated from the Soviet Union directly under the nose of the KGB. Not a bad life story.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    "First of all, I am not going to defend soviet concentration camps, USSR has had it's own share of sins. But comparison of Third Reich and USSR is an anti-communist propaganda cliché. For obvious reasons: no jew could become a member of national-socialist party, but anyone could become a communist. So, no matter how disgusting the stalinism was, it cannot be compared to nazism." Wait, your whole argument for why Stalinism can not be compared to Naziism was that jews could become members of the communist party?
- guythedudebro 5y ago
  I'd say better evidence that people didn't respect WW2's lessons is the constant equivocation you see of Nazi Germany with the USSR.
  - Mediterraneo10 5y ago
    This is a view held by actual Eastern European Jews who first survived the Holocaust, and then after the USSR's arival saw their compatriots either imprisoned locally or deported to Siberia, or living in constant fear of such for the long years until Stalin died. For just one of many, many examples of this "out of the frying pan, into the fire" feeling, I can recommend the work of Imre Kertész.
    - guythedudebro 5y ago
      The only reason the term "Eastern European Jews" refers to actual living people is because Nazi Germany was defeated (primarily by the USSR). It's not a defense of Soviet crimes to say that the Nazis were unequivocally worse. To place their "evilness" on the same order of magnitude means you're not considering generalplan ost's fulfilment as worse than our current timeline.
echelon 5y ago
> There is also another interesting observation: the more related to WW2 people die the more Cold War #2 we see. I might be misinterpreting, but many in Gen Z seem to consider WWII and Nazi history as a kind of meme to joke about. (9/11 too, for that matter.) I'm worried we might be destined to forget the lessons we learned. The rise of domestic terror, hate, and partisanship doesn't help.
- caslon 5y ago
  It's called dark humor. Tragic events can be respected and grasped without some puritanical concept of them being "untouchable" subjects. A joke about 9/11 is almost certainly taking advantage of (and probably directly in opposition to) the exact attitude that lead to it becoming "off-limits" in the first place, and playing with it.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    That and it's important to counteract people in high office/s around the world using 9/11 and other terrorist attacks to achieve their own ends.
- tombert 5y ago
  Wait, really? I'm a millennial, not gen-z, but I feel like Nazi/WWII jokes were way more popular in the 90's and early 2000's than they are now. For example, in Seinfeld, they had a character called the "soup Nazi", a character that was extremely asshole-ey about who he gave soup to. This was not a controversial episode or anything, and became one of the most quoted episodes of the series. Nowadays I'm not sure if that would be considered "ok." I feel like the rise of domestic terror, white nationalism, and fascism is scary, but seems to a) by mostly composed of millenials my age and older, and b) a lot more complicated than some edgelord humor. That said, despite the fact that I love edgey subversive humor, I agree that trivializing things as "just jokes" isn't a good thing; if it means fewer memes, I can live with that.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    There is a long history of lampooning nazis for comedic effect, very often performed by Jewish comedians. Hogan's Heroes is a sitcom about POWs sticking it to the foolish krauts. The concept would never fly today but it was standard fare for post war comedy. The children who grew up with that culture continued using it into the 90's.
knuthsat 5y ago
I think it’s the way history works. Napoleon was pretty horrible, yet even the enslaved Dalmatians forgot what he did and praise him for building roads. I’m pretty sure Hitler will have a similar public image to Napoleon in a few hundred years. We do similar things with Roman emperors and praise their accomplishments forgetting the massive amounts of suffering they caused.
- rkk3 5y ago
  Aside from the similarly fated Russian invasions, they are completely different. Napoleon was not genocidal and contrary to his popular reputation was not a warmonger. England & the coalition was generally the aggressor because they wanted to restore the Monarchy (The Bourbons) to France & weren't happy about the Rights of Man and Liberalism that the Grande Army was spreading.
  - hollerith 5y ago
    Was Napoleon the aggressor in his invasion of Russia?
    - rkk3 5y ago
      Yes. The backstory... England was very hostile to France, especially because of Pitt, and France lost its navy at Traflager so Napoleon's only option was to get all of Europe to Embargo England [1]. Russia eventually decided to trade with England anyway which is what triggered the French invasion to enforce the embargo. The other factor is that after Napoleon divorced Josephine, he had the option of marrying the daughter of the Emperor of Austria or Russia, he choose Austria which cooled relations with Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_System
- rendall 5y ago
  Napolean and the Roman emporers of which you speak had some actual military victories to counterbalance their other atrocities. Hitler brought nothing but ruin and dishonor to his beloved German people, and lost the war to boot. No. History will remember Hitler forever as a blustering fool who invented industrial scale genocide. He'll be sitting alongside Nero and Caligula in the collective memory, not Napolean and Julius Caesar.
lapetitejort 5y ago
The average person on the internet can view more war and carnage than even the average soldier in WWII (remember that the majority of the fighting forces don't actually "fight", per se). We can also connect to survivors of even the smallest of conflicts. We're steeped in the miasma of geopolitics. For sure, it's nowhere near as saturated as post-WWII, but we are still connected to the sad reality of violence.
- throwaways885 5y ago
  Any casual observer of history knows that reading/watching content about war is nothing like the reality.
  - jopsen 5y ago
    True, but prior to the world wars the general view of war was far more glamorous. English poets today don't write how war is great for the spirit or whatever... Sure, there's still plenty who don't quite get how bad armed conflict actually is.. but it's less romanticized today.
    - smegger001 5y ago
      no not in the same way, we instead live it vicariously in movies and games, and if we die we reload and go kill more "other" be it Nazi Communist or Islamic Fundamentalist, we go shoot more enemy a get a steady drip of dopamine with every virtual bullet.
      - jopsen 5y ago
        In "All Quiet on the Western Front" I recall one of the characters teachers encouraging the young kids to go... Did your teacher preach about the glory of fighting for freedom in Iraq? Reading wikipedia it seems when the book came out it was critically received by some for "it's pacifists agenda". Sure, we still glorify warfare, but our culture and tolerance for casualties have changed dramatically.
FridayoLeary 5y ago
> People are eager to fight something Believe me, kids nowadays don't want to fight. They'll be sitting in the tanks, on the battlefield on tiktok or something. Worse, (better?) is the ideas they pick up from the movies. Superbly advanced civilizations, with an almost [Edit: actually] unbelievable array of weapons, still hang their fate on individual superheroes. Their principal weapons are (get this) modern day swords and spears and body armour! also, the weapons are quickly abandoned in favour of punching the opponent in the face, with no apparent effect, and they don't even do that properly. If anything, violent superhero movies should be encouraged.
- Supermancho 5y ago
  > Believe me, kids nowadays don't want to fight. This zeitgeist is not ubiquitous. There are plenty of newly minted adults who jump into the military. Not all of them are lifers, but the government incentives are very good for the poor facing minimum wage at a McDonald's.
  - jopsen 5y ago
    I suspect OP is saying that something like conscripting people to war wouldn't be popular today. I also doubt it would be popular with helicopter parents :)
    - bawolff 5y ago
      It wasn't popular during either world war for a lot of people (from what i remember from my [canadian] high school history, quebec in particular wasn't thrilled about conscription)
      - rhodozelia 5y ago
        Thanks for your comment. In ww1 about 25,000 conscripted Canadians were sent over seas, in ww2 12,000. Many more were conscripted but didn’t leave the country. I didn’t realize Canada had conscription at all, or the divide between French and English.
endymi0n 5y ago
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." — George Santayana "I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive." — Kurt Vonnegut
- karaterobot 5y ago
  "The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes." — Mark Twain (attrib.) Makes more sense to me.
  - samatman 5y ago
    "The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce" -Karl Marx Just to keep the quote chain going. Seems relevant to me at least...
derivagral 5y ago
I'll second Frankl. I enjoyed his (other) books around love and searching for meaning, drawing from his experience. I'll have to check that one out as well. Very humbling stuff.
odshoifsdhfs 5y ago
It is still one of the most important books i ever read, but quick note, yes to life is the original title, still in german version, but currently in english it is usually published as ‘men’s search for meaning’

by eaa 5y ago

cm2187 5y ago

When you saw the wide support for communism after the war and the blindness to its own concentration camps and genocides, a lot of people who lived ww2 didn't really respect its lessons either.

gotoeleven 5y ago
We're fine with the ones in china because we get cheap stuff with two day delivery from amazon
- whythre 5y ago
  I’m not fine with it, and Amazon’s practices are gross. I wish we as a global community would put more pressure on China rather than turn a blind eye towards their more heinous acts. Avoiding buying Chinese goods seems almost impossible, we have outsourced also much manufacturing now.
d0mine 5y ago
it is just the cold war propaganda
eaa 5y ago
Well, your post has no question, but I will comment anyway. First of all, I am not going to defend soviet concentration camps, USSR has had it's own share of sins. But comparison of Third Reich and USSR is an anti-communist propaganda cliché. For obvious reasons: no jew could become a member of national-socialist party, but anyone could become a communist. So, no matter how disgusting the stalinism was, it cannot be compared to nazism. As for popularity of communism, well, Red Army was victorious, USSR was one of those who survived and won, so it's ideology was gaining supporters. There were many true believers in ideas of communism. E.g in socialist Czechoslovakia there was an attempt to build "socialism with a human face." In USSR there was a generation called "sixtiers" who were true believers in communism but saw stalinism as something horrible that should never happen again. But, for better or for worse, it looks like believers was the last thing the communist party needed. By the way, the book "Monday begins on Saturday" by Strugatsky brothers is exactly about a RnD institute (almost) full of people sincerely trying to make world a better place. Strugatsky brothers were believers themselves. To the end of USSR they have become bitter haters. PS. I am not stating that communism is good or better than capitalism.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  The double agent Oleg Gordievsky was at heart a sixtier, and after hearing about the demise of the prague spring, while either drunk, stupid, or unbelievably brave - if I have the story right - actually indicated his desire to defect, while on duty as a KGB officer in Denmark, by phoning his wife and going on a tearful tirade against the Soviet Union. He knew the line was bugged, likely by both PET and the KGB. His cries were heard, and after a "chance" meeting at a squash game he became a double agent, years later stationed in London where he nearly became the rezident (~CEO) at the Embassy. He was betrayed by Aldrich Ames at some point around 1985, and went on to become the only (as far as I'm aware) person to be exfiltrated from the Soviet Union directly under the nose of the KGB. Not a bad life story.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "First of all, I am not going to defend soviet concentration camps, USSR has had it's own share of sins. But comparison of Third Reich and USSR is an anti-communist propaganda cliché. For obvious reasons: no jew could become a member of national-socialist party, but anyone could become a communist. So, no matter how disgusting the stalinism was, it cannot be compared to nazism." Wait, your whole argument for why Stalinism can not be compared to Naziism was that jews could become members of the communist party?
guythedudebro 5y ago
I'd say better evidence that people didn't respect WW2's lessons is the constant equivocation you see of Nazi Germany with the USSR.
- Mediterraneo10 5y ago
  This is a view held by actual Eastern European Jews who first survived the Holocaust, and then after the USSR's arival saw their compatriots either imprisoned locally or deported to Siberia, or living in constant fear of such for the long years until Stalin died. For just one of many, many examples of this "out of the frying pan, into the fire" feeling, I can recommend the work of Imre Kertész.
  - guythedudebro 5y ago
    The only reason the term "Eastern European Jews" refers to actual living people is because Nazi Germany was defeated (primarily by the USSR). It's not a defense of Soviet crimes to say that the Nazis were unequivocally worse. To place their "evilness" on the same order of magnitude means you're not considering generalplan ost's fulfilment as worse than our current timeline.

echelon 5y ago

> There is also another interesting observation: the more related to WW2 people die the more Cold War #2 we see. I might be misinterpreting, but many in Gen Z seem to consider WWII and Nazi history as a kind of meme to joke about. (9/11 too, for that matter.) I'm worried we might be destined to forget the lessons we learned. The rise of domestic terror, hate, and partisanship doesn't help.

caslon 5y ago
It's called dark humor. Tragic events can be respected and grasped without some puritanical concept of them being "untouchable" subjects. A joke about 9/11 is almost certainly taking advantage of (and probably directly in opposition to) the exact attitude that lead to it becoming "off-limits" in the first place, and playing with it.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  That and it's important to counteract people in high office/s around the world using 9/11 and other terrorist attacks to achieve their own ends.
tombert 5y ago
Wait, really? I'm a millennial, not gen-z, but I feel like Nazi/WWII jokes were way more popular in the 90's and early 2000's than they are now. For example, in Seinfeld, they had a character called the "soup Nazi", a character that was extremely asshole-ey about who he gave soup to. This was not a controversial episode or anything, and became one of the most quoted episodes of the series. Nowadays I'm not sure if that would be considered "ok." I feel like the rise of domestic terror, white nationalism, and fascism is scary, but seems to a) by mostly composed of millenials my age and older, and b) a lot more complicated than some edgelord humor. That said, despite the fact that I love edgey subversive humor, I agree that trivializing things as "just jokes" isn't a good thing; if it means fewer memes, I can live with that.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  There is a long history of lampooning nazis for comedic effect, very often performed by Jewish comedians. Hogan's Heroes is a sitcom about POWs sticking it to the foolish krauts. The concept would never fly today but it was standard fare for post war comedy. The children who grew up with that culture continued using it into the 90's.

knuthsat 5y ago

I think it’s the way history works. Napoleon was pretty horrible, yet even the enslaved Dalmatians forgot what he did and praise him for building roads. I’m pretty sure Hitler will have a similar public image to Napoleon in a few hundred years. We do similar things with Roman emperors and praise their accomplishments forgetting the massive amounts of suffering they caused.

rkk3 5y ago
Aside from the similarly fated Russian invasions, they are completely different. Napoleon was not genocidal and contrary to his popular reputation was not a warmonger. England & the coalition was generally the aggressor because they wanted to restore the Monarchy (The Bourbons) to France & weren't happy about the Rights of Man and Liberalism that the Grande Army was spreading.
- hollerith 5y ago
  Was Napoleon the aggressor in his invasion of Russia?
  - rkk3 5y ago
    Yes. The backstory... England was very hostile to France, especially because of Pitt, and France lost its navy at Traflager so Napoleon's only option was to get all of Europe to Embargo England [1]. Russia eventually decided to trade with England anyway which is what triggered the French invasion to enforce the embargo. The other factor is that after Napoleon divorced Josephine, he had the option of marrying the daughter of the Emperor of Austria or Russia, he choose Austria which cooled relations with Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_System
rendall 5y ago
Napolean and the Roman emporers of which you speak had some actual military victories to counterbalance their other atrocities. Hitler brought nothing but ruin and dishonor to his beloved German people, and lost the war to boot. No. History will remember Hitler forever as a blustering fool who invented industrial scale genocide. He'll be sitting alongside Nero and Caligula in the collective memory, not Napolean and Julius Caesar.

lapetitejort 5y ago

The average person on the internet can view more war and carnage than even the average soldier in WWII (remember that the majority of the fighting forces don't actually "fight", per se). We can also connect to survivors of even the smallest of conflicts. We're steeped in the miasma of geopolitics. For sure, it's nowhere near as saturated as post-WWII, but we are still connected to the sad reality of violence.

throwaways885 5y ago
Any casual observer of history knows that reading/watching content about war is nothing like the reality.
- jopsen 5y ago
  True, but prior to the world wars the general view of war was far more glamorous. English poets today don't write how war is great for the spirit or whatever... Sure, there's still plenty who don't quite get how bad armed conflict actually is.. but it's less romanticized today.
  - smegger001 5y ago
    no not in the same way, we instead live it vicariously in movies and games, and if we die we reload and go kill more "other" be it Nazi Communist or Islamic Fundamentalist, we go shoot more enemy a get a steady drip of dopamine with every virtual bullet.
    - jopsen 5y ago
      In "All Quiet on the Western Front" I recall one of the characters teachers encouraging the young kids to go... Did your teacher preach about the glory of fighting for freedom in Iraq? Reading wikipedia it seems when the book came out it was critically received by some for "it's pacifists agenda". Sure, we still glorify warfare, but our culture and tolerance for casualties have changed dramatically.

FridayoLeary 5y ago

> People are eager to fight something Believe me, kids nowadays don't want to fight. They'll be sitting in the tanks, on the battlefield on tiktok or something. Worse, (better?) is the ideas they pick up from the movies. Superbly advanced civilizations, with an almost [Edit: actually] unbelievable array of weapons, still hang their fate on individual superheroes. Their principal weapons are (get this) modern day swords and spears and body armour! also, the weapons are quickly abandoned in favour of punching the opponent in the face, with no apparent effect, and they don't even do that properly. If anything, violent superhero movies should be encouraged.

Supermancho 5y ago
> Believe me, kids nowadays don't want to fight. This zeitgeist is not ubiquitous. There are plenty of newly minted adults who jump into the military. Not all of them are lifers, but the government incentives are very good for the poor facing minimum wage at a McDonald's.
- jopsen 5y ago
  I suspect OP is saying that something like conscripting people to war wouldn't be popular today. I also doubt it would be popular with helicopter parents :)
  - bawolff 5y ago
    It wasn't popular during either world war for a lot of people (from what i remember from my [canadian] high school history, quebec in particular wasn't thrilled about conscription)
    - rhodozelia 5y ago
      Thanks for your comment. In ww1 about 25,000 conscripted Canadians were sent over seas, in ww2 12,000. Many more were conscripted but didn’t leave the country. I didn’t realize Canada had conscription at all, or the divide between French and English.

endymi0n 5y ago

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." — George Santayana "I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive." — Kurt Vonnegut

karaterobot 5y ago
"The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes." — Mark Twain (attrib.) Makes more sense to me.
- samatman 5y ago
  "The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce" -Karl Marx Just to keep the quote chain going. Seems relevant to me at least...

derivagral 5y ago

I'll second Frankl. I enjoyed his (other) books around love and searching for meaning, drawing from his experience. I'll have to check that one out as well. Very humbling stuff.

odshoifsdhfs 5y ago

It is still one of the most important books i ever read, but quick note, yes to life is the original title, still in german version, but currently in english it is usually published as ‘men’s search for meaning’