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Well, 400,000 dead and nearly 700,000 wounded. Don't forget people witnessing the aftermath of total war in the European and Pacific theaters whether they were
by talmand 11y ago
Well, 400,000 dead and nearly 700,000 wounded. Don't forget people witnessing the aftermath of total war in the European and Pacific theaters whether they were in combat or not. I think it was a bigger thing than you imply.
I'm not sure where you're going with the propaganda films as compared to my point.
But I agree, the Great Depression would be a contributing factor to what I'm describing.
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoIt was a big thing. That 400k/700k was just Americans; for the Soviets it was millions. Mind boggling. But the number of Americans actually exposed to the horror was relatively small - say way < 10%. The death camps took a very long time for Americans to absorb. The behavior of the Japanese in war was also very slowly taken up, although it was mainly expressed as racism in the short term. When you leave thousands to die on an island without relief or resupply, the racism writes itself. The propaganda made the Boomers uncomfortable. I've made somewhat of a study of Sixties literature; I don't think it would have been that way if it were not for WWII propaganda. The WWII propaganda is also quite out of character for Americans historically. Even with the curtailment of basic freedom of speech in the Civil War, plenty of people were on Lincoln heavily the whole time. FDR was all but immune from even criticism. This propaganda changed the American character a great deal. I had two grandmothers from the pre-WWII period and they thought differently than people do now. I think the Depression was the principal cause of WWII.