AIBU to question the impact of WW1 and 2 on society today?

[westridingpauperlunaticasylum]

My great grandparents were directly impacted by WW1. The men fought in France, the women tried to keep families alive. We lost relatives in the conflict but those that returned turned to drink. WW2 I had a grandfather who was a Japanese POW. His experiences influenced a whole family on his return and I think the effects reverberate now. Did the 20th century wars create the society we have now? People talk about 'these days' negatively with a sense of nostalgia which pisses me right off. Today is influenced by the past and we have no control over that.

We wouldn't have had the vote without WW1.
But everyone is shaped by their upbringing and the upheaval of the first half of the 20th Century was unprecedented. The social order changed massively and technology and weapons have changed the world at an extraordinary rate.

The development of computer technology was rapidly accelerated by the need to decode German communications. It certainly would not have progressed so quickly if there had been no war!

The really frightening thing is how world politics is creeping in 1930sesque directions.

My PGF was a WW2 pilot in the Polish airforce and moved to UK as a result. He was shot down over France and ended up here. So i guess i wouldnt have been born.

Interesting thread. YANBU, i would very much agree that the ripple effect still goes on today. Very true that your grandparents’ childhood affects the next generations wherever this is known or not. And the ripple effect goes on and on down many more further generations. I feel so grateful to live today and not to have had world war as part of my life experience directly. I tell that to the DCs a lot: that the WWs were both so recent and so devastating.

The reaction against the social scars of the wars felt by the parents’ generations IMO helped create the ‘jazz age’ and the 1960s countercultures, both periods of postwar younger people searching deeply for social change, but also for seeking personal creative fulfilment and alternative ways of living then their parents generation will have offered them, which I think have also really affected today’s society.

And living through war directly vs not having had hat direct experience, must have created something of a unbridgeable gap between the lives of grandparents and parents generations which would be likely to have affected society greatly.

It makes me feel a lot for those societies living through wars now like in Syria and the displacement and diaspora that that has created and what the future repercussions will be for all those people and all of us.

Also societies with armed conflict going on like Palestine and Israel or until recently, Northern Ireland and the IRA and how people’s lives in those societies must be deeply shaped by that experience.

One of biggest causes of the current mentality of ‘us vs them’ amongst the children of Indian and Pakistani immigrants (the ones who came here back in the day) is partition and the brutal events that preceeded it. Remember that the people who lived in India and Pakistan during partition where British citizens and yet those who wanted to remain British were not permitted to come here - many moved to East Africa where in the 70s some had to leave again in similar circumstances. The British took them at that point but by then the damage was done.

The Ugandan Indians who did well here in the 70s did so because they did not trust the UK government not to dispose of them again. Many even refused to claim benefit and so they had no choice but to do well.

The last Empire.

I agree re 1930s mentality...
The aftermath of ww1 sowed the seeds for Ww2 with a treaty based on revenge and punishment.
After Ww2 the US turned Germany and Japan around through help and rehabilitation.
We, seemed to however, held onto stuff and not moved on a national level. (And both ward were filled with atrocities. My dad fought in Ww2 and used to say lots of Germans were conscripted but the difference was there was no conscientious objection there just the shooting squad).

Wars not ward

I would also not be here maternal gps met also while both stationed abroad. (nurse and cavalry officer) grandpas first wife and children were killed in the blitz. No one had been able to reach him before he came home on leave. Absolutely horrific.

We won the war but the Germans won the peace.

This is the sort of trite stuff that the Mail and its more challenged readers like to pronounce without having any idea what they're talking about. Manifestly no-one "wins" peace, and equally clearly the Nazi régime against which we went to wore has not won anything. Paradoxically it's the likes of the Mail that increase the danger that that may not remain the case.

Don't be ridiculous Bashstreerkid. I don't even read the DM. If you look at post war life in both countries it's obvious that Germany has the edge on the UK economically and socially. They have thrived when we have floundered. It is indisputable that they are more successful than the UK.

It's because took hold of the opportunity that was presented to them. And actually good for them, they broke the war cycle that was going on in Europe for centuries.
They took advantage of a second industrial age in a way that we couldn't or wouldn't.
We need to stop blaming other people and look to ourselves. (And for me part of that is being a better partner country rather than being an emperialist)

That doesn't mean they have "won" anything, numbereightyone, not least for the very obvious reason that it isn't another battle; and it certainly doesn't justify trotting out that trite mantra contrasting it with who won the war.

Massive, massive impact globally, within UK and for individuals.
Suffrage, airplanes, a generation of young men wiped out on an unimaginable scale in WW1 for very little gains from military perspective, huge medical advances, changing relationships between nations, the birth of the UN and NATO, the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the murder of millions of Jews and a realisation of the depravity man could sink to.
On a personal level, my mother was on the beach at Ramsgate when the little ships returned with wounded soldiers. She was a child but still collected and distributed clothing, blankets and food. It’s remained with her evermore and the war is to this day the most important thing in her life. She was evacuated and deeply unhappy so returned home after a brief stay. I suspect abused in some way since she was one of the older girls but she’s never talked about it I never anything but the vaguest terms. She lost two brothers at the age of 19 and 21. She saw doodlebugs.
I disagree Germany has the edge. Certainly they have performed better economically recently but we too have sustained peace on our shores. Sadly the Brexit referendum results seek to undermine all that has been achieved post war.

You are assuming that by pointing out the truth, which is that Germany have been more successful than we in the UK have, post war, I am anti German, or a Brexiteer. I am neither. I don't read the DM. We won the war. The cost to us was enormous albeit less so than had we lost. You say that's trite. I say that's the truth.

Medical changes were accelerated by warfare. Blood transfusions and plastic surgery by WW1 - see the work of Harold Gillies. Injuries caused by artillery fire required very different medical care to what had gone before.
Antibiotics in WW2 - penicillin was already around but not mass produced until the war,

On a positive note women benefited from the opportunity of running the country and had the confidence to insist on voting rights.

The suffering, the post war trauma is still here today. The huge loss of life and the day to day of living with such stress meant my gp lived with many sad memories, and were shut down emotionally. My parents suffered because of that.

The impact globally stlll ripples and I find it hugely offensive that Germany should think it can behave so insensitively and to have taken over the EU in the way it has. Hijacked the entire peace project and even now still not understanding the growing disquiet in Poland, Greece, Spain Italy, UK etc. Have we learnt nothing?

World currency 1910: British Pound Sterling
World currency 1946: US Dollar

World currency today: 1101100011000011010

How has Germany taken over the EU and how is it behaving insensitively ?

Medical changes were accelerated by warfare

That continues to be true as advances made in trauma care in Iraq and Afghanistan mean that soldiers survived where they'd once have died.

Even widespread use of lipstick came as a result of the wars.

And wrist watches replacing pocket watches in the trenches.

The fax was also a war invention even if it didn’t hit the masses until the 90s.

Actually the vast mayoritario of technical advances es enjoy these days originate in military defence research. Internet anyone?