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.

They are comparable in the impact on those regions, surely? Less impact on Britain than WWII, but just as much if not more on people from those regions. The global scale of a war and the impact on those who lived through a war are two completely different things. The Blitz had little impact on my mother's family. They still suffered huge trauma in WWII.

Of course war impacts those directly involved.

This is an interesting thread. My Nan's first husband was killed in WW2, so it's strange to think my dad, me, my brothers, my kids, nephews, nieces wouldn't be here if not for the war.

My dad was born just after the war, when food rationing still existed and paper was scarce. Consequently, my parents encouraged us to eat all our food and, although I don't force my DC to eat everything, I do hate that feeling of waste. Same goes for paper! My dad always uses every scrap of paper and so do I!

I guess also, my aunt was evacuated during the war and I think that affected her relationship with her younger sisters (my mum).

Interesting topic. My family was, on both sides, an ‘inbetween’ family - great-grandparents were slightly too young for WWI and my grandparents were too young for WWII. Lucky. It’s tragic how the spacing of the wars meant that successive generations in families often had to fight. I wonder whether the comparative stability of my parents’ families is in any way related to that? It would be a fascinating wider study.

I'm both reassured and saddened to read so many others saying that WWI and WWII affected the psychological health of multiple generations of their families.

WWII definitely played into the issues in my extended family, issues that have had a huge effect on my life, and it's always been weird to me to remember that I'm effectively still paying the price for what the world descended into in the 1930s.

Especially since the lessons we were supposed to learn from it are fast being forgotten. Not only are they of the utmost importance, some of us are still living in the shadow of the last mess! We can't afford another one on top of that.

UK-centred point of view, there, obviously. For people who've experienced similar first hand since, this will be even more immediate. It's like planting land mines. Even when a war is over, it's not actually over. Not for a long time.

And I understand people feeling a connection to the WWII era and some of its cultural elements, especially given how much it's affected us, but actual nostalgia? Suggesting things were better then? Horrible.

My great uncle was killed fighting in one of the battles during the middle years of WWI. He was only a teenager at the time. Not long after, his parents made the decision to emigrate with the rest of their children to the other side of the world. (The actual move took place after the war finished). So yes, the war had a huge impact on my family, as a whole new branch of it (mine) began a world away from the rest.

The ties between my great grandparents and their parents and siblings were basically broken as they never saw each other again.

My grandfather was 19 when WW1 broke out. He was a grocer’s assistant who joined up immediately. He was at the Somme, where he miraculously survived despite spending three days lying injured in the mud. He recovered and was sent back to fight.
By the end of the war, he was an officer who had learned to speak with a cut-glass accent, and in civilian life was given opportunities that he would never have had if he had remained in the small market town he grew up in. He rose to the top of his profession. He spoke little about his experiences in the trenches, and was a charismatic, domineering person who commanded extreme respect, and was distant from his children.
After my father died, I found a letter my grandfather had written to him in 1940 when my 18 year old DF joined the RAF, telling him how worried he was about him, and how he wished he could keep him out of the cruel machine that is war.

This really isn't the forum for your question Op. I have a degree in history and it's actually one of the most difficult subjects to write about because it's hard to keep to the word limit! I could go on and on so I really shouldn't start. I actually bang on to my dcs about the subject because they need to understand obviously the huge sacrifices past generations have made but also because the wars helped lead to a fairer more socially just society. People might moan now but they should have seen life in the 30s. Change would have come but more gradually and less radically.

I disagree Eliza, it is very interesting to read anecdotes from posters that you wouldn't always hear through an academic study of this topic.

My older brother was born towards the end of the war. My Mother (whilst my dad was in the Army) lived at her parents farm in the country where my brother had a great life being spoilt by doting uncles, grandparents, and playing outdoors all day every day.
When dad was finally de-mobbed he and Mum went to live in a 2 roomed flat in London my brother re-acted very badly and he spent his whole life resenting my dad.
He sees no problem that he never sees his two daughters "They don't need me they have their Mother".
My DH comes from an Irish background and the war had no impact on his family, whereas friends that I have who have a German parent have been very affected as they have said that their parent was embarassed by their background.

My great grandfather learned how to play rugby in the trenches in ww1
On his return he firstly played club rugby and went on to captain wales several times as well as being a player for our town (he even has a wiki page) as a result my brother has always been nudged towards a future in rugby (sadly does not play any more due to health reasons)
It improved the finances of my family though.

My grandfather (dadcu) served in ww2 and was at Dunkirk. He also liberated Belsen.
He would never talk about either event in his lifetime.

Forget WW1/2, I'd suggest that the effects of the Reformation (1536) are still being felt.

And there's a good historical basis for arguing that the Norman invasion (1066) is still having an effect ... especially if you look at who still owns most of the countryside.

My dad's family were bombed out during the war and ended up living 1 large family, in 1 room for many years. My dad moved out as soon as he was 17 and got married. He had my 2 brothers and myself before getting divorced and remarrying. He says himself he married to leave his overcrowded home. So without the war, his first marriage may never have happened and we may never have been born.

My dad did not get any qualifications. He said there were so many kids that they alternated school between morning and afternoon. So he only went for half a day during most of the war, and was taught mainly by very elderly or unqualified teachers who struggled to control the class. He started full time work at 15.

I'm always painfully aware with German friends of my own age (50s) that their mothers (Northern Germany) probably suffered the most appalling atrocities during the Red Army's advance towards Berlin.

I had to stop reading a book about this.

That's interesting DGRossetti can you expand a bit on that?

mammmamia

which bit ? The Normans ?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/17/high-house-prices-inequality-normans

Just catching up now. Thank you for sharing such a wide range of stories. Truly fascinating, uplifting and saddening. Mamma - you are right. An academic piece would not necessarily get this level of personal perspective. And if I can't post an AIBU on mumsnet where on earth else would I post it?

My GGF suffered major head injuries in WW2 and was a different, broken person for the rest of his life as a result. That had a direct impact on the upbringing and lives of his children, then to a lesser extent on their children. Those ripples are fading off in the lives of an age group born 40+ years later.
It's difficult to say how much of an extent the war caused it. It quite clearly was significant, however his father was a strict and ruthless Victorian and may have sown some difficult foundations exacerbating the war damage.

Likewise the brutalist architecture movement of the 60s and 70s did far more damage to places such as Coventry than the Luftwafe

Many of Britain's towns and cities still have much of their layout of medieval road networks as war damage was patchy. Many European cities that were more comprehensively damaged modernised their infrastructure making it more able to adapt to modern transport needs. Meanwhile Britain is congested on a narrow, winding web of roads and railways (with a bit of modernist ring road thrown into the mix)

Empires, particularly the extent of the British Empire have contributed significantly to many of the conflicts since WW1 and WW2 when many borders were altered.

What we can't know is how many potential conflicts haven't occured because of the social and political changes resulting from the world wars, particularly where minority groups were broken up by boundary changed and social "cleansing"/ displacement.

Gaaah. Wrote a long and thoughtful response to this which promptly disappeared into the ether...

To sum up, I think both World Wars have profoundly affected our understanding of family relationships, and in turn psychology and psychotherapy have been shaped by a perception of normality which is actually anything but.

For instance, it's now generally accepted that adolescence is a challenging time, a time of 'storm and stress', and that there is a generation gap, so parents cannot hope to understand their children, and vice versa. But when you look at when these theories were formulated, you realise that parents who grew up in the 1940s went through all sorts from rationing to extermination camps, and were either hardened or traumatised. This was not a great foundation for a happy family life. Meanwhile their 1960s kids enjoyed life, developed ambitions and ideas of their own, questioned their upbringing. They could not hope to grasp what their parents went through, and their parents expected their gratitude to heal the emotional war wounds.

I think we're still living through the consequences of this generational split, trying to feel our way into talking to our kids again. But the so called professionals keep telling us that teenage distress is normal and expected and that it's not a problem for the generations to isolate themselves. (Unless you've done something wrong, of course, like allowing them to watch Teletubbies when they were three, or talking to them in the wrong pitch.) I think we're still working through the fallout of war in our families.

Agree Gallicos