To not understand the whole "war time spirit" thing

[lockitdown]

I am trying my best to word this the correct way but will probably fail as I have never been good at expressing this.

AIBU in thinking the UK's "obsession"? with deferring to "wartime spirit" is somewhat odd considering the majority of the country most likely have never experienced it? People who were born the year WW2 ended, for example, will be 75 this year. Many of us don't even have parents who experienced wartime or this "wartime spirit" that we are all supposed to be falling in to as a nation.

I am NOT suggesting that we shouldn't honour the people involved in these wars, nor am I suggesting that the wartime spirit at the time wasn't amazing......just that its a rather strange point of reference for a population who may have never experienced it.

I think there are similarities and differences.

There is a common enemy.
People's normal day lives are being disrupted.
We don't know when this will end.
You don't know who will be hit next.
We need to pull together for the common good.
There are people who are happy to say you're not 'doing it right'.
Some people are doing great things and putting their lives on the line to save others.

Social distancing is worse as humans need social contact. On the other hand, at least we have all the modern technology to help us. Children can't go to school or play with their friends.

Supply lines are better now, we haven't needed formal rationing.
People's homes aren't being destroyed, and homes are better than 80 years ago. Children aren't having to be evacuated.

But this pandemic will likely be the defining time of their lives for many. The time that shapes them going forward.

@Lordfrontpaw, dh's dad said you could smell it from 5 miles away. He did tell dh some details but it upset him too much and he always stopped, even in his 80s.

Vettiy and HP
You're spot on re the propaganda I think.

Grandpa only mentioned it once - when grandma absentmindedly threw some bacon rind into the open fire in the kitchen and he just ran outside and vomited over the front step. ‘Please don’t ever do that again’. He was mid 30s when he went in and had signed up on the day war was declared. He saw all kinds of horrors and I can’t begin to understand - he was such a jolly, funny man but his health was shot and he died young.

If future historians used YouTube videos as their evidence they would be able to say that we have 'Blitz spirit' now. That's all it is - selective use of evidence.
I'm a historian and I'm surprised how many still put forward this view of WW2, but they are mostly older men. Hard to write new version of WW2 history that reach popular audiences though, it's so deeply entrenched.

It’s propaganda
Bombastic language evokes sentiment and symbolism of the wars designed to increase compliance to guidelines and that community effect

Boris worships Churchill this is his own ego journey to emulate his hero. His speech yesterday started off humble and then descended for me at least into something else

My grandmother grew up in London and survived the Blitz. She mentioned the Blitz spirit when I was on the phone to her last week checking she's ok and talking about all this. Different scenario and she's a Tory voter and reads the Express. But I guess both are about survival and sacrifices. And she's good at getting on with things although I know she's hating being stuck at home (she has a garden though so at least she can get outside and do some light gardening).

A few weeks ago Michael Rosen tweeted that he expected The Sun's front page to feature a picture of the PM and Matt Hancock in a Spitfire aiming at the enemy virus (or similar - can't recall the exact wording).

Yanbu
We are just being asked to stay at home. There really is very little comparison.

My grandfather got to Belsen too. Just after it was liberated...

Yes, it annoys me too. People acting as if everyone remembers the war - there's barely anyone left old enough to recall it and, as my 90yo step-grandma has said, at least is the war you could be together!

I guess people see it as reference point for British 'grit' but to be honest, we're such a guilded generation, many of whom have never experienced real hardship, that we are very poorly equipped to deal with this in an community-minded, non-selfish way. A friend of mine works with refugees and honestly it sounds to me like they are the people with the 'spirit' to understand this situation much more than most Brits. Many of them are concerned for British kids missing school, as they know how important continuity is for children in times of trouble, and many others have volunteered to help.

I have 2 problems with the summoning up of the Blitz Spirit.

Firstly it's a ridiculous comparison because coping with a pandemic is very different from fighting a war and requires completely different strategies.

Secondly, it mythologises the war and hides the reality. There was contemporary research into the way that the bombing of Hull affected the people who lived there. It revealed a huge amount of trauma; the findings weren't published because it was considered bad for morale. The Bethnal Green Tube shelter was covered up (as was the scale of deaths caused by some of the bombing raids). There are countless other examples of this kind of thing happening.

Dunkirk was portrayed in terms of the plucky little boats crossing the Channel to rescue our boys. Without taking away from the bravery of all involved, it was spun in such a way that the public didn't think of it (and still don't) as a military defeat. It was a huge withdrawal of the army from the Western Front but was seen as something to be proud of.

The reality of the War, and the Blitz in particular, was hidden and downplayed at the time and it has been mythologised ever since.

The same is happening now. Instead of a dispassionate analysis of which methods used by countries around the world are most effective and instead of the government being held accountable for its actions we are sold stories of plucky NHS staff and other frontline workers whose heroic actions are undermined by the few bad apples who aren't obeying instructions to stay at home. While those things are happening, and frontline workers need praise and support, this emphasis on individuals distracts from the wider picture.

But (sorry) 'war time spirit' is not about the concentration camps.

It is about what the Brits who stayed at home experienced, especially those in the cities being bombed. It is about working together for the common good, helping each other out, worrying about loved ones.

My mum was 10 when the war started. She was brought up in London, her dad had served in the first world war, leaving a wife and four children under five behind. He became a fire warden in world war two.

Her mum took in washing to supplement the income. She didn't speak to three of her sons for a week as they signed up rather than wait for conscription in WWII - having seen a husband off to war she was in no hurry to see her sons off to another one and couldn't forgive them for putting themselves in harms way rather than wait to be told to go.

Mum was evacuated to the country but brought back by her brothers when they discovered the family she was evacuated to were treating her badly. She slept on the underground platform in her area of London during the Blitz which left her with a fear of rats and claustrophobia. Imagine being eleven years old, hearing bombs going off above you and wondering if you'd be able to get out of the underground 'tomb' you were sleeping in?

Her sister's family was wiped out by a direct hit - her sister survived miraculously, the only one of four that got out. My mum's brother was the best friend of my aunt's husband (his BIL). He went to the emergency area to identify the body, couldn't find him. So he went back with his dad (my granddad). Who identified him by his wedding ring - the rest of him was unrecognisable. Apparently, and not surprisingly, my uncle passed out with shock.

My mum's school was shut down for three months at the beginning of the war, then she was evacuated, then came back and her school was bombed (luckily whilst it was shut). She was educated in a teacher's living room for months along with a few others until they got the school running again (shored up and with bombed out areas still in place).

Rationing was tight. Even when mum got married in the early 50s her wedding cake was three tiers high but only the top tier was real - and that had contributions of butter and sugar from family and neighbours in it! The queue we have for the supermarket was one they had to do and repeat for each shop - so butchers, then grocers, then greengrocers. Nothing under one roof.

Mum remembered a German plane machine gunning the street coming from her school and parents throwing children into doorways, then throwing themselves on top - the people living in the street opening doors and dragging people inside.

But it wasn't all doom and gloom. Mum tells stories of parties (impromptu ones with her sister on piano and rugs rolled up), trips to the beach, her brothers lining their sisters up on the table top to draw the 'stocking' line down the back on their legs so it looked like they were wearing stockings - one sister decided to use gravy browning to look 'tanned' and got chased home by local dogs!

It did leave mental scars - my mum's claustrophobia, my aunt developed agoraphobia, another eventually had a nervous breakdown. My teacher was a prisoner of war with the Japanese and would dive under the table if he heard a door slam at school...

they went through this for six years - not six weeks or six months. However, the difference is that they could get out and things did change - there would be lulls in bombings, changes in how the war itself was going etc. They could socialise, cinemas stayed open for example. My aunt losing her husband and his sister and brother in that bombing was awful, but the family supported her on the day she was dug out and the days that followed. She moved back in with her parents and they took care of her. That social connection made a little difference.

It's a different thing to today but I certainly admire those people - how they got out of bed sometimes over those long years I really don't know.

The spirit thing is a shit comparison I agree. My gran was one of the older evacuees in WW2 but did drop into conversation the other day that this for her is worse than the war. I suppose she didn’t have a husband etc away fighting then and now she’s home alone 😢

Should also point out we haven’t left her there all alone, she has carers going in every day and refuses to go into a care home/move to a more suitable house 🙄😂 for once though I’m relieved she is at home and not in a large nursing home!

That's interesting about Hull. I believe my great gf was fire watching when it was bombed and his dw was killed

Both my dps were babies and I suspect my df may have been evacuated. Mil slightly older and remembers more. Definitely a different attitude to my parents.

I think people were less materialistic because they had less. Possibly stronger communities as people tended to have relatives living with them.

I think that really it is referencing the vast majority of people who accepted that all the laws, rules, rationing, blackouts, curfews and other difficulties experienced during wartime were necessary and for the common good. They got on with things and made the best of what they could, even when being bombed.

The blitz spirit.

The 'Keep calm and carry on' mentality.

I don't believe we have it any more in this country. We are no longer allowed to feel proud to be British. It is frowned on. People no longer accept that laws are there to be followed. Now everyone finds reasons why the law doesn't apply to them.

We now have the 'Fuck everybody else, I'm going to do what I damn well please' mentality.

We are literally being asked to stay at home where most of us have WiFi, food, warmth and probably a family or at least partner to keep us company.

During the war many children were sent away from their parents and Father’s went to war, possibly never to return. Cities were also being blown apart and everyone had to ration their food, only eating enough to survive.

This is nothing like WW2, people are being ridiculous.

But people looted the bombed houses and robbed the corpses while they were still warm, Tudor

Tudor Surely most people are following the new rules and restrictions. it is the tiny minority who aren't. I think we do have the keep calm and carry on mentality. If you steer clear of the doom mongerers on social media that is.

I think though it is in some ways helpful to think of this as a battle.

Yes, in WWII there were the black-marketeers, the looters, the people who were out to make as much profit as they could with as little effort and danger to themselves. There always will be.
I remember my grandparents and their siblings talking about the war. Air raids, death of friends, fear of death for each other, the unknown, eking out of rations, difficulty getting anything (my great aunt apparently had a tendency for knocking the spouts of teapots ) listening all the time for planes, fear of invasion... the list goes on.

But also how when they were bombed out and lost everything, a neighbour took them in, how the Air raid Wardens would be out during the bombing digging because they knew there could be a child trapped under the rubble, how someone put a extra bottle of milk from their ration on their doorstep when their child was ill, how they all dug together to make the Anderson shelters, one in each garden, and when the first raids came and they weren't all complete they squashed in one together so tight that they could hardly breathe...

It's the latter that we refer to as the Blitz Spirit. It's not forgetting the bad things that also happened, but recognising that in the face of a common adversary, the ordinary people can come together and work for good.

And actually I have seen this happening now. In our area alone we had 3k people have signed up to help. People want to help. The generosity there is out there is overwhelming at times.
Yes, there are people who think they should get anything and everything they want. There are people already manipulating the systems put in place to help. But the majority of people are pulling together and surely we should celebrate that?

It is very like a war. A war against an enemy whom no one knows what it can do, how it will change, and how to stop it.
We don't know yet whether it will mutate and change. It could become milder, less contagious and become not an issue. It could become worse, killing more people, spreading in new ways.
It could be out of lockdown in June, and no worries, it could be in two years time countries are still going in and out of lockdown. Unlikely, but if no vaccine is found, then who knows?

Looking for the "Blitz Spirit" is a way of seeing good in the situation, and I, for one, hope the community spirit that I have been seeing this last month continues after this is over, with people looking out for their neighbours and the generosity is still outpouring to people in need.

People acting as if everyone remembers the war - there's barely anyone left old enough to recall it
Just from this thread you can tell that there are many of us who are one generation away from experiencing the war and certainly grew up with people who did. DH's sister and her husband both lived through it, were evacuated, remember the chickens in the garden in London etc it had a very big influence on our childhood's, not just hearing people talk about it but there being shelters in the school field, bomb sites still uncleared, the effect on our food etc. WWII has also been so well documented and there are still films being made that are set then (that Potato Pie thing, Monuments Men etc). It's a huge thing in our culture, whether or not it should be, certainly for anyone over, say, 50? It doesn't really register with DD the same way it did with us, it's losing its effect but thinking it doesn't still have an influence on people who grew up with people who lived through it and in places affected by it is unrealistic.

www.theguardian.com/society/2010/aug/29/blitz-london-crime-flourish-blackout

I think it's hard to summon "wartime sprit" when you only know it from the movies.

I think some people are having problems with understanding that comparisons don't mean exactly the same as, they mean have some key similarities with. (A bit like how a poem can ostensibly be about one thing on the surface whilst having an entirely separate meaning underneath.)