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How the fuck did they get through the war??

254 replies

ssd · 17/12/2020 22:25

If it was 6 years...

This hasn't been a year yet and were all losing the will.....

I think the only benefits people in 1939 had were no 24/7 telly and no social media

But 6 years....OMG

OP posts:
DailyPotion · 18/12/2020 13:02

I don't think anyone's arguing that this is harder, but they're not comparable. Plus history (rather than rose tinted glasses) clearly demonstrates that they didn't just get on with it in good spirits, there were all sorts of social problems as a result of people wanting better for themselves than was generally available.

In a very small but slightly similar example. My DH is in hospital. We don't know what will happen. In wartime, I could go and have my dad hug me Sad or my friends would come round and keep me company. So yes, he may have been away for months (actually, I've been there too as he served in the first Gulf War) but I wouldn't have been completely alone with my worry.

Maigue · 18/12/2020 13:27

@IrenetheQuaint

" Irene seems to be overlooking the fact that people were killed everyday, either in fighting, bombings, torpedoed ships, in PoW camps. Not to mention terrifying nights in air raid shelters (not just in London, many ports and other areas were bombed).

But I expect the bad food and lack of holidays was their main source of anxiety...not. hmm"

Of course people went through dreadful and terrifying experiences! I'm just saying that they also moaned a lot too about everyday inconveniences and anxieties. Anyone who thinks they didn't hasn't actually read any contemporaneous novels/diaries/letters/Mass Observation reports.

Absolutely this. People are still confusing contemporary government propaganda about the 'blitz spirit' with the reality of people's lives during WWII.

And the one big WWII psychiatric study of civilian lives under bombardment in Hull, based on hundreds of survivor interviews, shows people exhibiting all the signs of trauma and PSTD we would expect -- chronic incontinence, crying, shaking, mutism, uncontrollable shaking, heavy drinking and smoking, nervous collapse, stress-related physical illnesses.

They weren't some magic stoical breed apart.

ProfYaffle · 18/12/2020 13:32

"People struggled in the Ww2 in the UK too."

Yup, people were just as human then as they are now. The blitz spirit was propaganda. A study on mental health in Hull after blitz bombing showed that "people developed serious psychosomatic conditions, including involuntary soiling and wetting, persistent crying, uncontrollable shaking, headaches and chronic dizziness; men were found to indulge in heavy drinking and smoking after a raid, and prone to developing peptic ulcers."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/19/myth-blitz-spirit-model-coronavirus

Flaxmeadow · 18/12/2020 13:36

Yes Hull was massively bombed. The city of Hull lost the most dwellings by capita than any other town or city in the UK.

Hull at the moment is nothing like it was during the blitz. People have a roof over their heads and no destroyed infrastructure. They still have a water and sewage treatment. Electricity and gas. Still able to shop for food with no shortages. I think in tier 2 and still able to go to the pubs and restaurants.

MummaBear4321 · 18/12/2020 13:37

During the war it was all about everyone sticking together and helping each other. With this, the public have been pitted against each other, have been trained to blame each other, and have been told their neighbohrs are akin to murderers for having their mother over for a cuppa. During the war, people fought for freedom against a real threat. Now, they just fight amongst themselves and against an invisible virus that we simply cannot beat.

Flaxmeadow · 18/12/2020 13:41

Are people seriously suggesting that someone in WW2, sat in the rubble of a bombed out and flattened street, whose husband is fighting abroad and whose children have been evacuated was better off than someone who is upset because they can't go to the pub during lockdown to socialise? Seriously?

DailyPotion · 18/12/2020 13:46

@Flaxmeadow

Are people seriously suggesting that someone in WW2, sat in the rubble of a bombed out and flattened street, whose husband is fighting abroad and whose children have been evacuated was better off than someone who is upset because they can't go to the pub during lockdown to socialise? Seriously?
No and can you show me any post that had suggested such?

But it is completely different. They faced tremendous adversity, but they had friends and neighbours to do it with.

Plus, they really didn't bear it all without complaint.

chomalungma · 18/12/2020 13:55

I think many people are deliberately missing the point.
It's hard dealing with this at the moment. So basically how did people cope with wars? How do people cope when their world and what they are used to is suddenly changed.

brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr · 18/12/2020 14:00

people are still experiencing wars and flee them leaving everything behind, then desperately come to the UK in small precarious boats. and many people here are hostile to them and get very angry about that, then get very angry that they themselves can’t go to a pub at the moment and have to stay in their warm safe houses with the tv for comfort.

Quartz2208 · 18/12/2020 14:08

I talked to my Nan who has lived through both and she said what got them through the war was coming together human contact and interaction. The very thing we are not allowed to do.

And that is what is the hardest part of all of this - the distancing and lack of human cotact. The very tools we use to get through the darkest time is the one thing that we are not allowed to do

RufustheSniggeringReindeer · 18/12/2020 14:10

@Flaxmeadow

Are people seriously suggesting that someone in WW2, sat in the rubble of a bombed out and flattened street, whose husband is fighting abroad and whose children have been evacuated was better off than someone who is upset because they can't go to the pub during lockdown to socialise? Seriously?
No

Ive seen no such post..i may have missed it though

Mylittleturkeysandwich · 18/12/2020 14:12

Shall we all just agree that it's all shite? Wars are shite, lockdown is shite. Being at risk of losing your home because the payment holidays will have to end at some point is shite but so was having your home blown up.

Ormally · 18/12/2020 14:24

I suspect not knowing that it would be 6 years was no small part of it.

A great many people could work and contribute to benefit everyone with the expectation of this all being needed and contributing to things being less awful (e.g. in the services, food production, logistics to support the troops and infrastructure such as the rail network). I suspect most people at present feel either overloaded or impotent and invisible depending on their occupations.

I'd have to look it up but I think that the most stressful and destructive phase of the war, with the most frequent raids, came 1-2 years later than the start (for the UK at least). I remember reading an account saying that a family had been issued with gas masks at the beginning but had forgotten most things about how to use them by the time they came to have to do that. Likewise, the evacuation of children was actually scrambled in a very short time frame and the first wave was evacuated over just a couple of days with the warning being given to their families the day before to present themselves in the morning...I can't imagine how that must have been.

AmICrazyorWhat2 · 18/12/2020 14:38

My grandfather drowned/froze to death in the North Sea after his ship was torpedoed. Only two crew members survived, they were picked up by another vessel after clinging to wreckage in the freezing water ( it was mid-winter).

They reported what happened and it was like that awful scene in the film “Titanic,” people in the water slowly losing consciousness. I know my grandma was traumatized knowing how he died and even my Mum, who was too small to remember him, found it difficult to accept.
It was especially hard for my grandma never having absolute proof that he was dead, just Missing in Action.☹️

He was one of millions who died horribly in the World Wars leaving a devastated family behind. This pandemic is awful and traumatizing, but it’s not the same scale of devastation. I don’t think it’s helpful to compare them, it’s a completely different scenario.

eeeyulesmiles · 18/12/2020 14:47

Hmm - people keeping saying the two are in no way comparable, but they can only have come to that conclusion by... comparing them. I think what they mean is that they can't be generally likened to each other. At one level of course that's true - I mean one is was a world war and the other is a medium-sized pandemic in the time of the internet - but I'd be surprised if the people saying they're not comparable didn't find any similarities when they made the comparison they based that decision on (or maybe they didn't think about it in much detail).

A war and a pandemic are both big, complex, multifaceted events that affect people in different ways (for instance there will be many, many medical staff with PTSD after this, but not so much soldiers; the economic shock is huge; and so on). WWII was the last event that affected everyday civilian life as much as this, so it's perfectly natural for people to be thinking and talking about it now in relation to the pandemic. You might as well try to get people to stop talking about the weather!

mabelandivy · 18/12/2020 14:53

People were made of stronger stuff back then. Times are different. They had less in the first place to miss.

AmICrazyorWhat2 · 18/12/2020 14:56

@eeeyulesmiles Fair point, we’re all making comparisons! I suppose I’m thinking more about the scale of the trauma- there are definitely people who’ve been devastated by the pandemic, but I personally think that the majority will be back to a semblance of normality this time next year and most people won’t have lost a loved one due to the pandemic. Whereas that wasn’t the case in the World Wars.

I could be totally wrong, of course. None of us know what’s going to happen long-term.

Riv12345 · 18/12/2020 15:00

When I was at work the other day talking to an elderly patient.

We were chatting about the virus.
She said it's worse than the war!!
I looked at her and she said at least we could go out in the war!!

I thought oh my goodness she was so right

Love hearing there war stories!
I take my hat off to all of them ❤️❤️

eeeyulesmiles · 18/12/2020 15:04

He was one of millions who died horribly in the World Wars leaving a devastated family behind. This pandemic is awful and traumatizing, but it’s not the same scale of devastation. I don’t think it’s helpful to compare them, it’s a completely different scenario.

In your second sentence, you are comparing the war and the pandemic. You've found a similarity ("awful and traumatizing") and a difference ("scale of devastation"). That's all lots of people are doing in this type of thread. Stories like your grandfather's are really important contributions because they help people to be better informed. No one's wrong to try to think about this stuff though. Even with the huge differences, there are enough similarities to make wartime society something people want to think about and possibly find strength from. I think adding information to these discussions (as you have done) rather than saying they shouldn't happen is the most helpful thing.

eeeyulesmiles · 18/12/2020 15:08

[quote AmICrazyorWhat2]@eeeyulesmiles Fair point, we’re all making comparisons! I suppose I’m thinking more about the scale of the trauma- there are definitely people who’ve been devastated by the pandemic, but I personally think that the majority will be back to a semblance of normality this time next year and most people won’t have lost a loved one due to the pandemic. Whereas that wasn’t the case in the World Wars.

I could be totally wrong, of course. None of us know what’s going to happen long-term.[/quote]
Cross-posted! I think you're probably right about the direct effects of the disease itself and most people being OK afterwards. I'm not as sure about the economic effects (or of long covid, possibly). But also I think most of us are quite focused on our daily life right now, and the shock to society, the change to normal life - that is currently huge, regardless of what will happen later, and I think people are reacting to that when looking back to find historical events with some similarity.

AmICrazyorWhat2 · 18/12/2020 15:09

You make a fair point!

BiBabbles · 18/12/2020 15:12

Not talking about it doesn't automatically mean someone is handling something without issues. Many people don't talk about things either due to trauma or because it's just socially disincentived to talk about something. Some of the worst things fester because people don't talk about it.

There can be an overabundance on the other side of ruminating too much on a topic that is also unhealthy as well and I can see admiring people who've survived hardship well, but it's important not to pretend that even that not complaining somehow means anything about how someone is doing. Some will be doing well, for some that commiseration helps, some will be quiet but turn to drink, other drugs, risky sex or other vices as a coping mechanism, others turn to religion and other ideologies, some mix it up in finding a way to get pleasure, meaning, and interest in the suffering of life.

I find the idea that others suffered means I shouldn't complain odd. During the worst parts of my life, I often found the littlest things to be upset on. I didn't have the energy to complain about the horrors going on or wouldn't dare give it words, I was too frightened because no one else was talking about what seemed so obviously bad so it must be too much to discuss. It took me years to get over that.

It took my MIL ten years to cry over her father's death because, born just after the WW2 and went through a lot as a career woman, it weighed on her a lot that she must keep a particular image. Couldn't be seen as weak, couldn't be seen as needy, she laughed when her disabilities acted up, and some might thing she was stoic. I don't think she was. She was an admirable woman in many ways, but I think she was scared for people to see any softness, even her own family. That affected her health and relationships in many ways. I think there is a balance between the hard image she was trying to portray and letting out an overabundance of every emotion that I think she feared.

GravityFalls · 18/12/2020 15:12

Hull is in Tier 3 and suffering very much with the economic consequences of covid, having already been on shaky ground even before this year. So not exactly coming out unscathed.

HeronLanyon · 18/12/2020 15:22

There was an enemy to fight. We on the other hand are at the mercy of a virus we can’t see and have to be pretty much passive and reclusive with to deal with it.
A number of numbskulls don’t believe in what we are dealing with now.
Many don’t agree with how it’s all being handled - far more critical population now. More critical because we’re not in a one solution situation and we are more empowered generally.
We can’t enlist or be conscripted and go off and fight! Totally different mindset. Totally different threat.

I’ve rethought a bit about ww2 and now think more definitely that there must have been a lot more bending of the rules, moaning, tittle tattling etc than we like to think when we do our ‘little Britain blitz spirit’ stuff.

tinselfest · 18/12/2020 15:22

Also there was not the same removal of civil liberties then as now?

People had no choice over what food they were allowed to buy.

Millions were called up into the armed forces. They had no choice in the matter.