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[Catawampus]

On a completely unrelated note, I've noticed that it's not quite so easy to find movies/documentaries or whatever in regards to the first World War, though there's plenty of books. Why is this war relatively ignored compared to the second? It's quite common for a person to know more about the second than the first, yet the first created a lot of the issues that led to the second. Is there a way to get ahold of someone in Hollywood and suggest a big movie or something based on that war?

Probably lots of reasons.

1) People still remember WWII. A few still remember WWI, but not many. The market for home movies is a recent thing, so it's mainly the children of the WWII veterans who have been buying stuff, and they're always hearing about "back in the war" from their parents.

2) A lot of people consider WWI to simply be a prelude to the "main event", WWII. Many of the changes that were brought about by WWI were undone or overshadowed by WWII a few decades later. WWII was followed by the Cold War, which was more nebulous and less glamourous and so didn't overshadow WWII.

3) WWII had a lot more media coverage of the type that can be made into movies. There were lots of people with movie cameras recording things in the 1940's compared to the 1910's.

4) WWII was bigger in scale. There's just more to talk about and more of interest to different people.

5) In the case of the US, WWII was the one where America itself was directly attacked. WWI was just "over there somewhere". WWII was more personal.

[Bookworm]

My mom said she's gonna find me a spare charger when she gets home this evening.

On a completely unrelated note, I've noticed that it's not quite so easy to find movies/documentaries or whatever in regards to the first World War, though there's plenty of books. Why is this war relatively ignored compared to the second? It's quite common for a person to know more about the second than the first, yet the first created a lot of the issues that led to the second. Is there a way to get ahold of someone in Hollywood and suggest a big movie or something based on that war?

1) it's not purely American, so it doesn't grab the History Channel as much, unlike the American (un)Civil War.
2) Records were much more sparse. Everything was on paper, and much of the documentation got destroyed in some fires. (1973)
(For a fun research line on a Gillette Safety Razor, and the soldier it was issued to, there's a five part set over at https://www.theshaveden.com

Part 1 - http://theshaveden.com/forums/threads/t ... ets.56491/
Part 2 - http://theshaveden.com/forums/threads/t ... cer.56516/
The rest of the parts are linked along the line, but give a good breakdown of what it takes just to try to identify what one person might have done.
)

3) Radio broadcasting was in its infancy, and movie recording still took very bulky equipment for anything reasonable. There's a bunch available, here's one referencing Lorraine, in 1918 - Be sure to pay attention about 28 seconds in.
4) By the time people were ready for the movies to be made, we were in the middle of the Great Depression. All Quiet on the Western Front was 1928, I think. So there weren't many movies being made. By the time we were _out_ of that, it was the middle of WW-II, and movies were being used for propaganda. Once that war was over, there was a lot more film, information, and people ready to be the stars of the movies. WW-I was 'lost'. You could consider WW-II to be the first large scale conflict that had active media presences that gave relatively real-time information to the folks 'back home'. News Reels were produced as fast as possible, and were usually no more than two weeks behind. There were also several different ways to record sound, and thanks to the NAZIs, we ended up with usable wire recording, the precursor to tape recording. (Invented by a Dane in 1898) So, in the immediate run-up to WW-II, we had lots of information about that war, the background, etc. WW-I was caused by Serbian Separatists. Nowhere near as exciting as 'The Nazi's are coming!'.

Does that help? The movies and documentaries you should be looking for would have been made between 1926 and 1937 or so - and most of them would have been destroyed (as most early movies and newsreels were after showing. They were often recycled for the silver content)

[AnotherFairportfan]

The last British WW1 vet - a woman who served as a sixteen-year-old nurse - died a few years ago, and the last ANZAC vet died a year or two later, i think.

[Atomic]

Since old wars are in topic at the moment, here's a saying I heard long ago that's been making more and more sense as the years have gone by:

• The war's not over until the children are dead.

This isn't about killing children, it's about the children of war. Consider the warrior back from battle, who tells his children of his exploits. They grow up firm in the knowledge of their parents sacrifice, and of those neighbors who fought for a cause.

Now, forty years later, the parents are passing away in the fullness of time, and the grandchildren are growing up. They hear the stories of their grandparents lives, and know nothing else but that what had happened but through their words and teachings.

So then the children pass away and the fourth generation comes to fore. They know nothing but legend, and only if their parents had shared it with them, and even then those few things they themselves remember. The war is irrelevant to their lives, and those passions no longer exist. The war is over.

How many of you are passionate about what happened 60-80+ years ago, unless that heritage affects you directly? And to what degree, according to what affectation?

[AnotherFairportfan]

Conversely, wars happen every twenty-five to thirty years because that's how long it takes to raise a new generation of cannon fodder who watch war movies and read comic books and think war is magnificent.

[Alkarii]

And here I thought wars happened because of politicians in different countries not getting along or deciding to be greedy...

[AnotherFairportfan]

And here I thought wars happened because of politicians in different countries not getting along or deciding to be greedy...

Can't run the engine without fuel.

[Alkarii]

It looks like you've got a pretty skewed view of those who would join the military, because not one person that I met when I was going through basic joined because they thought war was glorious or anything like that. In fact, if anyone said anything like that, the drill sergeants set them straight very quickly, and I don't think they even needed to make any embellishments when it came to what would happen during a deployment to a combat zone.

[Bookworm]

Conversely, wars happen every twenty-five to thirty years because that's how long it takes to raise a new generation of cannon fodder who watch war movies and read comic books and think war is magnificent.

Man, I never realised that the 100 year war, the War of the Roses, the American Civil War, the Spanish American War, the Texas/Mexican wars(several), the Indian Wars, the Crimean War, and all the rest were caused by comic books and war moves.

Who would have thought?

[jwhouk]

Nah, it was by conscription, books, and priests.

[AnotherFairportfan]

I said "wars happen". Not "wasrs used to happen".

I was referring to WW One and Two, Korea {which was sort of a continuation of WW2}, Viet Nam, etc. - wars in the modern era, where the potential cannon fodder has some say in the process.

It's not a hard-and-fast rule, but the fewer people there are who have actual memories of the previous war, the easier it is to whip up the next generation to a fine froth.

If Bush Minor had been trying to push his Iraq adventure in 1980 {even if he had a 9/11 style event to hang it on*, he'd have had a lot harder sell.

===========

* Memories of the Tonkin Gulf were still green in a lot of peoples' minds...

[Alkarii]

I finally managed to get my application submitted, so now I only have to wait a couple of weeks for everything to go through and I'll be making more money while being able to work longer than a year.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I said "wars happen". Not "wasrs used to happen".

I was referring to WW One and Two, Korea {which was sort of a continuation of WW2}, Viet Nam, etc. - wars in the modern era, where the potential cannon fodder has some say in the process.

It's not a hard-and-fast rule, but the fewer people there are who have actual memories of the previous war, the easier it is to whip up the next generation to a fine froth.

If Bush Minor had been trying to push his Iraq adventure in 1980 {even if he had a 9/11 style event to hang it on*, he'd have had a lot harder sell.

===========

* Memories of the Tonkin Gulf were still green in a lot of peoples' minds...

Korea was part of the Cold War, as was 'Nam (by the way, the name of the country is Vietnam, one word, not two). And a whole lot of other conflicts. Including the tweedledee and tweedledumb between Iraq and Iran with both the soviets and the murikans trying to install their own puppets to control the oil fields, and backlashing magnificently against both of the supposed puppetmasters. Dubbya cleaned up the mess that was in place since before the Iranian Hostage Crisis that got Regan elected. Not that there wasn't already a mess there to begin with that dates back thousands of years to when Baghdad was called Babylon, but when both of the superpowers tried sticking their oars in... well, it went about as well as you'd think. Lockheed Martin already has a prototype compact fusion reactor they're testing, can't wait until they get one commercially viable. Then we can tell the middle east to just eff off and pull all our interests out of it.

Oh, speaking of going to war in the middle east in the 80's... Regan's whole platform was 'If we don't get those people back by the time I take office, we will be running over Iran within 48 hours'. So... you're kinda right, in that it would've been Iran rather than Iraq (because Hussein was still playing 'good little tinpot dictator' still and hadn't committed the atrocities he would later commit), and Regan instead of Dubbya. But it rather undermines your proposed theory.

And WW II was fought less than two decades after WW I, all the WW I veterans (who survived) were still alive and still more than aware. In fact, that's what permitted Hitler to expand so rapidly, The UK and most of Europe was so war-weary from the first world war that they didn't want another major war, and so they sat and did nothing until it was too late. Unfortunately, the peace terms were so punitively harsh against Germany that it really had no other option, especially not when the lunatic got in charge by whipping up fury at a nebulous 'them' (kinda like how Trump got elected, actually...).

[AnotherFairportfan]

Actually, either "Vietnam" or "Viet Nam" are acceptable transliterations into English orthography.

I prefer the two word version.

I was there, BTW. {Not that that has anything at all to do with anything in this discussion.}

Yes, Korea was part of the Cold War (its beginning in many ways), but the mindset in its prosecution was a continuation of WW2, which was guaranteed by the presence of Dugout Doug, the first "Hollywood General".

[Chaise Murphy]

It looks like you've got a pretty skewed view of those who would join the military, because not one person that I met when I was going through basic joined because they thought war was glorious or anything like that. In fact, if anyone said anything like that, the drill sergeants set them straight very quickly, and I don't think they even needed to make any embellishments when it came to what would happen during a deployment to a combat zone.

I knew a couple of guys who joined the army because they thought it would be cool to be soldiers. Not the sharpest knives in the drawer.

They dropped out of basic training, because "Everything they made us do, every hour of the day, was about learning how to kill people!"

Well, duh!

[AnotherFairportfan]

I mean the populace as a whole - particularly the ones who WON'T go - get that idea.

Phrased badly.

I remember my boot camp days - Navy, 1967 - there were enough guys who talked about "gooks" and the like whenever Viet Nam came up.

[Bookworm]

And WW II was fought less than two decades after WW I, all the WW I veterans (who survived) were still alive and still more than aware. In fact, that's what permitted Hitler to expand so rapidly, The UK and most of Europe was so war-weary from the first world war that they didn't want another major war, and so they sat and did nothing until it was too late. Unfortunately, the peace terms were so punitively harsh against Germany that it really had no other option, especially not when the lunatic got in charge by whipping up fury at a nebulous 'them' (kinda like how Trump got elected, actually...).

What I like to point out to people is that WW-I was caused by the Serbians separatists, and WW-II was caused by the French. Everyone likes to blame the Prussian/Germans/Austrians, but when you look at the underlying _cause_, it was not. They may be to blame, but they weren't the cause.

Serbia.. that area of the world is just as much trouble as Afghanistan and 'The Middle East'.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

And WW II was fought less than two decades after WW I, all the WW I veterans (who survived) were still alive and still more than aware. In fact, that's what permitted Hitler to expand so rapidly, The UK and most of Europe was so war-weary from the first world war that they didn't want another major war, and so they sat and did nothing until it was too late. Unfortunately, the peace terms were so punitively harsh against Germany that it really had no other option, especially not when the lunatic got in charge by whipping up fury at a nebulous 'them' (kinda like how Trump got elected, actually...).

What I like to point out to people is that WW-I was caused by the Serbians separatists, and WW-II was caused by the French. Everyone likes to blame the Prussian/Germans/Austrians, but when you look at the underlying _cause_, it was not. They may be to blame, but they weren't the cause.

Serbia.. that area of the world is just as much trouble as Afghanistan and 'The Middle East'.

Kind of...

WW II was caused by the punitively harsh conditions the Treaty of Versailles put upon Germany that caused runaway inflation so bad that people demanded their pay on a daily basis because by the end of the week, the price of food was several TIMES higher. Germany originally surrendered under the impression that the 14 points would be used as the foundation for a treaty, which is why they also went to a representative form of government (that Hitler later exploited).

WW I was caused by many things, but the assassination of Ferdinand was merely the straw that broke the camel's back. The true source of instability that permitted Europe's house of cards to come tumbling down so rapidly was simply societal. The industrial revolution was in full swing, and this proved to be a significant upheaval to how society was structured, and the end to feudalism in general. This was further brought on by a series of very strong personalities retiring and less strong personalities taking over that was a trigger for many internal strifes to grow significantly. It broke empires, because the imperial mode of government was already on its way out. Yes, Serbia was a very unsettled place for many of the same reasons, and also because of decisions that were made back in the day of Rome itself and how it split up the Roman Empire when it fractured, and without Serbia's instability WW I might have either been delayed or sparked elsewhere, but it was one of many 'straws in the wind' so to speak that helped the train-wreck of bad decisions that led up to WW I.

[Alkarii]

I'd recently learned that, until PM Chamberlain had increased trade with the US (while doing the whole appeasement thing with Germany), a third war between the US and Britain had been a very real possibility. There was something called War Plan Red, which was pretty interesting in and of itself, but at the same exact time, Canada and Britain both had plans for a possible war with the US. The expected outcome was that the US would take Canada, but would only manage a stalemate with Britain at sea.

While many want to think poorly of Chamberlain, if he hadn't had that policy of appeasement (he was trying to appease the US as well as Germany), we might not have helped Britain in time (if we did at all), and the second world war would have ended VERY differently.

So, maybe a little silver lining there, I guess.

[Typeminer]

I have read an interesting argument in Chamberlain's defense: That at the time of his policy of appeasement, Britain was in no state to take on Nazi Germany in any case, and it bought time.

I don't find this altogether convincing (France had a massive standing army, for one thing), but it's a different view. To my knowledge, Chamberlain never made that argument himself.