Sometimes I hear complaints from people today about how bad 2022 is, I suppose as compared to some other time in history.
My mother was born in 1925, in rural Wisconsin. When I started learning about history, to me it never seemed like much of a fun time in the macro sense, with World War I, Spanish Flu, Prohibition, Depression, World War II. Even the Roaring 20s didn’t seem that fun, too out of control when you know what’s coming, not like the post war period.
Now her family was not harshly impacted. The Depression required more barter with storekeepers and adjustments, but they made it. No one died or was seriously injured in the wars.
But it seems like it might have been stressful? Of course people didn’t have the Internet to complain about it back then. What’s the opinion of others?
Yes, 1914-1945 was a worse time to be alive, on average, than 2022. But 2022 is a worse time, on average, than:
a) What 2014 was
b) What we expected 2022 to be
Compared to today? Yes, pretty crappy, but much better than the next 4 decades, where I live. Compared to, say, 1350 CE in Western Europe? No, it was great.
2022 in the U.S. is a very far cry from what most people endured in the 1930s-40s, and even further from what was experienced on the European continent.
Imagine being French, living through WWI and the enormous political and social upheavals of the interwar period, then being mobilized to prepare for a second German invasion.
And that assumes you were in America. If you were born in Eastern Europe or (what was to become) the Soviet Union in around 1900, then things were about to get very very bad for basically your whole life as as soon as you hit your teenage years.
It was pretty horrible in 1943, what with the Red Sox having to replace Johnny Pesky and Ted Williams with Skeeter Newsome and Leon Culberson, then finishing next to last in the AL.
Are there any places in the world where this is not true? Currently there are famines and failed states in Africa, and things are pretty bad for anyone living in Ukraine. Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea (to name just a few) are ruled by repressive regimes. But was life in any of these places actually better, on average, between 1914-1945?
One advantage those who lived before 1945 had over those who lived after is that they couldn’t fathom the possibility of civilization itself being snuffed overnight. As a child of the 1960s, nuclear annihilation has been a very real threat my whole life.
It all depends on what subdivision you chose. I’m sure then are some micronations that were flush with wealth in 1914-45 and that aren’t today. And of course it depends on how you measure “better”.
Presumably those sent away were not in Massachusetts. Even then, the casualty rate of Massachusetts man who were in the armed services was lower than that for the entire population of Poland, in which one in five people died.
I remember telling my mom when I was about 7 or 8, if I could go back in history I’d want to live in the 1930s. People wore beautiful clothes, lived in big fancy houses, and went to parties all the time. I watched a lot of old movies.
For East Africa WW1 was one of the biggest catastrophes to befall the continent (even by the standards of the region which has gone through some tough times). A long drawn out guerilla campaign between British and German troops (or rather troops from the British and German colonies generally) killed a huge percentage of the population, finishing just in time for the arrival of the Spanish Flu which then wiped out another huge swath of the weakened population.
As someone safely living in the US I wouldn’t swap places with them in 2022. But someone who was born there in 1900 would (if they survived) have lived through, WW1, the Russian Civil war, the Holodomor, the Nazi invasion, and the Soviet reconquest, Compared to that the current conflict is splash in the pan (of course we have no way of knowing if it is start of another few decades of terrible times ).
The current regime is awful, but its positively benevolent compared to the Japanese occupation (that started in 1910 and ended in 1945 and led to 100s of thousands of deaths), and was soon followed by the Korean war which led to even more deaths (though that was after 1945)
).