In addition to what **Cal **is saying, I think the premise of the question is fundamentally flawed to some extent. Namely, I’d think if you somehow accelerated to 88 mph and asked Joe Peasant of the year of our Lord 865 whether or not war was glorious, or desirable, or warriors commendable ; Joe would have signed himself before pelting you with rocks. The lower classes have always dreaded War - hell, it’s a fucking horseman of the apocalypse for a reason. The only people who ever enjoyed war, or tried to justify war, or ever talked about glory and honor in war were the ruling warrior elites (and to a lesser extent the religious elites who sucked their collective cocks, but even there the support was very much spotty) ; and IMHO much of it was obligatory albeit not necessarily sincere justification for their own existence and role in society. But those were the guys who wrote about life and history and their opinion about it…
I mean, on some level I sympathize with the idea that war became abhorrent when everybody could see the aftermath of a napalm strike, a gas attack, a massive shelling… but the aftermath of taking an axe to the gut isn’t much prettier. An ancient battlefield was a horrifying cesspool of blood, guts, meat flies, grave robbing and mercy killing. Veterans were just as, if not even more mutilated wrecks than the survivors of modern wars ; and many of the participants much as unwilling victims of circumstances they had no control on (hence why, going back to the Bible, war is presented as this immanent, inevitable scourge on humanity rather than something actual people have a role in avoiding or even declaring). So if we accept that the human cost of war has always more or less been the same (on a personal level, if not as a matter of scale) and people haven’t much changed over the centuries… then why accept the idea that we used to fucking LOVE war, but now we don’t ?
True, but people didn’t have to see the battlefields, and the advances of medicine meant more seriously wounded people were able to walk around for a lot longer after the war. War has always been awful – “War is cruelty and you cannot refine it,” as Sherman said. But I think that with WWI it became more visible*.
*I forgot to mention the effect of newspapers, and especially of photojournalism, in this. Some people blamed the demoralization of Americans with respect to the Vietnam War on photojournalism and television.
I get the impression that we hit a peak of “max grossness” perhaps from 1860-1970 or so. Ever since Gulf War I, we’ve gone back to a certain sterilized view of war. Gulf War I was the “video game war,” where Americans really started to see war as being something fought from 20,000 feet up through a slick-looking cross hairs of a digital screen. It made war seem really cool, and then we also have a huge spree of enormously popular first-person shooter games like Counter Strike, Battlefield 2, Call of Duty, etc. And modern outlets like CNN nowadays still sanitize war to some extent - sure, you see bleeding heart anchors talk about the human suffering, but CNN doesn’t have the cajones to show people horrifically burned and skin melting. They’ll show some dead orphan (who doesn’t appear too wounded) in the arms of a weeping mother, but not the actual entrails.
So we’ve actually gone back to sanitizing war, somewhat. And making it look cool.
They kinda did though. Wars used to be much more personal affairs, just as states used to be much more territorial, even city-based things.
Every Athenian was able to witness the aftermath of Marathon for themselves (even though it was a victory), or the following not-so-one-sided battles in those wars (even if they could always rationalize it as “well they’re Persians so fuck 'em”), or the war of the Pelopponesus (sp ?). And even if not every medieval burgher toured a battlefield in their lifetime, and even if not everyone was a citizen-soldier in their lifetime ; physical violence used to be much more prevalent on a daily basis, be it from street crime or from their justice systems. They knew **exactly **what a guy dying in agony looked like from up close - I don’t. They knew what sound a knife makes when it effortlessly slides into some other guy’s liver - I don’t.
So maybe, I’ll grant, that desensitized them to physical violence rather than made them more wary of it. And maybe they all had PTSD. I still think it significant that we base our vision of history and the people in it on rich-guy Horace’s platitudes or De Bello Gallico (by victorious general Caesar, Julius, I) but never read Gaul is some bullshit and other drunken rants : a lifetime of latrine wall engravings (by Meown Puddus Pullus, PFC, 35th legion)
Well, technically there were no “Machine guns” in the American Civil war. The Gatling gun is kinda a machine gun, but was used very little during that war. 12 guns were bought by commanders privately, and used a little.
As was pointed out the American Civil War virtually did not include machine guns, and even repeating rifles only to a very limited degree. The vast majority of casualties were inflicted with muzzle loading shoulder arms. Not even a large % were inflicted by artillery, less than in the Napoleonic Wars. Whereas artillery became the dominant killer in WWI, even if that was somewhat distracted from by the also important introduction of machine guns on a large scale. Mg’s also had a fairly limited impact on the Boer or Russo-Japanese wars.
It wasn’t strictly anyway a technological change. The US Civil War created lots of subsequent aversion to war, as highly costly wars have always done. The Napoleonic Wars also did, the religious wars in Europe a couple of centuries earlier as well. But more localized (to the war weary country or countries) and limited in time.
For whatever the reasons, which again were not necessarily just a function of weapons technology, the Western world after WWI seemed to reach the conclusion that ‘The Great War’ was how major power conflicts would be in the future. The hope for quick relatively low cost and decisive wars receded permanently. And then that tended to a gradual erosion of the idea of even particular episodes in long costly wars being glorious. Though that’s not even gone yet, and definitely still existed looking back on WWI before WWII (eg. Sgt Alvin York’s exploits as viewed in the US, ace fighter pilots as viewed by various countries, etc).
Just opinion though. It’s both a matter of opinion how much the aftermath of WWI was really different and why. Also it obviously depends which society you’re talking about. For example the belief in potential for glory in war wasn’t particularly dampened in Japan by Japan’s limited involvement in WWI. The very costly land siege of Port Arthur in the 1904-5 war did do that in Japan to some extent, but again it wore off. And then some, by the 1930’s. It’s also hard to say war wasn’t ‘considered glorious and noble’ in Germany, which suffered very heavily in WWI, by the 1930’s. If it was a prospective then at first successful (1939-40 particularly) war to redress Germany’s humiliation in the 1914-18 war. War was considered less noble among intellectual elites in the English speaking world after WWI and that never really changed back. I think that’s the most correct answer for the most important inflection point in the English speaking world.
In Russian folklore, soldiers have always been shifty, suspect characters. If they came back from war, it was because they deserted their units. They weren’t paid a salary as such, and any money they made was from looting, pillaging, or deceiving honest housewives. I’d say the popular image of soldier as hero pretty much died with Alexander Nevsky.
In the west, the invention of the machine gun pretty much ruined glorious marching formations. In the good old “Barry Lyndon” days, two armies of approximately the same size would march towards each other and the poor bastards in front would absorb gunfire from single-shot rifles. By the 1860s, combatants had revolvers and repeating rifles, so Americans ditched formations pretty quickly. British and French armies used them right up until WWI, but adapted to trench warfare instead. Being a soldier was a lot less glamorous when they hunkered down and hid wearing trenchcoats instead of marching like the “Land of Counterpane” toy soldiers.
I live in Korea, where every ROK soldier on leave is apparently required to have a fabulous babe on his arm. This glamorizes (mandatory) military service to teenage boys who aren’t dating yet but would sure like to be. And when families come visit soldiers, their sisters are culturally expected to dress in a sexy manner, lest the brother get a good-natured ribbing from his fellow soldiers for having an ugly sister.
Long before the Great War there were grumbles that the endless, interchangeable European wars of the 1700s and 1800s were pointless wastes of human life. I’m reminded of Robert Southey’s The Battle of Blenheim, which was written in 1796 - despite the great toll of human misery the narrator can’t remember why the battle was fought:
*"With fire and sword the country round
Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then,
And new-born baby died;
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.
They say it was a shocking sight
After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory."*
The Great War was the point at which it became impossible to pretend that war was anything but a necessary evil. The notions that individual human life is valuable and that there is no afterlife were also far more widespread in the 1910s than in previous generations.
The dread of seeing a nuclear war may also play a role in all of this. Some misunderstanding or standoff between two hostile nations could trigger a apocalypese that wipes out masses of people in the world.
In additon, there are more and more expatriates and international couples nowdays, which furhter makes a outright war between countries seem unnecessary/respulsive compared to negotiation or diplomatic means for resolvng tension or dipsutes.
Death of the Ball Turret Gunner is right up there, as well.
I have the impression, gleaned from a lot of reading, that there were several key things that fell into place to cause war to quit being something that noble, manly men should desire, and that society should celebrate.
First, until about WWI, battles were usually one day affairs, with only a few being multi-day affairs. WWI was the first war that I’m aware of where units were in combat (i.e. in the trenches) for extended periods. That’s a fundamental difference.
Second, until about the US Civil War, combat tended to be more “heroic”, in that the fighting wasn’t typically just shooting at each other at hundreds of yards- there was close-quarter combat, etc… But in the Civil War and all wars since, they’ve mostly been relatively impersonal- formations of men shooting at each other, or just shooting at other soldiers, fleetingly seen, while being shelled, etc… which translates into less opportunity to do notably heroic stuff.
Third, along the lines of point 1, prior to the Civil War, armies tended to be generated and used, because they deteriorated whether or not they were fighting, so wars tended to be shorter.
Fourth, technological advances in small arms (cartridge rifles & machine guns) and artillery(high explosive shells, indirect fire, gas) meant that weaponry was more lethal and more impersonal than ever before.
So in WWI, we had troops and armies continuously in the field, less chance for glory, and a whole lot more random and impersonal death, so it’s not at all surprising that the earlier attitude of glorious war got kicked in the balls and replaced with an attitude that generally views it as something to be avoided if reasonably possible.
Aristophanes derided military valor in 400 BC. It’s not new.
Seems to be a constant propaganda battle. There’s a gradient from John Wayne to Richard Wagner on the ‘War is Fun’ side and from Joseph Keller to Ernest Hemingway on the ‘War is Hell’ side.
Joseph Heller? He was more on the “war is fine, incompetent and/or malicious assholes are hell, especially on your side.”
Again I think the question has to be answered from a particular society’s POV, or is answered from the POV of modern English speaking society, even by people who would think there’s something wrongly prejudicial in saying ‘we’ means the modern Anglo-Saxon world. It’s still how they are answering the question if they say WWI.
Again, WWI didn’t make war non-glorious in Japanese society. Or even German. The fact that it made it seem so in Britain is really the key, and what distinguished if from say the US Civil War. There was plenty of war weariness in the US over that war, even on the winning side. But intellectual leadership in the English speaking world still tended to reside in Britain. Within a few decades anglophiles like Teddy Roosevelt came around to the view that little wars could be beneficial in ‘building the character of youth’, following the British evolution in their small wars of the late 19th century, gradually reversing serious war weariness back in 1815. The (second) Boer War didn’t totally reverse that either though it was a shock both in how well the Boers initially did against the British Army, and the ‘non-glorious’ aspects of smokeless powder warfare (not machine guns so much, but accurate rifle fire from men under cover whose positions could not be determined by their muzzle smoke, unlike black powder smoke of earlier wars). WWI was what really changed elite British attitudes, and though British influence in the English speaking world was waning by then, the same war happened to subject the US to (albeit much more briefly, mainly summer 1918 to the end) to the same meat grinder.
That was the turning point I think in the English speaking world. Not necessarily elsewhere.
I would say both “always” and “never”? If you don’t happen to be stuck fighting in one, the spectacle of war, combined with examples of individual committing acts of heroism and bravery in service to a cause much larger than themselves tends to add a sense of glory and nobility to war.
Even recently, modern war films like 12 Strong, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, Lone Survivor, American Sniper, Zero Dark Thirty, and Black Hawk Down tend to downplay the political aspects of war and focus on the heroism of the soldiers involved.
If you mention Apocalypse Now, one of the bleakest and most surreal war films ever, what scene immediately conjures into people’s mind? Usually it’s Col Kilgore’s air cavalry squadron blasting it’s way into a Vietcong village blasting “Flight of the Valkyries” on their helicopter’s PA system.
I suspect if you were Joe Blow Musketman stuck in some infantry square being swarmed by enemy cavalry, it didn’t seem particularly glorious.
On a similar note, let’s talk Grenada. We sent 3,000 Marines to a Caribbean island that maybe one out of ten Americans could point to on a map, to deal with about 18 Cubans holding some Americans hostage, and at the end of the week that it took from start to finish, you would have thought it was V-E Day all over again. :dubious: Yee-ha. For the first time since The Big One, America had an unequivocal victory under its belt. Go Us.:rolleyes:
“We’re 10-1-1 now!”
War has been considered both glorious and horrible pretty much for all of recorded history.
Keep in mind it was only about 8 years post-Vietnam, which the US populace and military came out of with a very negative feeling. Grenada was our rebound war, so to speak.
As far as the first Gulf War was concerned, the video game aspect was directly due to the way the DoD and CENTCOM controlled the media coverage- they released what they wanted to show, which was cool looking guided weapon strikes in large part. In the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the wars started out that way, but as they continued, a lot of footage and images emerged via social media- it was and is entirely possible to find a lot of gruesome stuff out there from those wars without a lot of effort. Same thing for the Ukrainian and Syrian civil wars, as well as the Russian conflict in Chechnya. It’s true that it doesn’t make it onto the nightly news, but that’s true of most any gruesome footage.
George Soros and Charles Koch have teamed up to jointly fund a Washington think tank to promote more diplomacy and less war in settling global disputes.