INTERNET BUSHWACKER AND FREEBOOTER

I often wonder if this is why you so commonly see the sentiment that we are in an era of uniquely bad literature, or at least that the fact that most books don't have artistic aspirations and are not aiming to be anything other than mindless entertainment is new. In fact what's new is the idea that everything is worth preserving (and also the internet making it easier to preserve it). The dumb artistically unambitious trash books of the past have survived only sporadically, because people thought of them as literally disposable.

The leaders of the british military get a reasonable amount of flack for not opposing Hitler more in the 1930s. I get that. Britain at times (e.g. with Neville Chamberlain) seemed incredibly reluctant to get involved in a war with Germany.

Then I asked myself why.

So I began looking at the military careers of the 4 men who served as head of the British Army in the 1930s. All high ranking Generals or Field Marshalls in the 30s. I asked myself "what rank would they have been 20 years before?"

Probably company commander level. Captains or the like.

So I looked them up and each of the 4 men (George Milne, Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd, Cyril Deverell and John Vereker) served in field command at least during the early stages of WW1. On the front lines of the western front during Trench Warfare at its worst. Some of them were wounded in battle. One earned a VC.

So I went digging and as expected many if not most of the Generals and Colonels during the 1930s had served in junior officer positions on the front lines of WW1.

The Great War.

A war that killed almost 900,000 british soldiers. About 1/8 soldiers died. That is maybe 10% of ALL the men from 18-40 in Britain.

And these men served in the mud, and the trenches during the worst of it.

I am not surprised they were reluctant to start another war. In 1939 when we declared war it had been only 21 years since the last one ended. 21 years. Young men who left the trenches now had sons who were equally young men and eager to sign up once again. JRR Tolkien served in thsoe trenches in WW1. His son Christopher went to war in 1943 with the RAF and whilst he never saw front line action he certainly could have. Another son (Michael) volunteered but was turned down.

What father, having served in the first war, would be eager for his son to sign up for the second? What general would not do everything in his power to avoid sending millions of young men to risk death again?

Sure we "won" WW1 but it was truly traumatic for Britain. Every town, every village, has a monument to the dead from WW1. Every single one lists the eager young men who left for war and never returned. A lot of these Cenotaphs were built shortly after WW1 ended - the one in the town I live in was dedicated in 1921 and lists over 360 names.

Were we as a nation reluctant to enter a second major war with Germany? Yes we were. Incredibly so. That let Hitler get further along the road than he should have.

But WW2 was not just within living memory, it was the formative memory of many of the men now in power. It was the event that defined their early 20s. They ALL had friends who didn't make it. ALL of them.

The people complaining about the evils of capitalism and how they are suffering in Trump's economy still have a standard of living the average German would have killed for 100 years ago. The unemployment was so much worse. The treaty killed so many jobs. The economic sanctions were bleeding them dry after the war already effectively bankrupted them. To try and relieve the strain they printed up a ton of money backed by nothing which lead to hyperinflation. It's infamously known that you needed a wheelbarrow full of cash just to buy a loaf of bread. I heard stories of workers getting paid twice a day and needing their wives to hurry and pay the bills because the next day that money would lose a lot of its value.

for example, we have a microscope that is perfectly functional, good microscope, but its software is abandonware because the company refused to maintain it. the company is still in business, still makes essentially the exact same software, but they made all of the old tech incompatible with new software to force people to buy the new microscope tech. it would cost a quarter million dollars to replace this microscope. this perfectly good microscope.