What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
Gandhi
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Friday, January 3, 2014
Double Plus Ungood
This isn't meant to be an academic rebuff of Michael Gove's Daily Mail article. I'm not an academic and I'm hoping Sir Richard Evans will write a response far more detailed and sharp than I could ever write. After all it's Evans that Gove criticises most. Him and Blackadder anyway. This is just a plea for the Centenary of World War One to be more than just an exercise in flag-waving and brass polishing. A opportunity for Clio to get a word in edgeways amongst John Bull & the Jingoists.
George Orwell once wrote, in 1984, something along the lines of 'he who controls the past controls the future.' Whilst Khrushchev once said 'Historians are dangerous. They ask questions." I bare both of those quotes in mind when looking at the initial skirmishes in the Battle of the World War One centenary.
The decision to put Kitchener on the £2 coin shows that certain people seem to know Kitchener only as a very good poster. As opposed to the man who rolled out concentration camps during the Boer War. The shallow dip into the past for an image to sum up World War One produces that. But let's put that down to a basic lack of thought & selection by committee.
Today though Michael Gove wrote an article in the Daily Mail - of course - basically saying that left-wingers had made the 'heroes' that fought World War One into villains. Apparently this is Blackadder's fault. Which shows that the Education Secretary seems to have missed the vast tranch of memoirs, poetry, art & film that has been saying - virtually since the First World War ended - that this wasn't a noble war.
However almost none of those sources question the 'heroism' of ordinary men in the front line who put up with the kind of hell that none of us can possibly imagined. They just questioned why these ordinary men were expected to put up with this. Why were we fighting this long dirty war? For what reason were we sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives?
Well, there's a lot of reasons. The causes of World War One are many. Lots of different threads, knotted together. There's Imperial rivalry, a Naval Arms race, Railway Timetables, Treaties and Counter-Treaties, Britain's traditional fear of letting one continental power gaining control of the European mainland, Germany's fear of being surrounded by hostile powers, the personalities of the relevant Presidents, Prime Ministers and Monarchs, a desire to settle old scores, Belgian neutrality and yes, there's the possibility that a Prussian Militaristic super-state might behave in some ungentlemanly manner. And that's those I can think of off the top of my head.
None of these are necessarily heroic. Most of them are just politics. But our grandfather's & great-grandfathers died in their thousands for something and we'd prefer to think that - like the fight against the Nazi's in World War Two - we were on the side of the good guys & not just another superpower keen to protect what we've got from our enemies.
And perhaps there is an element of that. Certainly many of those young men who signed up in 1914 did so for patriotic reasons. The stories that came out of Belgium early in the war of |German atrocities - raped Nuns, shot children etc - seemed to confirm that we were on the right side in this conflict.
Maybe we were.
But what the Centenary of World War One gives us a chance to do is look at what happened without the jingoistic spectacles on. To ask why we went to war and look at all the reasons.
One of my great-granddads never recovered from being gassed in World War One. All of them fought. My granddads both fought in World War Two. A war we find it much easier to justify. A war of survival against a terrible foe.
Was World War One the same kind of war? Or just a clash of Empires and wannabee Empires. A shuffling of the Great Power pack? Whatever it was the centenary gives us a chance to looks at World War One and ask all the questions we might want to ask.
Michael Gove is entitled to put his view across but this political drawing of lines seems both childish and unnecessary. Perhaps the Education Secretary should read a few more history books, biographies and memoirs rather than choosing to blame Blackadder. I'd start with Edmund Blunden's ' 'Undertones of War' and maybe to get a view from the other side Ernst Jünger's 'Storm of Steel'.
George Orwell once wrote, in 1984, something along the lines of 'he who controls the past controls the future.' Whilst Khrushchev once said 'Historians are dangerous. They ask questions." I bare both of those quotes in mind when looking at the initial skirmishes in the Battle of the World War One centenary.
The decision to put Kitchener on the £2 coin shows that certain people seem to know Kitchener only as a very good poster. As opposed to the man who rolled out concentration camps during the Boer War. The shallow dip into the past for an image to sum up World War One produces that. But let's put that down to a basic lack of thought & selection by committee.
 |
| Major Clement Attlee, WW1 - Michael Gove wouldn't like him. |
Today though Michael Gove wrote an article in the Daily Mail - of course - basically saying that left-wingers had made the 'heroes' that fought World War One into villains. Apparently this is Blackadder's fault. Which shows that the Education Secretary seems to have missed the vast tranch of memoirs, poetry, art & film that has been saying - virtually since the First World War ended - that this wasn't a noble war.
However almost none of those sources question the 'heroism' of ordinary men in the front line who put up with the kind of hell that none of us can possibly imagined. They just questioned why these ordinary men were expected to put up with this. Why were we fighting this long dirty war? For what reason were we sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives?
Well, there's a lot of reasons. The causes of World War One are many. Lots of different threads, knotted together. There's Imperial rivalry, a Naval Arms race, Railway Timetables, Treaties and Counter-Treaties, Britain's traditional fear of letting one continental power gaining control of the European mainland, Germany's fear of being surrounded by hostile powers, the personalities of the relevant Presidents, Prime Ministers and Monarchs, a desire to settle old scores, Belgian neutrality and yes, there's the possibility that a Prussian Militaristic super-state might behave in some ungentlemanly manner. And that's those I can think of off the top of my head.
None of these are necessarily heroic. Most of them are just politics. But our grandfather's & great-grandfathers died in their thousands for something and we'd prefer to think that - like the fight against the Nazi's in World War Two - we were on the side of the good guys & not just another superpower keen to protect what we've got from our enemies.
And perhaps there is an element of that. Certainly many of those young men who signed up in 1914 did so for patriotic reasons. The stories that came out of Belgium early in the war of |German atrocities - raped Nuns, shot children etc - seemed to confirm that we were on the right side in this conflict.
Maybe we were.
But what the Centenary of World War One gives us a chance to do is look at what happened without the jingoistic spectacles on. To ask why we went to war and look at all the reasons.
One of my great-granddads never recovered from being gassed in World War One. All of them fought. My granddads both fought in World War Two. A war we find it much easier to justify. A war of survival against a terrible foe.
Was World War One the same kind of war? Or just a clash of Empires and wannabee Empires. A shuffling of the Great Power pack? Whatever it was the centenary gives us a chance to looks at World War One and ask all the questions we might want to ask.
Michael Gove is entitled to put his view across but this political drawing of lines seems both childish and unnecessary. Perhaps the Education Secretary should read a few more history books, biographies and memoirs rather than choosing to blame Blackadder. I'd start with Edmund Blunden's ' 'Undertones of War' and maybe to get a view from the other side Ernst Jünger's 'Storm of Steel'.
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