The Cultural Impact And Legacy Of World War Two

Doesn't the US have a better claim at deciding WWI than WWII?

I think the saddest lasting cultural impact of WW2, at least at this moment in history, is that baby boomers think they won it.

the gratest generation

I recall an All in the Family episode from the early 1970s in which Mike Stivic points out the decisive role of the Soviets on the Eastern front, I guess to counter some jingoistic bluster from Archie Bunker, which would suggest this matter was not quite settled in the American mythos at that time. Of course the Stivic character was the so-called "pinko" of the show, but he was also a baby boomer representative.

So...the erasure of Russia and the Eastern front from American accounts of the war is the source of no great mystery...it's obviously a relic of the Cold War and just general jingoism...however, I'd be curious if at any point this was a planned or systematic thing. Were textbooks edited, etc? Was there an actual propaganda campaign to claim the US "won the war against fascism" more or less on its own (with, of course, the help of the plucky British, whose ass we proverbially saved)?

― ryan

so it's not sourced but the wikipedia article on wwii historiography re: the eastern front mentions lack of access to documentation, which i think is a pretty good point - we didn't know what the soviet union did in the great patriotic war because, to a significant extent, they didn't tell us! the article also says that post-soviet union western historiography about the eastern front significantly changed as a result of access to soviet archives.

It seems like it's common to imagine D-Day as the pivotal event in the Allied victory, given how strongly it features in our collective memory.

iirc, the last book I read on this (Bloodlands) said that the war was basically unwinnable for Germany after the stalling of the USSR invasion in 1941.

they didn't have any winter gear for starters (which was possibly why Soso never believed the invasion was imminent - despite multiple Soviet agents within the Nazis reporting it was happening) so anything other than a rapid Autumn victory was going to be very costly whatever the final outcome. Goebbels seemed to think his winter coat donations campaign was good propaganda to rally the nation, rather than them looking like amateurs!

I feel like the US's greatest victory in WW2 is taking its sweet ass time to enter and let the combatants destroy each other so they could dictate the peace at the end. Didn't hurt that the British had to hand over most of its gold reserves during the war and dismantle the empire in the aftermath.

Every FDR, Churchill, and general knowledge WWII bio and history I've read in the last forty years not published by a conservative house has mentioned the Eastern Front: Stalin pressing FDR about opening it and joining him, the staggering number of Soviet soldiers lost between 1942-1944, and so on. Is the omission in textbooks?

textbooks, and maybe also movies/TV fiction/TV docs/political rhetoric? since we're talking about cultural impact and legacy. less scholarship, more storytelling.

It’s always interesting to me, WW2 in the American consciousness is pretty easy to romanticize since it was never on our doorstep, and so much of what we think of when we think of the war is through this nostalgia haze, and also there’s something very specifically momentous about the Normandy invasion in terms of being a battle to point to for Americans as this great glorious all-in valorous endeavor (this is less a comment on the personnel on the ground more a comment on those who are looking back at it from the other side of the ocean!)

The Soviet Union didn’t really get much of the gauzy vague elsewhereness part, losing 10 million plus soldiers and another 15 million civilians and getting a good bit of the holocaust as well. Which isn’t to say they haven’t traded in on the glory of the victory, but the cost and the more personal and brutal nature of the war makes it different and harder to be nostalgic for in the same way to put it mildly.

There's also something really striking and terrifying about the Normandy images which I don't think you get in much other war photography: the flat expanse of the beach, huge dark cliffs in the distance, soldiers wading through the breakers without any cover. No wonder it's impressed itself on our imagination.

since it was never on our doorstep

hawaii = not part of the US?

I feel like there is easily just as much lazy stereotyping and glossing going on in this thread as in any oiled-lens USA! USA! remembrances of the conflict

The Japanese shelled the west coast of the U.S.

Tomboto otm

as someone who grew up having school assemblies on pearl harbor day, field tripping to the arizona etc., and was kinda bemused in college to discover that dec 7 means literally nothing to most mainlanders, i would nevertheless like to raise an eyebrow at the suggestion that it's analogous to, like, stalingrad

however the pacific war in general was just unbelievably unpleasant and i can't imagine enduring a single sweating malarial xenophobically terrified second of it whereas tbh i think i could have handled europe with a little luck. that's where america put in its serious trauma time imo even tho i agree that people do talk as if we were the ones to defeat the nazis.

whereas tbh i think i could have handled europe with a little luck.

didn't Spielberg make a movie about just such a lad

funny, in school we learned twas irish volunteers that won ww2 is that not the accepted version

that's what i'm told but i've only seen the landing part xp

I was surprised to learn recently that the majority of US combat deaths were in the European theater...I had always assumed the Pacific was "worse."

This video kinda breaks everything down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKPFT-RioU&t=557s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKPFT-RioU&t=557s

hmmm. well it's called "The Fallen of World War II"

since it was never on our doorstep

hawaii = not part of the US?

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, June 4, 2019 5:00 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The Japanese shelled the west coast of the U.S.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, June 4, 2019 5:12 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

U-boats attacking shipping lines on the east coast and gulf of mexico too!

xps

Lord Haw-Haw was an exemplary Irish volunteer who might not have been mentioned at school :p

400k combat deaths for US feels like an astronomical number when abstracted from what other countrese experienced...and it's also worth pointing out that this was more (according to that video) than the UK.

I didn’t forget Pearl Harbor, but it’s not exactly the same as what the Soviet Union went through in terms of violence being visited upon the civilian population.

I’m not saying we didn’t get our hair mussed

I was surprised to learn recently that the majority of US combat deaths were in the European theater...I had always assumed the Pacific was "worse."

stand corrected and realize i'm being glib but it's just the vibe i dread lol

obv something like d-day is an actual nightmare

the russian sieges, tho-- the marching and raping back and forth across the civilian pops of eastern europe-- the camps and systematic massacres-- the millions dead-- hardly untrue to say that (non-native) (non-black) america has never experienced anything like that

xps

there is a decentish book called Savage Continent which gives accounts of the lawlessness and genocide occurring in "peace-time" mainland Europe including deadly pograms in Poland, mass genocide of the Ustache in Serbia, British backed genocide in Greece, the partisans all getting liquidated by Uncle Joe. It's no Band of Brothers!

yeah. it’s not diminishing the US experience of the war to note that the Eastern front was a world historical grand guginol. arguably the worst “thing” that ever happened.

A whole lotta Grand Guignol though

dec 7 means literally nothing to most mainlanders

erick erickson won't eat asian food that day

well that's certainly not how we observe it here

The Japanese shelled the west coast of the U.S.

tbf, in the context of WWII, this one brief, hit-and-run attack amounted to less than nothing

something like half of the civilian dead at PH were japanese-american; what an asshole obv

(again tho that's half of a v low number)

just in case dlh was referring to my post (an outside chance, but there you go), I was referring to a negligible Japanese attack in 1942, not Pearl Harbor.

nah "erik erickson"'s

agree that post-pearl-harbor attacks on u.s. territory amount to curiosities

otm my point was basically that WW2 for Americans (who weren’t actually in the war) is a distant event but for soviets and frankly almost everyone in Europe it must have been a waking nightmare for half a dozen years, or at least it was til you got numb to it all.

The Japanese shells destroyed a derrick and a pump house, while the Ellwood Pier and a catwalk suffered minor damage. After 20 minutes, the gunners ceased fire and the submarine sailed away.

^^^an event used to justify subsequent Japanese-American internment (one horrific atrocity visited upon American citizens in this country during the war).

And as for WWI...

agree that post-pearl-harbor attacks on u.s. territory amount to curiosities

― difficult listening hour

anybody want to compare and contrast with, say, the doolittle raid?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bagration

this motherfucker makes D Day look like a bit of the old horseplay on the beaches eh what?

Yeah. Destroying like 3 german armies within a week is pretty mind blowing... and indeed the scale of operations on the eastern front (from Barbarossa till the end) make DDay pretty... tiny... (with less than 5.000 allied deaths over the whole DDay).

Yeah it seems like D-Day and landing in France was more geared toward beating the Russians to Berlin and taking as much territory as possible before they did since once they were there, they might not be leaving any time soon.

When you consider all the main battles in the west (DDay, Market Garden, Bulge, Monte Cassino...), they're all so small compared to the monstruous eastern front !

was surprised to see TM at the D Day commemorations as had forgotten she was still technically the prime minister.

she's just maintaining what is left of her cultural impact and legacy ... next to nothing.jpeg