The Shooters Not The Shot, The Bombers Not The Bombed

[poliphilo]

Ailz came across these figures.

33 million service personnel of all nations died in the big wars of the last century. And 48 million civilians.

And yet in our commemorations we mostly mourn the combatants-  the combatants who were also the killers.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Those figures are way, way low.

Mutiply by around four and you're getting there.

Many of those doing the killing were also civilians told to put on a uniform: 'I am the enemy you killed, my friend'...........

I can't say 'ain't gonna study war no more' because a lifetime's study has made me realise that pacifism is the only way.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Countryfile was memorialising the Great War last night. Apparently a lot of British people got killed. The Germans were somehow mixed up in it too but we never learned what happened to them.

The language was positively Orwellian at times.

For instance, Matt Baker told us a story about a British officer who won the VC "saving lives" by "silencing" a German machine gun nest. I guess he must have done that by singing lullabies or something.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

People need to learn how to read history from all perspectives, not just one!

See it from a Russian and central European viewpoint- 1914-45 if you include the wars, revolution, civil war, the deliberate genocidal starvation and the purges- something like 40 million dead in central Europe and Russia _alone_.