9 Dec 2024
WAR WAS TRADITIONALLY DELEGATED TO MEN In the last thousand years or so, nations that considered themselves civilised generally delegated the task of fighting wars to their male populations. On average, men were stronger and probably more violent and possibly less prone to the introspection that might question whether an order to engage in a near-suicidal action was stupid and pointless. Napoleon and Wellington live on through war gamers who deploy men in ways that might have led to a different outcome at Waterloo. The US civil war (also a gamers’ favourite) was for a while peak slaughter of loyal male soldiers. In addition there were unsurprisingly many civilian casualties but these were regarded as regrettable mistakes. And then came World War I. The women kept the home fires burning (and much else) but the reputation of that conflict is that it was a foolish and immoral waste of young male life. AFTER WWI WE ALL BECAME INVOLVED The result was widespread pacifism with a twist. George Orwell said that if nations insisted on going to war they should accept that the cost would and moreover should be borne by the whole population. The Spanish civil war and in particular the attack on Guernica in 1937 by German and Italian bombers brought to international attention what this meant – that civilians would be casualties of contemporary warfare. Consequently, appeasement was an extremely popular response to the demands of the Nazis in the late 1930s. When Churchill voted against Neville Chamberlain’s Munich agreement of September 1938 he was nearly deselected by his own constituency party. A few months later Hitler broke his word and invaded Czechoslovakia. At that point war was seen as nearly inevitable and, correctly envisaging that London would be a bombing target, the government began to prepare for the mass evacuation of children, gasmasks in hand, to rural and seaside areas. WWII is notorious for the attempted genocide of Jews but also for the bombing of cities. The “Battle of Britain” aimed at London, first by the Luftwaffe and then by V1 and V2 rockets, the destruction of German cities by British and US bombers in early 1945 and the atomic bombs...