Chapter 7 Chapter 1 The Age of Total War 4

4 We haven't discussed the impact of the era of continuous wars on human beings. How much price did human beings pay for these two wars?Although we mentioned a large number of casualties earlier, that is only part of the price.It is strange to say that although the casualties of World War I were not as severe as those of World War II, it was paid more attention to by the world at that time. Not only were there many monuments everywhere, but the Armistice Day was commemorated more devoutly every year.Because of the revolution, Russia paid special attention to the First World War, which is naturally understandable; but this phenomenon is not unique to the Soviet Union.The Second World War had no commemorative measures comparable to the "Monument of the Unknown Heroes" of the previous war; after the Second World War, the atmosphere of celebrating the "World War I Armistice Day" (November 11, 1918) every year has gone from bad to worse , Gradually lose the sacred and serious meaning of the year.Looking into the reason, perhaps as early as the last World War, the world did not know that the sacrifice would be so heavy; but by the Second World War, everyone knew it.So the shock of 10 million deaths in the former is more painful than the 54 million deaths in the latter.

The comprehensive nature of the war itself, and the determination of both sides to fight to the end regardless of the cost and by any means, have had a major impact on the psychology of the world.Otherwise, how can we explain the growing phenomenon of inhuman cruelty in the 20th century? After 1914, the war behavior became more and more cruel and barbaric. The facts are all there, and it is impossible to deny it.At the beginning of the 20th century, the human disaster of rape and humiliation had officially disappeared in Western Europe.But since 1945, we have come to accept all kinds of brutality as a daily occurrence, and we are indifferent to the horrors of a third of the member states of the United Nations (including some of the oldest and most civilized countries) in hell on earth (Peters, 1985).

The increase in brutality, however, is not primarily due to the fact that the latent bestiality of human beings is stimulated and rationalized by war.Of course, this phenomenon did appear in some World War I veterans, especially those warriors who came from the far-right nationalist camp, such as sniper squads and "Freec Corps" elements.They themselves had the experience of killing people, and they had witnessed the tragic death of Pao Ze. Under the banner of justice, how could they torture and kill a few enemies? But the real reason why the world is becoming more and more cruel lies mainly in the strange phenomenon of "democratization" of war.All-out conflicts have turned into "people's wars," and ordinary people have become the mainstay of the strategy, and sometimes even the main target.Modern so-called democratized wars, like democratic politics, often vilify their opponents, making them the object of people's abhorrence, or at least ridicule.In past battles fought by professionals or specialists, there was still a bit of respect for each other, more compliance with the rules of the game, and even a bit of chivalry, especially if the two parties were of similar social status.In the past, when the two sides used force, there were often certain rules. We can vaguely see this ancient style in the fighter pilots of the two World Wars.French director Jean Renoir's anti-war film "La Grande Illusion" (La Grande Illusion) about the First World War has written a lot about this phenomenon.And, unless constrained by constituency or press pressure, political and diplomatic professionals can often declare war and make peace with their enemies in peace; just as boxers shake hands before a fight and share a drink after a fight.But in the general war of our century, this is not the case at all. There is no such thing as Bismarck's time, or the model of eighteenth-century warfare.Wars like the current one that need to encourage the whole country to fight against the enemy can no longer be as well-regulated as the aristocratic wars of the past.Therefore, we must emphasize that during World War II, the actions of the Hitler regime and the behavior of the Germans, including the non-Nazi German army, in Eastern Europe are despicable, but they are also based on the fact that modern warfare must portray the enemy as a devil the reasonable needs of modernization.

Another reason why war has become more brutal is because of the dehumanization of war itself.Bloody murders are now remote events that can be resolved with a button or switch.Under the means of technology, death and sacrifices no longer happen in front of your eyes. This is so different from traditional battles where you goug out the enemy's internal organs with a bayonet and see the enemy's figure fall from the front sight.Under the desperately aimed guns on the front line, what is shot down is no longer a living person, but a series of statistics—even this number is not real, it is just a hypothetical statistics, just as the United States killed the enemy in the Vietnam War. Estimates are the same.Looking down from the height of the bomber, everything on the ground is no longer living people and things, but has become lifeless bombing targets.A good-natured young man would never dream of sticking a bayonet into the belly of any pregnant woman in the country; once he flies a plane, he can drop bombs on the population buttons of London or Berlin, or drop the doomsday on Nagasaki atomic bomb.Those hard-working German officers, if ordered to take the Jews to the death camps surrounded by barbed wire, would definitely not be willing; but sitting in the office, they can arrange the train time day after day without personal feelings Death trains to Polish abattoirs.This is really the cruelest thing in our century. It can be completely impersonal, completely organized and routine, and cruel atrocities are carried out from a distance. Sometimes it can even be interpreted as a last resort. It is really painful and sad.

Since then, the world has become accustomed to this unprecedented and astronomical massacre and massacre of people. Humans even need to create new words to describe this phenomenon: "people without a country" and "collective genocide".During World War I, Turkey would kill untold numbers of Armenians—generally estimated at around 1.5 million—in the first instance in human history of the systematic mass extermination of an entire population.The second reoccurrence, the more well-known Nazi killing of Jews, killed about 5 million people—a figure that is still disputed (Hilberg 1985).During the First World War and the Russian Revolution, millions of people were displaced and became refugees, and millions more were forced to leave their homes in the name of forced "exchange of native population".1.3 million people of Greek descent who originally lived in Turkey were repatriated to Greece. 400,000 Turks were also ordered to be recalled by "Dear Motherland". More than 200,000 Bulgarians moved to a place with the same name as their nation, but the territory has shrunk. Between 1.5 million and 2 million Russians, some fleeing from the Russian Revolution and others from the defeated side of the Revolutionary Civil War, are now homeless.For this group of Russian vagrants and the 320,000 Armenians who escaped the Turkish genocide (the former is the main target), the League of Nations issued a new document, the so-called Nansen passport, which was specially issued to Used by homeless and denationalized persons.In this world of increasingly complex administrative systems, these poor people have no identity and do not exist in any national administrative system.The name of the Nansen passport is derived from the surname of Fridtjof Nansen, a great Arctic explorer from Norway.In addition to exploration, Nam devoted his life to helping the lonely and helpless. He once presided over the refugee relief program after World War I and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922.According to rough estimates, between 1914 and 1922, the world produced a total of 4 to 5 million refugees.

But compared with World War II, the first mass displacement figures pale in comparison.During World War II, the plight of refugees was unprecedented.It is estimated that before May 1945, about 40.5 million people in Europe had been forcibly uprooted, not including the foreign laborers who were forced to go to Germany, and the Germans who fled before the arrival of the Soviet army (Kulischer, 1948, pp. 253-73).After Germany's defeat, part of the territory was divided and annexed by Poland and Russia. From this area, as well as from Czechoslovakia and the original German-inhabited areas in southeastern Europe, a total of 13 million Germans escaped (Holborn, p. 363).These refugees were eventually taken in by the newly formed Federal Republic of Germany.Any people who return to the new federation can get citizenship there and build a new home.Similarly, the newly established Israel also grants the "right to return" to every Jew on earth.But which country, except in this age of exile, would take such a generous offer seriously? In 1945, the victorious forces of the Allied Forces found a total of 11.3327 million "war refugees" of various ethnicities and nationalities in Germany, and 10 million of them were immediately repatriated to their original places—but half of them were against their will. , were forcibly returned (Jacobmeyer, 1986).

The above are only refugees in Europe. The restoration of colonial independence in India in 1947 caused 15 million refugees to be displaced between India and Pakistan, not including the 2 million who later died in internal conflicts.Another side effect of World War II, the Korean War, caused 5 million South Koreans to become refugees.The establishment of the Israeli state in the Middle East - this is another follow-up effect caused by the war - the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWPA) added 1.3 million Palestine refugees to the refugee list.In the opposite direction of the Palestinian refugee tide, 1.2 million Jews returned to Israel in the 1960s, most of whom were originally refugees.In short, the disaster caused by World War II is unprecedented in human history.Every day, millions of people suffer, are displaced, and even die.What's even more tragic is that human beings have learned to live in this miserable world, and no longer feel that there is anything strange about this phenomenon.

Looking back, the 31 years of turmoil, starting from the assassination of the Archduke and Crown Prince of Austria in Sarajevo to the unconditional surrender of Japan, is like a replica of the 30-year war in German history in the 17th century.The Sarajevo incident - the first Sarajevo incident that year - marked the beginning of an era of great chaos.The turbulence and crisis experienced in it are the contents discussed in this chapter and the following four chapters.But for the era after 1945, the 31-year war in the 20th century left a different impression on people's minds than the 30-year war in the 17th century.

Part of the reason is that due to the 31 years of war in this century, the reason why it is divided into a single era is mainly from the perspective of historians.For those who have experienced the situation, although the two wars are related, they are two separate wars separated by a period of "intermission between the two wars" with no obvious war behavior.For Japan, this period of no war lasted only 13 years (Japan went to war in Manchuria, China in 1931); for the United States, it lasted 23 years (the United States entered World War II until December 1941).But another reason is that these two wars have their own merits and merits, and have their own historical characteristics and characteristics.The massacres in the two World Wars were unparalleled, and the invention of science and technology left an indelible nightmare for the next generation: after 1918, people feared poisonous gas and air raids day and night; after 1945, people feared the mushroom-shaped Havoc of the atomic cloud.Both wars produced social collapse and revolutions in the great regions of Eurasia - as we shall discuss in the next chapter.Both wars also exhausted the warring parties and weakened their national strength.The only exception is the United States, which was unscathed both times and became richer and became the master of the world economy.And yet, how striking was the difference between the two wars!World War I solved nothing.It raised some hopes—a peaceful and democratic world under the League of Nations; a return to the thriving world economy of 1913; In a year, or even a month, the oppressed and weak classes can rise up to overthrow the fantasy of capitalism.But all these hopes and illusions were quickly shattered.The past is gone and can never be brought back; the future is far away and we don't know when to expect it; and the present, except for the short few years that passed quickly in the mid-1920s, there is only bitterness in front of us.World War II, on the contrary, did achieve several results, at least for several decades.All the shocking socio-economic problems that arose during the period of great upheaval seemed to disappear without a trace.The economy of the Western world has entered a golden age, and Western democratic societies have achieved a stable political situation with significant improvements in material life.The flames of war have also shifted to the third world.On the other hand, the revolution also found a way out for itself.The overseas colonies of the old colonial empires have disappeared one after another, and the unfinished ones are just around the corner.The communist countries all embraced under the banner of the big brother of the Soviet Union, which has transformed into a superpower, and formed a group of its own. It seemed that it could compete with the Western countries in terms of economic growth at any time.As a result, the dream of economic competition between East and West was only an illusion, but it was not until the 1960s that it began to gradually shatter.Looking back now, even the international situation was quite stable at that time, although at that time because I was in it, I didn't know its true face.There is another difference between World War II and the previous one: the old enemies during the war, Germany and Japan, were reorganized into the economic system of the (Western) world.And the new postwar enemies—the United States and the Soviet Union—never actually opened fire with each other.

Even the revolutions that followed the two world wars were markedly different.The revolution that arose after the First World War was based on the dislike of war itself by those who had experienced it firsthand, and they believed that such unprovoked killings were meaningless.However, the revolution after World War II was based on the tendency of everyone to be the same enemy. Although the common enemy refers to Germany and Japan, more generally speaking, it also includes imperialist forces.No matter how terrible this second revolution was, for those who participated in it, it was only natural that they had learned from famous teachers.But like the two wars themselves, in the eyes of historians, the two types of postwar revolutions are still the same process.Let us discuss this below.