The horrors of the crisis war

[tim]

This is the best book I have come across that demonstrates the horrors of a crisis war. After reading this book, its easy to see why such events traumatize an entire generation and how after the survivors will want to compromise and spend the rest of their lives making sure it will never happen again.

The only problem with reading this book is if you believe in generational dynamics and understand that this kind of worldwide conflict is coming again, it is horribly depressing. If this kind of brutality and war comes to the world again I don't know how anyone will survive with the technology and weapons that exist today.

http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Continent- ... 1250000203

"The end of the Second World War in Europe is one of the twentieth century’s most iconic moments. It is fondly remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, danced, drank and made love until the small hours. These images of victory and celebration are so strong in our minds that the period of anarchy and civil war that followed has been forgotten. Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed and more than thirty million people had been killed in the war. The institutions that we now take for granted - such as the police, the media, transport, local and national government - were either entirely absent or hopelessly compromised. Crime rates were soaring, economies collapsing, and the European population was hovering on the brink of starvation. In Savage Continent, Keith Lowe describes a continent still racked by violence, where large sections of the population had yet to accept that the war was over. Individuals, communities and sometimes whole nations sought vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to them during the war. Germans and collaborators everywhere were rounded up, tormented and summarily executed. Concentration camps were reopened and filled with new victims who were tortured and starved. Violent anti-Semitism was reborn, sparking murders and new pogroms across Europe. Massacres were an integral part of the chaos and in some places – particularly Greece, Yugoslavia and Poland, as well as parts of Italy and France – they led to brutal civil wars. In some of the greatest acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands, often with the implicit blessing of the Allied authorities. Savage Continent is the story of post WWII Europe, in all its ugly detail, from the end of the war right up until the establishment of an uneasy stability across Europe towards the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries, Savage Continent is a frightening and thrilling chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post WWII Europe for years to come."

A great interview with the author, Keith Lowe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZaQnyv20hs

[Trevor]

Sadly, we're going to learn this kind of thing from personal experience. Those of us who manage to survive WWIII, in any case. Many are not going to survive it. I don't know how many precisely will die, but it'll certainly be in the hundreds of millions at least.

I heard some stories from my grandparents about this time period. They mentioned how difficult it was, the waiting, the fear that you'd never see your loved ones again. As for the depression, my great-grandmother told me that if such a thing ever happened again, it would be even worse because so much of our population now lives in cities.

[johnleee]

I would add Iraq to that list as well. They fought a brutal war with Iran in the 1980's, and they haven't forgotten how much they suffered in it. If Saddam was still around, they'd be in a nuclear arms race. Saudi Arabia is deep into a crisis era, or even a Fifth Turning at this point, so if they start building nuclear weapons, we're in even more trouble.

[Trevor]

I would add Iraq to that list as well. They fought a brutal war with Iran in the 1980's, and they haven't forgotten how much they suffered in it. If Saddam was still around, they'd be in a nuclear arms race. Saudi Arabia is deep into a crisis era, or even a Fifth Turning at this point, so if they start building nuclear weapons, we're in even more trouble.

Yeah, in 2003, they were so unwilling to fight that they actually surrendered to journalists. Sounds rather incredible when you think about it.