The realities of warfare

It's easy for us 21st century video gamers to forget what war really was like, at the soldier level.

It was being conscripted from your daily life, sent out to get get shot at, watch a bunch of friends die and get wounded, then finally your number is up and that's it.

Think about the real hell that had to be. You're senselessly shooting at people you have no real issue with. The generals and politicians make the war for young boys to go die in it. What does the American baker with a family of 5 manning the machine gun have against the German factory worker with his own family of 5? Yet they are shooting at each other. And in war, there are no target tables, health, respawns, ect. There's just people dying, and then you die.

I'm gonna do some hippie shit and analyze some images of war to show you what I mean.



What we see here is a German soldier at Stalingrad, holding a ppsh, watching the line. He's definitely a dead man and probably died shortly after the picture was taken (or he was marched to his death in Siberia). Look at the fear on his face. It's just the look of defeat. Yeah at this point maybe Germany was lost, but not from the German soldier's perspective. He looks defeated because he's already given up on getting out alive. Anyone see Band of Brothers? Remember in the 3rd episode when Lt. Spears tells Blithe you have to accept that you're already dead? Think about how fucked up of a reality that is, being forced off to the front for a war you don't personally give a damn about. Maybe you feel like you do, but you don't. The German (or whatever) government got you drummed up for the war with their propaganda. Maybe some nations, those under attack, had some legitimacy with doing it, but I'm not claiming all war is always wrong. I'm just trying to show how fucked up it really is.


It's hard for me to bear looking at this one. When we remove all context, we have one human being exercising control over a fellow starving human being at gunpoint. The prisoner is starving and freezing but the guard is smirking that revenge is being enacted on the German. What do either of them care about each other? Nothing really. They're just following orders.

Why do we celebrate war then?

Here's another, this one from world war one. Look at the facial expression. Connect with the soldier and see him as a human. I think it's fucked up when you do. This picture was in the closing months of WW1 and of a Brit, so good chance he survived the war.

But why was he ever in that situation? Because trust issue politicians couldn't resolve their issues and decided to fight? Because of a perverted form of game theory that essentially demanded every Entente and CP nation eventually go to war? For God's sake (or Darwin's, atheist here) this man has/had a family, friends, and a life he left behind. What was he to gain from fighting that war? A little plunder at the best?

Here's the worst, a child soldier



Audie Murphy doesn't look so proud to wear all those medals, because he know's how he really earned them. He killed human beings. I'm not saying he shouldn't have, I must stress. I'm just saying how fucked up it is. He killed human beings and other human beings used him as an example of honor for that.



The fear in the left soldier's face and the psychopathic focus in the right soldier's face





Lifelong disfigurement from ww1



If mods feel it's too graphic, I totally understand. Here's a man who barely dodged death but didn't get out so unscathed. Again, focus on the faces

Even if you believe that humans are inherently violent on some level (and I agree with that, since we're still very much animals), there is something so epicly gruesome and shocking about modern combat that it causes lots of people serious mental harm. I wonder... if we could see photographs of the faces of some of those Roman legionnaires, fighting for a city they'd never seen, if they would have looked the same.

Maybe it's different though. Maybe the gigantic sounds of the guns, the fact that your friend can go from standing next to you to being only legs, really makes it worse.

This is an important thread for this game. I like personally to really intellectualize this sort of thing as a way to make it easier to think about. I keep going and looking at these photos again and it gives me just the eeriest feeling.

I would say Roman legionairres had PTSD too, but maybe not as bad. Combat was actually pretty low in casualty back then; usually as soon as one side's position collapsed, everyone would flee or surrender before the slaughter could begin. Usually.

It was less random back then. Most died to artillery fire in WW1 and WW2. It's the randomness that is the mental killer. In Vietnam, the fact that the ground was full of booby traps really screwed with riflemen's heads because, traditionally, the ground was their friend. They could dig a hole for safety. Not so in Nam. Or rather, they didn't feel like it was their friend anymore.

PTSD most greatly affects the men that fought for a long time and survived their experiences. Those that were killed were pardoned the disorder.

The problem with Vietnam is the duration of activity. Most American troops survived their tour(s) in Vietnam. Unlike in WW2, they did not come back being treated as heroes.

In WW2, the survival rate was much lower. In the Japanese, German, and Soviet army it was horrible. The rifle battalions of an established division could experience 10 times turnover or more in personnel over the course of the war. Those that were there in the beginning and served to the end were the surviving few, often having been wounded a few times.

This one got to me. A different angle of the German officer with the ppsh.

I just stumbled upon this. Thought it might interest you.
I leave it to you to analyze it, though.


Also, here's a whole side of of PTSD victims (since this seems to be the ongoing theme of this thread): link

It's easy to demonize the Red Army's rape of Germany, but could you expect any different? Looking at that dude's face, I feel like he has nothing left to live for, except revenge and survival for the sake of survival. He's been reduced to his animalistic urges by the war

Gotta say this post is a tad too political for, my taste right now, but, really it does kinda seem you are just here saying LOOK AT THIS, and nothing else really, we cannot say that war has no reason, because it does, and it isn't just politicians in the back, that causes them, because of their bicker, some wars it is the case ,but not all, ww1 was an example of this, but several wars that weren't the case, for an example as it was noted during the roman times, it was actually a good thing that the romans would sometiems conquer by force, it lead to several advances within medicine, and increase technologies everywhere, sadly was taken down due to religion.
After which wars in the Medieval ages were several times, spatters between kings and lords, but they had their reasons, because for a country to increse its territory, sure it would means higher ritches for some king but, also more farming land, and more income in general level of a country.

It's easy to demonize the Red Army's rape of Germany, but could you expect any different? Looking at that dude's face, I feel like he has nothing left to live for, except revenge and survival for the sake of survival. He's been reduced to his animalistic urges by the war

And of course you should expect different, to rape someone is just fucking discusting, the soviet soldiers, were soldiers, they were there to fight to stop their country from loosing power, and loosing infrastructure, they were there to make sure that the soviet union would not collape, which would lead thousands of people to famin, and death.
War is already gruesome, and might be animalistic, but we are humans and if we say that we are above, lions who kill, all the children of the past lion, then we must be above rapping, and pillaging, especially now after hundrerds of years, of unregulated warfare.

I'm really sorry for the really badly made responses, but i realy just want to know what point you want to get across.

Interesting stuff, but the wrong place for it.

The Red Army's actions during the WW2 despite their brutality are understandable.

They did what they had to do against an enemy that just wanted to ideologically and physically wipe them out the face of the earth through a "war of annihilation".

Unlike the western front, soviet populations could not surrender, the nazis/wehrmacht just executed them, burned them inside their villages or starved them to death.

I really don't think the bulk of soviet soldiers or partisans fought because their leaders told them to or due to nationalism like the Germans, the British/commonwealth, the USA and the french or polish free forces. Fighting was the only chance for survival for the soviets, there was no diplomacy in the eastern front.

You reap what you sow. Germans got what they deserved.

http://ww2history.com/videos/Eastern/A_different_kind_of_war

I would not be surprised if most of the survivors of the eastern front had some form of PTSD or psychological trauma. What I wonder is what traumatized them more, what they had to do in order to survive (Killing) or what they endured (Having your whole family/village murdered).

i would love to leave this up. but this is gonna be a nightmare to moderate all it takes is one spark and up in flames it goes. Just can't trust people to have a civilized discussion about politcs ever.

edit:welp flint has arrived, better stop it before he finds steel.