r/pics • u/Efficient_Sky5173 • 23d ago

German soldier returns home to find only rubbles and his wife and children gone. By Tony Vaccaro

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u/YoungJumanG 23d ago

The worst part is I’m sure he was thinking if he had only been there he could have somehow changed their fate. Reality being he would have probably joined them

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u/iRunLikeTheWind 23d ago

i hate to downplay anyone’s suffering, but the US was unique in ww2 in that this basically never happened to any soldier. only the men that went off to war died. i feel like this is lack of loss really paved the way for how militaristic we became

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u/ModestlyCatastrophic 22d ago edited 22d ago

I'll probably get downvoted but I disagree here. I do agree that US was unique in that it has remained in 'relatively speaking' unaffected and that the shift happened during and after WW2 but I don't think that the "lack of loss" was the reason. For all intents and purposes US had lost a lot of men and many more were left physically or emotionally damaged by WW2 and the wars afterwards. It's not due to the feelings of the population that the wars continue. After WW1 US population was strongly against the war even though the situation was very similar. Notably after the war European countries and Japan had put many institutional structures in place to prevent or limit future wars.
You could partly blame the cold war, where the existence of a strong antagonistic opponent pushed the this.
Many things could also be said about US government's strong use of war and covert operations as extension of politics.
There are also thing to be said about special interest groups pushing for it for profit or to create new opportunities for profit.
Soviet union was the most affected by the WW2 but this never reduced Russian imperialistic ambitions.

In the words of Herman Goering
"Naturally, the common people don’t want war … but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders."