Sensitive Subject But I Think We Are Up To It.

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25612369
Is WW1 depicted fairly in the various comedic productions mentioned in this link?
For example Gove says:
"He added: "The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh, What a Lovely War!, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles - a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite.
"Even to this day there are left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths.""
Now I should point out that my own knowledge of the actual situations and events is limited so I'm trying to be neutral here.

[emmie]

DF i know the story of the film, i have watched it endless times, i was trying to tell you why such films were made, call it a propaganda film, one that depicts little people up against big odds, stoicism that is rare in many cases nowadays. It also seem to me that many people don't seem to understand the nature of warfare, and that to depict the higher ranked staff like the Generals as addled buffoons in WW1 would be wrong. And that if you start a war be prepared for its inglorious end

If anyone has the time or the inclination read the story of General Jack Seeley, and his horse Warrior, his own accounts are remarkable,
i have been unable to trace his original book, as they were written some time ago, but Brough Scotts book who incidentally is his grandson, tells of a remarkable man, and an undoubted harsh time. another take
on it would be Vera Brittain's book Testament of Youth, who was Shirley Williams the MPs mother. Ms Brittain was a very well to do, middle class young woman, who's brother, fiancée, and all their friends perished in the fields of the Somme, Passchendaele, and many of the other battlefields synonymous with mud, and death, these men were officer class and died alongside the enlisted men.
There is no glory in war, there never has been and there never will be, but sometimes you have to fight for what you believe in, call it naivety, call it patriotism, but those men fought and died for a country they called home, an ideal perhaps but come the time of another conflict would you not defend yourself and your homeland, because i do know i would

[emmie]

its a subject i know something about, and something close to my heart too, any number of relatives killed in WW1, one poor soul suffered from a mustard gas attack and though he lived through the war never recovered well, and died prematurely. There would have been no way to stay out of the conflict, nor is it simply because one man got shot, Archduke Ferdinand, empires all gone now, and all those men lie in their graves, you know that the Spanish flu killed more than all those who died in WW1

[LazyGun]

@emmie "and all those men lie in their graves, you know that the Spanish flu killed more than all those who died in WW1"

Eh? Why is mentioning the spanish flu relevant to this conversation?

[emmie]

i threw it in because war is hell and does kill millions, however
that a non man made catastrophe caused a world wide pandemic that killed a hundred times more than anything we could come up with.

[emmie]

because it started well before the end of WW1, and many soldiers died from it, not being shot or gassed.

The 1918 flu pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920
was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus, It infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—3 to 5 percent of the world's population—making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history
To maintain morale, wartime censors minimized early reports of illness and mortality in Germany, Britain, France, and the United States
but papers were free to report the epidemic's effects in neutral Spain (such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII), creating a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit—[9] thus the pandemic's nickname Spanish flu.

[LazyGun]

@ Emmie - What, so you were setting the context? Offering some perspective?

" threw it in because war is hell and does kill millions, however
that a non man made catastrophe caused a world wide pandemic that killed a hundred times more than anything we could come up with."

A natural catastrophe like the Spanish flu epidemic was unavoidable. WW1 is obscence because it was man -made, and hence avoidable. I do not see what value introducing the Spanish flu epidemic offers to the conversation?

[LazyGun]

Its an irrelevance to the conversation, Emmie, as far as I can see.

[emmie]

please tell me then how it was avoidable.

and Spanish flu or pandemics still happen, not quite so much here, but in much poorer countries, who don't get the benefit of good medicines.

[emmie]

to you, but not to me,

[LazyGun]

@Emmie First, could you please explain how your introduction of The Spanish Flu epidemic is at all relevant to a conversation over the politics of the start of WW1?

Any man-made decision hypothetically speaking, is or was avoidable, kind of by definition. A natural catastrophe, not so much.

[emmie]

then please explain for those who don't know how it started why it was avoidable. If i stepped out of doors and slipped on some ice, that could be avoidable perhaps, but if the reason is the council didn't sweep it away as good practice, then there would be little i could do about that. With the alliances in place, and those jockeying for position, war would have come whether we were involved or not.

[emmie]

and man has never stinted in his war like stance, given that some can fight over nothing at all. But like now they do so because of religious, cultural differences, land, oil, and outright bigotry.

[LazyGun]

What relevance does the Spanish Flu epidemic have to WW1 emmie? You still have not explained why you introduced this non sequitur to the conversation.

And, colourful analogies aside, any man-made political decision is by definition avoidable, since there is always other action that could have been taken. A natural catastrophe, not so much.

I really do hope you are not trying to say that WW1 was not so bad in the scheme of things, because the body count was not as great as the Spanish Flu, because that would be a pretty cold thing to say.

[Zeuhl]

Didn't Spanish Flu 'incubate' in the Demob and Refugee camps at the end of the War?

[emmie]

of course i am not saying that, but nature does or has found a way to weed people out without our causing mayhem and wars.

i have made many points on the war and Gove's words, if you chose to read them fine, if not fine, i however can't say much more on the subject, seeing as how i have put the case as well as i am able over a long day.
being in a debating chamber is one thing, sitting here typing out stuff that needs a good deal of thought one cannot always get across a point sufficiently, it's a website, some things will go by the by.

no war is fair, just or truthful, its just disease and death, and then more death, if it's avoidable then let's do it, however the world and it's people are not really made that way. We have avoided a major war for the best part of 60 years, i hope it stays that way, but i don't think many around the globe share my sentiments.

[emmie]

started before. if you look at the figures they are truly astonishingly awful.

[LazyGun]

I still cannot see why you introduced the Spanish Flu Epidemic into the conversation, Emmie. What point were you trying to make? Honestly, I am puzzled.

[emmie]

as per my previous post.

[LazyGun]

@Emmie Where? Where is your explanation of why you felt it was relevant to introduce the topic of Spanish Flu into the conversation? What point were you trying to make? I cannot see where you have offered this....

[emmie]

had blackadder died from the spanish flu, would that have been poignant, to go through the entire war and then perish from it, as many soldiers did,
no it would have been very bad luck. As it was he went over the top with his mates, firing a gun, blowing a whistle, which supposedly sums up the point of this thread, that these were lions led by donkeys, and that just wasn't the case, that Haig was vilified for a long time, as were many of the top brass, that history is oft revised, after official papers are released, there is a somewhat different perspective of it.
It wasn't as they thought then the war to end all wars, round 2 came not long afterwards.