Hey Everyone,
Thanks for those of you who did your presentations yesterday. I thought they were all great!
Maybe this is a good place to expand on some of the ideas that were brought up in the presentations yesterday. I for one, found it interesting how Kurt Vonnegut, in the letter that Karina quoted, referred to the nazis as supermen. Also note how in the novel Rumfoord is referred to as a superman. Interesting parallel…no?
Anything you picked up on during the presentations that you thought was interesting and wanted to comment or expand on, comment here!
I do agree with you Tony. The parralel between Rumfoord and the Nazis in his personal letter is interesting to consider.
I think the number one reason why Nazis are glorified to a certain extent is because of their brilliance in terms of warfare. SO many WW2 novels and movies show the Nazis as glamourous, strong, and valiant young men who follow orders without excpetion and the german army as a whole is always presented as very “proper”.
The odd thing is that their actions, although not personally chosen, by the individual soldiers, were horrifying. If we exclude the obvious and worst of all camps and death camps. The Nazi cult was surrounded with brainwashing and pure thinking. This is, what most scholars, and I do to, believe allowed for them to conquer so quickly. They had close to emotionless men; yet, they ultimately failed because of this. The last part is what I think. You can’t fight a war for very long without heart, and many Nazis soldiers didn’t have a cause worthy of a heart to fight for it.
Rumfoord is kind of un-emotional..so maybe Vonnegut is trying to say that like superman, the Nazis carried out actions because they could/had to. And not because they wanted to necessarily…
?
Nick’s presentation brought up some interesting points.
The criticisms against the Dresden bombing are warranted and happened for obvious reasons but it seems like some of those same people justify their harsh criticisms against the United States and London by saying the Dresden attacks should be looked at on their own, without the context of the war.
To vilify the Allies for performing brutal attacks without considering the incredible tragedies being suffered on their end is unjust. At the height of the war the Germans were bombing highly populated civilian areas in England such as London.
From how Nick explained the situation the city bombings done by the Allies as one of the factors that hastened the end of the war, for that reason alone the bombings had a great purpose. Of course many people died and it is a tragedy when even one person who is not involved dies in any conflict.
In the novel Billy agrees with Rumfoord that the bombing had to happen. I think this point shows that the casualties of war are inevitable and when you are dealing with a hostile enemy you do not have the luxury of hindsight and hard risks have to be taken.
It is interesting that Billy agrees with Rumsfoord about the bombings. Is this Vonnegut telling us that, perhaps, the bombing was justified in some ways? It was undoubtedly horrible, but considering the other atrocities of the war, I wonder if it’s blown out of proportion. I don’t want to justify it, but like Juval said, the Nazis were sending V2 rockets into London and committing acts of genocide.
I agree with what everyones been saying about the bombing of Dresden. While it was horrible in its self there were many other instances of mass casualties in the war that did not receive nearly as much attention. I realize it may have been out of retaliation, but how do you accurately measure such things? How do you measure one event as being “worse” then another? Do you define it purely by casualties, collateral damage, or do you take motives into account? In my opinion, indifferent and malicious motives themselves should be what stand out when looking at the war. I think its always important to think about the big picture when looking at the war, not individual events.
This is why, I think, the phrase “So it goes” was so important to the novel and to understanding the war. Vonnegut may have used that phrase as a way of telling people that those types of things are inevitable during war. It could have been a way of shifting the focus off the actions and repercussions of wartime events to the motives behind them. Instead of if and when something might happen, questions like “why” are whats most important. Motives, however, seemed to be largely absent in this novel, particularly in Billy’s case. Is it possible to have motive without free will? I think Vonnegut is letting us interpret the “Why” for ourselves.
I kind of disagree with the aspect of thinking that Nazis were brainwashed. I took a Holocaust class last year and we talked specifically on Nazi soldiers and how they were able to do what they did. Some of course were brainwashed, while others, however, were too scared of being called a ‘coward’ by other soldiers and that was simply their reason for continuing to do what they did.Many high ranking Nazis also gave soldiers’ the option of killing Jews, where if they decided against it no harm would be down.
I do agree with you though on why the Nazis were glorified and I think because of that Vonnegut was calling them supermen. But on that note, I think he might have been mocking them because I think at this point the Germans were losing and everyone kind of knew it but they continued to fight and act as the strongest and best soldiers until they were told to retreat.They were fighting their hardest for a lost cause.