why is the idea of war romantic? is it a propaganda thing?

i'm in my late 20's and my younger brother is shipping off soon. not even as a trigger puller, he's doing sigint. but there's something in me that thinks "fuck that'd have been cool."
i've been watching gopro footage this weekend and there is something very appealing about the concept of going and fucking shit up somewhere. i can't even figure out why i feel this way because it's probably boring and unpleasant a lot of the time. but i can't shake the feeling that part of me wants to go fuck shit up.

early humans existed in tribes which lived and thrived by the acts of heroism and selfless cooperation. getting hyped as fuck by big operations and collective danger is a genetic trait

it's also a feeling you can't achieve in regular life

>>63889051 (OP)
Human beings, men in particular, have a natural affinity for violence. In nature this was important because the men who were best at violence (specifically group violence) were the ones that ate the best and had the most sex. Even if there's no longer much benefit to having an urge to take up arms and murder the men of the neighboring tribe, the urge still remains because in evolutionary terms that wasn't that long ago.

>>63889051 (OP)
The fundamental principle underlying all justifications of war, from the point of view of human personality, is ‘heroism’. War, it is said, offers man the opportunity to awaken the hero who sleeps within him. War breaks the routine of comfortable life; by means of its severe ordeals, it offers a transfiguring knowledge of life, life according to death. The moment the individual succeeds in living as a hero, even if it is the final moment of his earthly life, weighs infinitely more on the scale of values than a protracted existence spent consuming monotonously among the trivialities of cities. From a spiritual point of view, these possibilities make up for the negative and destructive tendencies of war, which are one-sidedly and tendentiously highlighted by pacifist materialism. War makes one realize the relativity of human life and therefore also the law of a ‘more-than-life’, and thus war has always an anti-materialist value, a spiritual value.
tl;dr it gives purpose. or you just like to kjll things.

>>63889051 (OP)

Because on a subsconcious level, it is.

Watch the opening scene of Apocalypse Now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b89MYgHM50M

>When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle.

Now, Captain Willard is regarded as a pretty good representation of someone suffering from debilitating PTSD and as you can tell, his trauma is multifaceted. He had not only suffered in war, he had actually come to enjoy it. Combat was not just terrifying, it was exhilarating. The greatest high of his life.

>>63889051 (OP)
If I was anything like your brother, he would probably enjoy watching TZD videos if you send them to him via a messenger app when he gets access to WiFi.

>>63889189
>Die randomly in an artillery strike or bleed out from shrapnel
>A retard on 4channel glorifies your death because it was "le heroic!!!" and "le spiritual!!!!"
>>63889142
There is no evidence that the most violent men bred the most or ate the best.

>>63889051 (OP)
>is it a propaganda thing
No. War is romantic because it makes you feel like you are part of something bigger than yourself.
WARAK

>>63889051 (OP)
WWI killed the idea of romantic war, though arguably the American Civil War did that sooner.

>>63889303
>WWI killed the idea of romantic war, though arguably the American Civil War did that sooner.

This is kinda nonsense desu. People who survived the Napoleonic Wars and the American Revolution knew full well how much of a bloody mess it was. It was romanticized by generations born afterward who didn't experience it.

Hell, you pretty much see it now with WWII and all the wanking to the "Greatest Generation" (my great-grandfather who actually fought in it HATED that phrase and would get incredibly angry whenever someone used it in his presence).

There is nothing romantic about modern industrial war. It's dirty, smelly, mostly boring and annoying. A lot of it is waiting while artillery duels are ongoing. Some random incoming shell probably kills your friend, the best and most complete soldier in the platoon. Then comes the order to advance and a lot of men die in a short timeframe. There's nothing glorious or romantic about war, it's a fucking pointless excercise in human suffering. No one gains anything, everyone loses, even the top guys who ordered the fighting to begin.

war is usually romanticized by those who havent been at war
well besides for pic rel, he fucking loved it

>>63889284
Enjoy rooting away in your sofa

>>63889309
>you pretty much see it now with WWII and all the wanking to the "Greatest Generation"
That's deliberate propaganda by ZOG.

>>63889316
>That's deliberate propaganda by ZOG.

And the wanking to the Revolution and Napoleoni Wars (or WWI by the Nazis) wasn't?

>>63889313
There was nothing romantic about pre-industrial war either. You'd march, march and march some more and die from an illness, shitting and pissing yourself to death, before you even reached the battlefield.

>>63889051 (OP)
The male instinct is to fight

>>63889314
>war is usually romanticized by those who havent been at war
>well besides for pic rel, he fucking loved it

Plenty of people go to war and fucking love it. That's where the stories romanticizing it come from.

>>63889313
>Some random incoming shell probably kills your friend, the best and most complete soldier in the platoon.
well put
many people have this odd idea that war only kills the weak and the bad soldiers, but in modern war you could be a literal fucking Rambo Thundercock and still get fucked by some random airstrike/artillery strike/drone strike

I think what people dislike about war is not killing other people but dying and squatting in a muddy trench,
See picrel, comfy warm not in a muddy trench, cant be killed, can take his time and enjoy it seeing it in 4k

>>63889051 (OP)
> is it a propaganda thing?
Propaganda is before a war. You convince your peeps that the people you wanna kill are dogs and not worth considering. During war its just convincing people it's still a good waste of money and thingsll get so much better when its over. Post war its convincing your peeps you need to kill more dogs elsewhere

>>63889327
>many people have this odd idea that war only kills the weak and the bad soldiers, but in modern war you could be a literal fucking Rambo Thundercock and still get fucked by some random airstrike/artillery strike/drone strike

I mean, that was true even in ancient times. In the Iliad, Achilles dies to a fucking arrow to the kne-errr I mean heel.

>>63889333
true
or that Rambus Thundercockus gets done in by typhus or other fun disease in ye olde times
war is such a fucking dysgenic and retarded waste of resources
still, a defensive war must be fought and deterrence kept up, I'm not a total pacifist

>>63889051 (OP)
t. guy who has never been in a war

>>63889343
Right now 600000 miles from where you're sitting. Someone is disagreeing with you. Don't you wanna spend billions to kill them?

>>63889347
rather wabt to keep the disagreeing guy there and I'll stay here, while making sure that I am properly armed and equipped if the disagreeing guy decides to start a war in order to impose his worldview on me
we can trade, share memes, enjoy our cultures and act amicably in the meantime

>>63889347
If you had the death note and the name of the guy wouldnt you write the name in?
i know i would.

>>63889051 (OP)
>ukraine rockets
That's actually an Astros 2 demonstration in Saudi Arabia.

>>63889922
Funny thing is that Ukraine tried to get their hands on them but Bolsoshit blocked the deal becausem muh russian fertilizers

>>63889051 (OP)
Yet most people in the military sit around for a lifetime and nothing "cool" will ever happen. Become a roadie if you want to be part of a crew that makes something happen several times a week. The military is for small town losers that do not have access to anything better.

>>63889051 (OP)
>i can't even figure out why i feel this way because it's probably boring and unpleasant a lot of the time.
George Orwell's book "Homage to Catalonia" is a pretty good, quick read about his experience fighting during the Spanish Civil War and how miserable it was. He does get into the left-wing sectarian infighting but he showed up there not really knowing a lot about the politics, and that kind of thing also tends to evaporate among soldiers who are just trying to survive. But there is a part where he sees a bunch of anarchists heading off to war on a train and brandishing their guns and bayonets and getting hyped, and his memory of that particular scene was that war is hell and a mess but it can also be glorious in rare moments.

Anyways, knew a guy who had seen a lot of armed conflict, firefights, had been blown up more than once (even kidnapped), witnessed the aftermath of suicide bombers hitting crowds. He had a blackpilled and nihilistic view towards the idea that war allows you to somehow reach some insight that's otherwise inaccessible. He thought that was a load of crap. There are people who contrast the mundane, boring, normal life they have in a safe country with a fantasy in the "war world" that's out there, but that's delusional. Or vice-versa, they come to think only the war world is real while the mundane civilian life is fake. Actually it's the same world and warfare is boring most of the time. Also the (few) veterans who are like "you don't understand what I went through man" is like meh whatever. BTW a lot of victims of war are civilians for whom it's not a choice, it's something that happens to them.

If you want to gain some spiritual insight on the cosmos or a transfiguring knowledge of life that comes with war, go to the grocery store and buy some meat and then dump it on the sidewalk and stare at it. That's what it looks like. But like I said that's just one view.

Do you think it is romantic to pull a trigger on a child? If you go to war, do not go to war for the satanic zionist Jews.

>>63889051 (OP)
>ukraine rockets.webm
I remember first seeing this webm in 2019, during a Israel-Hamas flareup. It's a barrage of HAMAS short-range missiles

>>63889142
Not quite this
>>63889073
This mostly. There isn't much evidence that hunger gatherers were violent to other humans regularly. In fact they're usually quite timid unless in a weird resource strained environment or dealing with modern human incursions. Post agriculture this all changed, but that was only like 12k years of evolution. Not enough to really change our brains. But the violence of Neolithic humans was pretty metal, as is today's violence.

Men are hunters. They did evolve for 100,000's of years to cooperate in groups, face danger, and use violence to achieve a goal. Historically this was directed at animals but obviously you can see it's not exactly a huge leap to stretch that meta to other humans. All you need to do is set the circumstances up just right and we're doing Talheim Death Pit shit.

Also factor in broader in/out group dynamics, another old human trait that has less to do with GROUPS per say but rather NOVEL SITUATIONS. The unknown is terrifying to our monkey brains, and other groups are usually a big unknown. We evolved to be men and heroically face the unknown in our hunting adventures. Not a big stretch to have that now include facing a foreign human threat.

Because your brain is made to be shot adrenaline and combat is one of the most intense ways to produce it. People often misunderstand PTSD. Some veterans who have seen actual action have trouble going back to normal life not because they were traumatized by what they did or saw, but because normal everyday life does not provide the kind of adrenaline-inducing situations your brain has been habituated to. And now everything seems dull and unimportant. You become unable to care about normal things because you've gone back to primal instincts of survival and fighting, something that doesn't exist in modern society.

Warmongering propaganda knows this very well and does everything to make war look like what a 15 year old boy would imagine : something highly adrenaline-inducing and rewarding.

>>63889051 (OP)
killing your enemies has a long history of being considered a good thing. many groups even considered dying in an attempt to kill your enemies a good thing.
often even the enemies agreed it was noble or brave or logical for them to try it

basically it was human nature. but since about the Russo-Japanese War it is too removed from ancient tradition. almost always it is too deadly with too little gained for it to have much romantic appeal anymore

War is cool to people who don't have life experience and don't understand how nice sitting on your porch drinking a beer with your dad is, and how being dead tends to make that difficult.

honestly military service sucks
most of the time you do nothing or just suffer
but the moment shit gets real. i can't even describe how satisfying the feeling you get.

also i cherish the memories from my service even during peacetime even though it sucked

War is trying to kill someone who is trying to do the same to you. There’s nothing romantic about it.

See, you’re the subject of a millennia-long social conditioning program. You’ve been told your entire life that killing is bad, unless it’s in the military. You’ve been told that dying is bad, unless it’s for the right cause. You’ve been fed ideas of heroic sacrifice, of defending your homeland, of doing what is right, or what is necessary.

That’s how you justify war. But it’s not why you’re drawn to it in the first place.
You’re drawn to it because you are a violent animal with violent urges. Killing and raping are what ensured your genetic material survived to this day.
These things are wrong. We recognize they are wrong, we recognize that they are anti-social and anti-society, we recognize that we would all be better off were they to not exist… but it doesn’t change the fact that (you), innately, are rewarded for doing these things. It feels good.

The only way, then, to have a civil society AND satiate the need to kill and pillage, is to justify the violence. It’s a flimsy defense, but it’s enough. At least for (you) and anyone else that doesn’t go to war and doesn’t think about things too deeply.

>>63889284
If you have never felt the desire to kill someone or a group of people then it obvious your life lacks in real experience. Even worse, you may have come to rationalize why they shouldn't die.

>>63889303
More like being stuck in some shithole while being bombarded for months on end, now imagine something like flying at supersonic speed, AA ammunition trying to catch you while you approach your target, your message one of hatred and contempt in physical form. all that stands between you and death is the cutting edge of yor nation's technological prowess and your own skills.
Just think about it, the song in your mind.

>>63891519
what'd you do?

>>63895954
combat engineer

>>63889051 (OP)
>why is the idea of war romantic? is it a propaganda thing?
yes

>>63892134
you're not a pilot, you're the guy getting turned to paste by artillery

>>63889051 (OP)

It could be cool if you are in the American army and you just call air strikes on a bunch of thirdies with rusty rifles that have now real way of fighting back.

War is absolute hell if you are a poorfag in a meat wave in Ukraine, getting hunted by drones, like an NPC in a video game or the extra in a shitty movie.

>>63889051 (OP)
Idk, war seems kinda gay to me now. I've seen too many videos of retards getting killed by FPV drones to think war is romantic. I've noticed most deaths are kinda pathetic too, like usually most people die looking like a faggot bleeding out and crying in the mud/snow after getting their limbs get blown off by a drone. They always die alone too, nothing romantic about that desu

>>63889051 (OP)
Clausewitz explained.

yes it is miserable, yes it is romantic, yes it is fun, yes it is boring; it is all of these things. It's natural for people to love it and hate it, and many men will react weirdly because only 10-15% of men are actually good for war. Don't overreact. War is ultimately a practical tool, and you shouldn't forget that, but that doesn't invalidate the metaphysical takes either. Pointless cynicism and nihilism are just as deceptive as excessive metaphysical praise.

Imagine drinking beer with friends. A little is funner than none. Some people are into it and successfully enjoy more. A few are alcoholics and overdose on unhealthy levels causing long-term damage or getting killed. War is similar. It's fine if that's what you enjoy. It's probably healthier not to get involved at all, but then again, if someone preaches about avoiding it constantly they probably have issues.

>>63889051 (OP)
its because you're watching from the TV/monitor 10000 miles away from the war. When you're at the war, you have nothing to romanticize about, all you're worried about is how to survive the next missile/drone/bombing run and hope you dont become a statistical number for the record

>>63889317
>And the wanking to the Revolution and Napoleoni Wars (or WWI by the Nazis) wasn't?
They were, but I think the disconnect isn't as great (sans WWI). I think the farther you go back, the more war becomes like a fight or duel, the lesser the distance between the propaganda and the actual practice (though there will always be some distance).

>>63896764
Military books imply (and sometimes explicitly state) roughly pic related.

A lot depends on the kind of war you go to, how your experience was, and how it ends for your side.

You might have a nice, successful, short war that gets praise from your nation, and that puts the glaze on the six months of boredom and crappy living conditions you put up with before the actual fighting. (Gulf War)

Or you may do multiple deployments to the same environment in conditions ranging from very quite drab to ridiculously plush, yet come away from it with less sense of satisfaction, because the "combat" was endless patrols for nothing, the occasional IED, the occasional death, and no real closure because there was neither victory nor defeat. (Iraq War)

OR you could be stuck in a grinding fight with barely any support, your days spent freezing or baking in a filthy trench as the finest weapons of science try to murder you in new & interesting ways, and death, mutilation, or capture is always just around the corner. (WW1, Korean War, Iran-Iraq War, Ukraine War) Your whole objective is to survive, not enjoy it or hate it.

>"For the past fifty years the Allied War has been sanitized and romanticized almost beyond recognition by the sentimental, the loony patriotic, the ignorant, and the bloodthirsty. I have tried to balance the scales."

>With those two sentences Paul Fussell, a severely wounded Second World War veteran turned literary critic and scholar, ends the first paragraph of the preface in "Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War." It's a shattering book. Using primary source materials Fussell demonstrates, from the average Allied soldier's point of view, the war was fought in an ideological vacuum devoid of higher meaning. He also debunks the fantasy that many citizens and soldiers needed to believe to keep up morale: the Allies were all good, the Axis all evil. This fantasy has survived.

>The men in the trenches, jungles and beaches knew this to be bunk, for it was they who stepped in the guts of their comrades and enemies. And it was they who resented the sanitized, uninformed version of events that was presented to the American and, to a lesser extent, British people. As a result, the war years eroded critical thinking and originality, to say nothing of the willingness to confront difficult moral questions. (British civilians tasted war in 1940 in ways American civilians never did throughout the entire conflict).

>Said British Officer Neil McCallum,

>"The game does not appear to be worth the candle. What is seen through the explosions is that this, no less than any other war, is not a moral war." Fussell describes McCallum's depiction of actuality as "an implicit warning against the self-delusive attempt to confer high moral meaning on these grievous struggles for survival."

>>63896904
>And that was what the war boiled down to for just about every man at the front witnessing his comrades getting ripped to pieces by machine gun bullets or in a bomber's cockpit incinerating defenseless German civilians: survival. The faster the war ended, the faster he would go home. The war ends faster the more enemies we kill. Therefore, the enemy must be dealt with utterly remorselessly. It's kill or be killed. There was no grandiose talk of freeing the world from Fascism. The combat troops knew what they were fighting against, but a clear definition of what they were fighting FOR had to be invented for everyone else. For the troops, it was to survive.

>Fussell wraps up his book with a chapter titled "The Real War Will Never Get in the Books." The unspeakable suffering and destruction perpetrated by all sides in the Second World War (12,000 French and Belgian civilians were killed by the Allies during the fighting in Normandy) could not be presented to the American public in any way that could do it justice or be acceptable to their eyes and ears.

>The troops so greatly resented the antiseptic portrayal of their physical, emotional, and psychological suffering that they, too, sought escape in satire and euphemism. Also, soldiers responded with "constant verbal subversion and contempt." Optimistic publicity about fighting the good fight and euphemism rendered their real experience falsely. The troops knew, said Fussell, the home front would be made aware of none of the bad stuff, even something as banal as soiling one's underwear under fire.

>Gross military blunders, officers abusing troops (called chickenshit), soldiers' sexual desires and deprivations of every kind: they are a soldier's life at war.

>>63896913
>Out of every one-hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. But the one, one is a warrior and he will bring the others back. -Heraclitus

Fussell was a mobik in a low-end unit in a conscript army. He called it the childrens crusade. He was not one of the top 1% like Junger, Waugh, Patton or Carton de Wiart.

>>63892104
Jesus fuck what a psychopatic post. I have plenty of experience, yet I don't wish for others to die you retarded faggot. Offensive killing and offensive war is bad, full stop. It is ethically bad, it's morally bad, it goes against my faith, it causes pointless destruction and death.

Defensive killing and warfare is justified. It being justified still doesn't mean that you should forget that the target you're shooting is another man. Pointless killing for killing's sake and morally justifying that killing to yourself with narratives about why that target should die is just simply grim and gay.

>>63897376
Were the crusades wrong?

>>63896904
>>63896913
>>63897261
this was a neat read.

it's not
it only appears so because le narcissistic quality of defending le tribe
until you feel the pain and mental anguish and realize peace is the only option anyone should take (as unrealistic as that is)

>>63897461
You're asking this because you're one of those larping, performative internet Christians, aren't you? If all you've gotten from our faith is hatred for the other and want for conquest and killing with reckless abandon, please seek Jesus you fucking retard.

>>63889051 (OP)
>why is the idea of war romantic?
because it is simplistic

in normal life, for better and worse, we can't just beat up the bad guys because some faggot thinks we should be merciful, or some other faggot thinks it's a waste of money, or some other other faggot thinks war is le bad

war is the final recourse when all the normal rules of society are off the table, and the only rules left are what you and the opponent agrees to follow (i.e. the international laws of armed conflict) which in practice are only in place by mutual agreement. it's ultra-simplified.

>>63889051 (OP)
a sense of pride, community, danger, and accomplishment. to a lesser extent, if you have a community garden, you'll get the same sort of sense working with people to grow stuff that you then eat with them. you can get the same going and doing something like rock climbing, racing with a team, even hunting. human beings get bored easily, like any intelligent creature, doing something, especially something that builds community or works with others, will help. the propaganda is just there to amplify it.

>>63889051 (OP)
The plight of modern society is that it is too easy, and humans like all animals were built to live in challenging and miserable conditions against all odds.

Once their life is made so much easier by automation and cheap energy, and once their food supply is secure, most people simply don't know what to do. When an animal doesn't have anything to do they overeat, oversleep and groom themselves in case something happens and they're back on survival mode.

Struggle grabs people's attention because it is something we evolved being schizoid about. War simplifies morality to the extreme, you have clear goals, a clear purpose and while you suffer a lot you were made to take it. You learn things you didn't k ow you were capable of and it scratches that itch most men have instinctually.

>>63897837
If you think the Crusades had anything to do with the Christian faith, you are utterly delusional and a "performative internet Christian".

>>63897261
That quote is gay as fuck. Interested to read the Fussell book, but as you say I'm sure his research and writing is heavily influenced by his own viewpoint

>>63900179
The Heraclitus quote? It's cringe because it's true. Or Fussell's boys crusade quote? It's a crusades reference, an age theme (he argues high school influenced WW2 soldiers in a way WW1 and Korea didn't), and an Eisenhower reference.

But yes Fussell was highly biased and unlike say Eugene Sledge who wrote during the war, or the average military writer 5-7 years after it, he was writing long after the fact, decades after it for most of his books. So he incorporates memes like the Ronson Sherman which we know were made up in the years after WW2, and he's drenched in a peculiar 1950s WASP naivete, which he lashes out at.

Mobik is a good description of him. Basically he was upper middle class, academic, intellectual, but not aristocratic; a sensitive lad. After the war he became a Ivy professor writing about social commentary (his book Class is probably better than his war books). Anyway, from a sheltered aspirationalll-elite but nonviolent background he was thrown into a conscript unit reinforcing the European front, and it was one famous for being low quality among a wave of poorly trained draftees. He was infantry in it for a little under a year.

tl;dr the military was centered around normies, and his type either rise to the top or sink to the bottom. You can observe the social version (in contrast to the intellectualized version) in GWOT hyper-patriots. They didn't have a realistic understanding of how war works so they got PTSD while the professions didn't.

Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe is the contrasting take and from it we can derive the three common Western 20th century reactions to war.
Fussell's take was war is pointless hell. He was reacting to Eisenhower, who labeled WW2 a crusade for civilization (he was probably writing with his upcoming run for the presidency in mind). But Eisenhower was equally naive in his way (about /pol/ we take for granted) and made a point of rejecting the traditional "mercenary" takes on the profession of arms.

>>63900559
But the wars after Eisenhower's memoirs revealed the third take, the traditional Western way of military life which he and Fussell were both rejecting was both not obsolete and probably the psychologically healthiest.

Read Samuel Huntington's Soldier and the State take for an attempt to reconcile all three. It was a nice try but Huntington suffered from being part of the same naive proto-boomer culture, so he couldn't address military life directly and had to frame his copes with a credentialist appeal for segregating military institutions under civilian control

>Death come easy if you come before your time
>Death come easy to a young man in his prime
>They put a gun in my hand
>Said, Fight for the freedom of your land
>Death come easy to a young man in his prime

>Life was easy, I could want for nothing more
>Life was easy, then there came the call for war
>I left my family left my home
>With the army I was forced to roam
>Life was easy then there came the call for war

>Love was easy, with my lady I would stay
>Love was easy, then the war took me away
>Forget your love. War is right.
>So they taught me how to kill and fight
>Love was easy then the war took me away

>Killing's easy with a weapon in your hand
>Killing's easy and they say that war is grand
>With their music and their drums
>They don't see the slaughter of the guns
>Killing's easy and they say that war is grand

>Death come easy if you come before your time
>Death come easy to a young man in his prime
>They put a gun in my hand
>Said, Fight for the freedom of your land
>Death come easy to a young man in his prime

>>63900559
>he was probably writing with his upcoming run for the presidency in mind
didn't he wring his hands a lot over the atomic bombings?

>>63900666
Eisenhower was a politically adept fellow. A master organizer of course, and naive in the way I mentioned, but he knew what he was doing. Consider his approach throughout to the question of "what was war like." He exhibited dignified silent discretion about casualties and combat, mixed with the rare wry dry comedic anecdote to humanize himself, plus the occasional clinical-horror scene to let you know he was Really There. Classic. He was smart, he was there, but he was also a manipulator who was consciously setting out to give that impression the way he wanted it for an audience.

With that in mind think about what impression he was trying to give about upcoming geopolitics. The two big powers were America and Russia. FDR's cabinet was packed with pro-Russians. The war had given everyone a taste of what mass destruction felt like in a purely conventional way and Eisenhower was setting up the post-war cooperation with Russia in occupied Germany. He's careful to namedrop his ties with Zhukov, emphasize his initiative and forward thinking, and also present himself as a safe pair of hands respectfully subservient to the civilian ruled American government. He's creating a reverse-Patton image for himself because that's what will be politically appealing to western elites in the immediately post-atomic political world.

>>63900718
yeah I know
since you read the book, I'm asking you what his comments were on the atomic bombing
I've heard what he was supposed to have said about it postwar and I think it's a load of revisionist crock to make himself look good for the campaign trail

>>63901061
He says little directly about nukes. This is the longest passage about it (written 1948):

I had a long talk with Secretary Stimson, who told me that very shortly there would be a test in New Mexico of the atomic bomb, which American scientists had finally succeeded in developing. The results of the successful test were soon communicated to the Secretary by cable. He was tremendously relieved, for he had apparently followed the development with intense interest and felt a keen sense of responsibility for the amount of money and resources that had been devoted to it. I expressed the hope that we would never have to use such a thing against any enemy because I disliked seeing the United States take the lead in introducing into war something as horrible and destructive as this new weapon was described to be. Moreover, I mistakenly had some faint hope that if we never used the weapon in war other nations might remain ignorant of the fact that the problem of nuclear fission had been solved. I did not then know, of course, that an army of scientists had been engaged in the production of the weapon and that secrecy in this vital matter could not have been maintained. My views were merely personal and immediate reactions; they were not based upon any analysis of the subject. In any event it was decided that unless Japan surrendered promptly in accordance with the demands communicated to the Japanese Government from Potsdam the plan for using the atomic bomb would be carried out.

It's only mentioned as a footnote. For example Eisenhower is making remarks about how to organize a mass army and how he saw Nazi officers as enemies and he puts mentions of atomics in to highlight the 'crusade' as a hopefully one-off thing and thereby emphasize its moral importance by making it one. But what he was setting up was chapter 24:

>>63901347
Chapter 24 is about Russia - the other superpower of the time. Note Eisenhower mentions FDR proposed he run for president a few chapters earlier, note the date of his memoirs - 1948.
-
THE UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA EMERGED FROM the war the two most powerful nations of the globe. This fact affected every detail of American official routine in conquered Germany, for any prolonged struggle between the two powers would hopelessly complicate our local problems and might even nullify our costly victory. But there was involved far more than efficiency in German administration or political control.
What permanence the new-won peace might have; what stature the United Nations could attain; even what the future course of civilization would be—the answers to these questions now clearly involved, as an important factor, the ability of East and West to work together and live together in one world.
-
Russia tested Joe-1 in 1949. Eisenhower knew FDR & his cabinet were highly pro-Bolshevik, and he recognized Russia as the main conventional military power of the time, but he felt comfortable in the moment. The Cold War had yet to begin.

>>63901347
>>63901358
thanks
he was certainly very politically correct

>>63889051 (OP)
>is it a propaganda thing?
Yes 4000-5000 years of it.
Human beings have not evolved to fight with each other only with other animals at most also remember the flat teeth thing.
Thats why PTSD and other related "war fatigues" are a thing and why our society is so fucked to the core.

https://youtu.be/LzR-wFGjXHQ?si=upx1yCVA97xSylab